Faced with the might of the Prime Order’s forces, and their dread new weapon, the warriors of the Outpost unite under their Queen in a bold and desperate defence. Garret seeks closure from his demons. Talon is forced to take a risky gamble.

If episode 12 of this second season of one of my least favourite shows surprised me, the finale was a positive shock to my system – at one point I even found myself shedding a tear. Where on Earth has all this action, drama and good writing been hiding for the last two seasons?

Ok, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s still the usual silliness of poorly co-ordinated fights, terrible FX work and shonky sets, but by god does this finale grab the viewer by the neck and give us a damn good shake.

The battle scenes here are actually damned impressive, by the standards of the show. There’s an awful lot of fighting, a decent number of extras and the writers suddenly become markedly less shy about killing people off.

There’s genuine redemption for a number of characters as well, with people who’ve done and said various bad things and generally acted quite poorly actually coming through with real heroics where it counts. One of those is the scene at which I was amazed to find myself actually feeling a bit of proper, honest-to-goodness emotion, as an act of selflessness emerges from the most unlikely of sources and leads to another character suddenly getting an upgrade from their usual lot to something entirely different, and the actor in question running with it for all they’re worth.

There’s also some genuine choices forced upon various players here which make their own kind of sense even as we the audience realise along with them just how big a risk they’re taking. Talon in particular finds herself forced to make a decision she won’t take lightly, for a number of reasons.

But even all of that didn’t prepare me for the big finish. There’s stuff happening here which is obviously done with an eye firmly on a third season, and as I said before, in spite of myself I find that I am very much here for it. The writers – in a turn of events that I couldn’t have hoped to predict – have found a whole new thread to go at with the characters, and given the revelation of the source of the Three’s power last time out, it’s clear that there is finally more to this show and its mythos than might have been apparent.

Verdict: Upsetting all expectations and delivering a genuinely enthralling and intriguing finale, I genuinely hope the cast, crew and writers get that third season to take all this forward. And I never thought I’d hear myself say that. 9/10

Greg D Smith