Brigid, Tandy and Ty try to track down Mayhem to put an end to her murderous campaign, but must examine their own moral codes in the process. Mina’s continued experiments in the wake of the Roxxon fallout may provide an explanation as to who and what Mayhem is.

Mayhem being in this show may well be one of the worst kept-secrets ever, but now we know, we can get to the interesting stuff, like why in this iteration of the characters, Mayhem is a double of Brigid only with murderous intent, what exactly her motivations might be and why she hasn’t killed her ‘docile’ duplicate just like keeps happening with Mina’s mice.

Fracturing its narrative into a ‘then’ and ‘now’ format for the duration of its length the episode seeks to give us answers, and ends up leaving us (and our heroes) with some fairly complicated feelings on the subject. After all, is a killer who targets only evil people truly someone we can view as a villain? But at the same time, can we ever really root for someone who casually deploys violence to achieve their ends, regardless of how noble those ends might be?

Emma Lahana deserves all the credit for making this actually work on the screen. O’Reilly was already a complex character – tough, smart and with a certain flexibility when it came to the rules getting in the way of her doing the right thing. Now, in the wake of the Roxxon incident, she’s much more unsure, nervous and jittery, unable even to shoot straight, as we saw last time out. By comparison, Mayhem is calm, efficient and utterly ruthless, going about her mission with not a single thought as to the consequences outside of getting what she wants. The two couldn’t be more different, despite being played by the same actress, and it’s clear that Lahana had great fun with this one.

But stuck in the middle of this conflict are the girls who we now know are missing as part of a wider, organised operation, and regardless of where the characters (or the audience) stands on Mayhem and her methods, everyone can agree that this is bad and that the girls need rescuing. Watching these characters all working towards that end while fighting against one another is engaging, forcing the viewer to really ask the moral questions alongside the protagonists. Truth be told, having finished watching it all, I’m still not sure where I stand. Sure, the obvious response is to side with Mayhem, in that bad people deserve to have bad things happen to them, but Ty’s rejoinder on this point is equally compelling, to say nothing of the simple basic fact that retribution is not the same as justice.

Verdict: Feeling a lot smoother and more together than an episode which keeps jumping back and forward in time has any right to be, this asks tough questions of its viewer and it’s to its credit that it refuses to provide definitive answers. 9/10

Greg D. Smith