The gang hatch a plan to infiltrate a Court of Owls meeting. Stephanie’s home life deteriorates further. Harvey has a very bad day.

I’ve worked it out. Though the show has a strong cast generally, it’s Olivia Rose Keegan’s Duela who is the real star of the show. Last time out, it was her dynamic with Carrie which proved the real draw of the episode and here, it’s her interactions with Turner which really make things snap. Not least because she’s the one we can actually see developing as a character.

When Cullen’s watch goes wrong, it leads to a random discovery (what are the odds?) about how the Court organises its little meetups, and given that they have the paintings and therefore must be on the next step of their nefarious plans, that means the gang need to get to the next meetup and see what’s what. With a nice artificial obstacle meaning only two of them will be able to go, this means Duela and Turner are the natural (?) choices to sneak in to the Belly of the Beast and see what they can discern.

It’s clear that Duela, despite her protestations to the contrary, is getting quite fond of her fellow Knights, and it’s fun to watch her and Turner awkwardly semi-flirt as they rely on one another to get through a nerve-wracking experience. It’s also a surprise to see Duela seeming to begin to actually care about her fellows, but in a nice way because Keegan injects just the right mix of performative disregard and genuine, unstoppable moments of humanity into the character.

Unfortunately, the Big Bad Plan which is revealed at the meeting is classic comic book nonsense, though it may link back to the semi-revelations delivered by Eunice the last time out. Certainly if you buy into it, it makes the Court very scary indeed, though also slightly odd, and a revelation about those changes Bruce was set to make to his will is almost laughably cartoonish and naïve. Oh well.

Stephanie is away from the group this time as we get to see more of her Tragic Home Life. I get that this is quite a ‘real’ topic and props to Anna Lore for selling it as best she can, but the issue mainly is that it doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere – that and it’s wildly inconsistent given she got wasted on alcohol with the gang a little while back but is supposedly desperately worried about/repulsed by her mother’s addiction issues. Making her father equally as unsympathetic as her mother here seems calculated to somehow make her ‘even’ with the tragic backstories of the other Knights, but that would forget the life of privilege she continues to lead relative to the others and it just feels like another step on the artificial journey towards her and Harper’s inevitable hookup.

As for Harvey? Well, turns out he couldn’t keep Cressida safe from the insidious criminal overlords who rule the city and have infiltrated every level of its law enforcement and governance by sticking her in a safe house. Who could have guessed it? But it’s OK because then we get another load of piano music and Harvey waking up sometime later in a different location with telltale signs of him having been involved with something way more interesting than what we have been allowed to actually see. Oh good.

And on the Obvious Plotting front, you’ll never* guess who the leader of the Court is. Oh for a really world class script doctor…

Verdict: Some decent character work let down by cartoonish villains, plot-convenience and an almost wilful tendency to make the more interesting stuff happen off screen. 4/10

Greg D. Smith

*You will, almost immediately. It literally couldn’t be more clearly signposted.