With Mother loose and on the prowl for a new host, Daimon and Gabriella turn to an unlikely source for help. Ana is starting to struggle in controlling her darker urges.

Kthara has escaped, albeit trapped inside Victoria’s body, and with her son Basara weakened in the half-shredded remains of Spivey. This leaves the Helstrom siblings with something of a challenge, but before they can get to addressing that, they have a lot of blaming one another to do, which ends with Ana predictably storming off back home with Yen in tow to resume normal life – or whatever passes for normal for the pair of them.

That leaves Daimon to wonder where the hell Caretaker has got to, and what he can do about reaching his mother before she is consumed. One interrogation later, he’s no further forward, and that’s before he gets to have a nice bit of confrontation with Hastings which relates to a flashback opening of the episode. Why did the Helstrom siblings get separated? Why didn’t Hastings take in Ana as well, and just how closely involved was she with The Blood?

Ana meanwhile is hungering for a victim on whom to take out her pent up rage, and that means she’s starting to get sloppy, much to Yen’s annoyance. Especially so when that sloppiness leads to conflict between him and Derrick, and puts not just his relationship but his and Ana’s lives at risk. And Ana doesn’t handle pressure well at the best of times…

Elsewhere, The Blood have Caretaker in their custody because they’re looking for something very special which they suspect he has, though the reason they want it is enough for him not to want them to have it – cue some fairly drawn out unpleasantness. Reaching out to Daimon, Esther, the apparent leader of The Blood offers a truce of sorts in which Daimon is not initially interested. But a conversation with Gabriella makes him realise that perhaps he could do with the help, though the real question is whether The Blood – an organisation which seems fairly invested in keeping him and his sister apart from one another and their mother – is to be trusted.

It’s another decent instalment in a series that’s turned itself around after a slightly excruciating few episodes. There’s good onscreen chemistry, great performances and decent action. It still has a tendency towards a bit of info dump dialogue here and there, but we seem headed for a decent finish.

Verdict: Action, tension and emotion in equal measure. 8/10

Greg D. Smith

Click here to read Greg’s earlier reviews