Reed struggles to contain and hide his newly manifesting power. Marcos is summoned by the last person he expected. Johnny and Clarice seek out Erg in the sewers, but his help won’t come easily. Agent Turner is back on the case, but will he get anyone to take him seriously?

It’s right there in the episode title. Complications. This episode has them in spades.

Starting with Marcos, and the aftermath of his little bit of ‘drunk-dialling’ to Lorna and his baby. That’s caused quite a stir, and leads to him being left at base by Johnny and Clarice to get sober and get his life in order. The opening flashback scenes give us a little bit of insight into Marcos’ own father issues and why it’s as devastating as it is for him to be separated from his child, which helps explain why he elects so readily to go along with his unexpected visitors when he’s given an opportunity to go and help Dawn.

Johnny and Clarice go off in search of Erg in the sewers, but given the vagueness of Evangeline’s information, it’s not an easy search, compounded by the fact that this is obviously someone who’d rather not be found at all. When they finally do make contact, things don’t go at all as either of them expected, and there’s likely to be drama that plays out in relation to that later down the line.

Reed, meanwhile, is struggling with his own spontaneously manifesting powers. His attempt to get out of home base on his own for a while is somewhat scuppered when a remorseful Caitlin asks him to take Lauren along with him to try to patch things up. If there’s anyone who knows about the pain of hiding powers from the ones they love, it’s Lauren, but can Reed bring himself to have that conversation?

And Turner is busy trying to get the police to take notice of his own theories and research about what he sees as clear mutant activity. It’s obvious that Turner left Sentinel Services, but that Sentinel Services didn’t quite fully leave Turner. This actually is a welcome development – the idea that he’d just forgotten the pain and anger which drove him in the wake of losing his daughter and accepted that he needed to do something else entirely never quite sat right. Turner has been, since fairly early in the show, a more complex and ambiguous character than one might expect, and that’s not changed here. Although he knows the ‘official’ line that everyone died in Atlanta, he’s not buying it, but whether he can get anyone else to listen is a different matter.

As for Andy – well it seems that he’s another potential weak link in the Inner Circle chain. Reeva trusts him for now, but really given what we have seen of her character already, how much is that trust ever worth. She rules the Inner Circle with an iron fist, and that may well prove to be her undoing in the long run, though doubtless there will be casualties on both sides along the way.

Verdict: Well-crafted writing and great performances from everyone involved keep the complications here from getting muddled or messy. It’s genuinely fascinating to wonder just what might happen next on either side of this conflict. 9/10

Greg D. Smith