TNT
Andre Layton may have silenced one of his biggest threats on Snowpiercer when he fought to the death with Pike, and while he may have won that battle, he still has a war to fight … with his own conscience. That concussion he suffered because of Pike’s bomb is taking its toll on this week’s episode as Andre lay unconscious at a time when he’s supposed to be sitting with Pike’s body. And as this is a task he is to carry out alone, there’s no one else in the car to make sure Layton is okay.
When Andre does ‘awaken’, he’s still on Snowpiercer but this train is a big 180 away from the train he’s on, this one with a warm, tropical feel to it, sun drenched, potted plants, everyone dressed for the tropics. a decidedly 1940s noir vibe to everything, even though it’s all much more saturated with color. But for Layton, this whole fever dream is a wild conglomeration of Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.
Layton’s first surprise when he wakes up is being accosted by two goons and them promptly rescued by Wilford, Ruth and Javi (and the train’s W symbol has been replaced with a skull symbol). Andre is terribly confused but he knows he needs to get home — to the tail. Till, now a librarian in this dream world, tries to guide Layton and tells him he needs to find the Cartographer. But first he needs a fake passport to get from one section of the train to another, which turns out to be a test to see if Wilford can trust him. He passes, but Ruth is still giving him the side-eye (as she does so well).
Andre manages to briefly break away from the Wilford group and finds the Cartographer — Zarah — who shows him a map of the train drawn in an infinity loop, or rather as a snake devouring itself. Before he can get more information, he’s found by Wilford’s gang but Zarah was able to tell him he’ll need to know the password to get into the tail. But first they’ve got to go to the dining car where Wilford makes an exchange with Roche — the hula girl from the engine’s ‘dashboard’ in exchange for the doll left with Pike’s body. The exchange is made but LJ Folger (whom Andre quipped was just as awful in this world) and her crew show up and gun down everyone … except Layton. He’s tossed in a jail cell and told his sentence will be death by firing squad. No need for a trial. A priest then arrives — Pike — to urge Layton to confess his sins. Andre just irritates Pike, who leaves him alone, but Andre is set free and heads to the tail.
When he finally gets there, Josie is guarding the border and she first asks Andre what he wants then recites to him a riddle: ‘Most will run but some will seek. Hide or cheat, we’ll always meet. My present, past, and future keep. Who Am I?’ In this reality the answer is meant to be the same: ‘Death’. Andre already has so much blood on his hands, figurative and literal now, that for him the only peace he can get is through his own death. But he answers correctly and Josie admits him to the tail where he meets the Tail boss, a young woman who, it turns out, is his now grown daughter Lianna (Battlestar Galactica‘s Kandyse McClure). She runs the train now, but Andre doesn’t want that to be her future. He knows New Eden can save her. He’s got the doll that was obtained in the trade and hands it to her but … it has a bomb in it and it explodes.
Layton awakens back in Asha’s bunker — and for a moment I wondered if everything we’d seen since Layton first encountered Asha in that bunker was now going to be revealed as a dream — where they have to fight off some intruders. Layton is insistent on opening one of the lockers in the bunker, which Asha does her best to prevent. But when he does, what he sees inside is the reality check that brings Layton back to the real world — a calendar with a picture of a tree, the same one he’d had a ‘vision’ of that convinced him there was a New Eden on the horizon. Layton now knows that he was never a prophet, he just conjured up this notion of hope from an old picture he’d subconsciously remembered completely out of context. With this knowledge now a reality, how will Layton resolve this ‘big lie’ he’s concocted, covered up and even murdered for?
TNT
While Andre was lost in his own world, there were some interesting developments in the real world. Zarah and Josie actually bonded over Andre with Zarah admitting to Josie that Andre still loved her, and she’s okay with that. In fact, she’s ready to put any old jealousy behind her … so Zarah is basically proposing a ‘throuple’? Till also found some comfort from ‘the enemy’. Seeking a quiet place to shed some tears, she accidentally found Audrey seeking solace of her own under the little observation dome. Audrey actually felt some empathy for Till, whom she’d never seen cry before, and Till asked Audrey to work her magic on Layton to help him find his way back to the real world. It actually was Audrey who used her special skills that brought Andre out of his catatonic state. Meanwhile, Wilford has been doing some studying of locations and signals, and with Alex’s helps he’s been able to plot out locations of Snowpiercer and Big Alice a few months earlier when Wilford was trying to intercept Layton. Wilford had detected a track switch signal near Marseille, a point at which neither train was located, and now Wilford believes the signal was from Melanie. Perhaps this is the distraction Layton will need as he tries to figure out how to deal with his New Eden problem.
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