With the revolution victorious, now Layton must try to wrest order from the chaos. But looting and disorder among the passengers of Snowpiercer may soon be the least of his problems.

I always thought the struggle for the writers of Snowpiercer would be what came next once the revolution ended, one way or the other. After all, the passion, the conflict and the intensity involved in fighting for your very existence all sort of drain away when the fight is won. How would Snowpiercer’s new rulers be any better than the old? Would the new order really be any different than the established one? Would the old order even go quietly?

Turns out, they have a neat trick in mind to circumvent this, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves – first they do need to address just what happens now Layton has become head of the Train and Melanie has resigned herself to a life as an engineer. Answer: the things you pretty much expect.

The Tailies go wild, revelling in their new freedom and looting, carousing and generally causing a mess. The First Class passengers and the Hospitality staff – now led by Ruth – are about as happy as you might expect them to be about all this. Layton – backed by Roche and most of the Brakemen – tries his level best to keep some order, which involves a lot of admonishing his fellows and a lot of reassuring the upper classes. Once again, you’re forced to ask just exactly how different he is from Melanie.

Speaking of whom, Mel is now ready to embrace a new, simpler life in the Engine. Her handover of power to Ruth is as frosty as one might expect, but there’s a sense of relief now that she can hand over the reins of power and responsibility to other people and just go back to being the engineer she only ever wanted to be. There’s also a chance for her finally to address a heavy burden of grief which has stayed with her all these years.

But up in the Engine, Javier has picked up a mysterious transmission he can’t quite pinpoint. Bennett certainly seems to be up to something in trying to hamper his colleague’s efforts as far as possible in finding out exactly what the source is, and by the time it becomes clear, it’s all a little too late.

With a sense of inevitability as the last minutes run down on this finale, events race onwards towards a conclusion which nicely offsets the issue of how to keep things interesting now that Layton and his friends have won, while setting up a whole new narrative thread for season 2, as well as throwing us one last surprise revelation before the credits roll.

Verdict: A fitting finale to a great maiden series. Can’t wait for Season 2. 8/10

Greg D. Smith