In the aftermath of the failed mission at the summit, bigger issues surface – Agent Turner is using Project Hound to trace the Underground back to their base. As their enemies close in, the mutants must make hard choices – will the Underground be able to survive? And what costs are worth paying?

With Campbell’s escape, the Frosts resolve that the only remaining solution is of the permanent variety. They’re shouted down as Johnny, Marcos and Clarice bundle everyone into the cars and out of the area, but not everyone necessarily disagrees with them equally.

Meanwhile, Agent Turner is using some of the new Hound Programme members to trace the exact movements of the Underground, and he’s not playing safe anymore. Having seen too much death and still raw with the grief of losing his daughter, Turner is now undoubtedly equally as dangerous to the mutants as is Campbell. As he and his forces close in on the Underground’s base of operations, it’s left to Reed and Caitlyn to organise the defence/evacuation, with Johnny and co absent. This means that Andy and Lauren must work together, but can they do that still?

By the time Marcos realises that someone’s missing from the safehouse he and the others are at with the Frosts, the countdown has already begun. Big choices are about to be made, and deeds done which cannot be undone.

The season concludes with a strong episode – perhaps its strongest yet thanks to the sheer amount of emotion flying around the place. It’s been fascinating to get to know Lorna and her past through the course of the series – her parentage is an open secret to anyone vaguely familiar with the X-Men franchise – but here we really start to see that heritage coming through, both in the scale of her power, and in the way that she perceives the world.

For the Struckers, although it has always been fairly obvious that Andy was the ‘outsider’ of the family, it also always seemed that his relationship to Lauren was strong enough to counter that. Over recent weeks, we have started to see even that bond start to fray at the edges, and here it is tested yet again. It’s a performance that could so easily have degenerated into scenery-chewing or over-angst, and a credit to both young actors that it does neither. You want these kids to work it out, and you’re never quite rooting against either of them.

And as for Caitlyn and Reed – here they really rise to the occasion, cementing their place as not only members of but leaders within the Underground movement. Their actions during the siege of the hideout reinforce that regardless of what various members of the Underground might think of them, they are often the sensible adults in the room when nobody else can be – something the movement inarguably needs if it is to survive.

As the episode hurtles towards a conclusion, it plays with the audience a little: the conclusion not necessarily being entirely unexpected, but different enough to give a small surprise. This has been a show about pulling together against a common foe – a theme that’s been there through the initial acceptance of the Struckers into the Underground through Clarice’s struggles and even the arrival of the Frosts themselves. The conclusion, as the credits start to roll, is perhaps the inevitable end product of that sort of eternal tension, but it lays the ground nicely for what we can expect in the next, already-confirmed, season.

Verdict: A fitting finale to one of the better comic book TV series this past year, if not ever. It seems that Marvel Properties on TV work best when they’re outsourced – maybe something the studio can take note of for the future. 9/10

Greg D. Smith