Mara confronts Ray to see if by doing so she might move past her own demons. Alexis visits with her parents for her birthday but recent events cause her to confront them over why they don’t speak about Dylan. Oliver’s plans become horribly apparent, and the team must unite to try and stop him as OniraTech’s fate hangs in the balance.

Reverie is a slightly silly show. It always has been, and it elevates itself mainly through absolutely committed performances on the part of its actors and some smart (if at times slightly inconsistent) writing. Last week, it set a lot in motion, and gave itself one final hour to resolve it all. The result is that some bits feel a little uneven.

The revelation that Mara had compelled Ray to kill himself last week came from pretty much nowhere. Shahi had invested an awful lot in making us really feel sympathy for Kint as a character. She’s instantly likeable, empathetic, and most important of all, apparently incorruptibly nice. To see her tell Ray that he should just pull the trigger was a thunderbolt, and left this viewer questioning quite a few things about her.

The way that the show addresses this is a thread that runs through the episode, from her confrontation with Ray, to helping out others as events progress and then the final denouement, there’s a real sense of Mara doing exactly what the show’s credits monologue assures us all week to week – finding a way to save herself.

Meanwhile, there’s the slightly pressing ticking timebomb that is Oliver Hill. Turns out his plan is a lot grander in scope than we might have guessed, while also being a little oddly cliched and disappointing. Jon Fletcher has always done a good job of keeping the viewer off balance as to exactly what his motivations might be, but here he gets unfortunately reduced to a bit of a caricature. Worse, his mental health gets used as a sort of hand-wavy excuse for his behaviour past and present, and in a show that’s done such good work in addressing various elements of mental health in its protagonists as it’s progressed, this is a fairly big lapse. I get it, he’s a bad guy, but the show seems set on making him a ‘bad’ sort of mental, rather than giving adequate time to explore why he’s doing what he’s doing (and why he did what he did in the past). It’s less malicious intent on the writers part than simple lack of time I suspect, but it almost feels like Mara’s journey would have been enough, and Oliver’s arc could have been spun out for longer, left to mature in a follow-up season. Overall, it’s a minor gripe, but a gripe nonetheless.

Everything else though, works. The sense of team, of family even, which is spoken of by one (surprising) character towards the end is genuine, and has been built up over the season well. Whether it’s Charlie’s paternal concern towards everyone mixed with his sheer physically intimidatory manner (Haysbert can look mean with great economy of expression and movement), Paul’s puppy-love crush on Mara or Alexis’ slow thawing towards the people around her, there’s a real feeling that these characters have grown together, and more importantly, that our heroine is at the centre of all that growth. Mara hasn’t just saved herself and the people she’s gone into Reverie to help, she’s made OniraTech a genuine family, injecting warmth and humanity into the faceless, impersonal environs of a tech company through sheer force of personality.

Whether the show will return for another season remains – at time of writing – a mystery, but I think it’s done enough to merit it, and certainly it seems the writers think so too, if the final mystery it leaves us with before the credits roll is anything to go by. Time will tell.

Verdict: Giving itself slightly too much to cover in its finale, this instalment inevitably stumbles in a few areas, but in most others it shines. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the adventures of Mara Kint and crew, and I genuinely hope to see more from them in the future. 8/10

Greg D. Smith