Falista continues to tighten her grip on The Outpost, determined to unlock the secrets of the Gods and earn their favour. Talon and the other Blackbloods try to reckon with the reality of their race’s near extinction.

Surprisingly, this week the episode actually starts to wrestle with some deeper themes, while also managing to have a little bit of fun along the way. That said, the main angle revolving around Falista is not getting much better.

Falista is becoming a tyrant. This is the sort of turn that, if handled correctly, could provide a whole season’s worth of drama and intrigue. And if handled poorly, it can turn into Daenerys’s U-turn in the final two episodes of Game of Thrones. Whereas I wouldn’t say that Falista’s heel turn is quite nudging into Khalessi burning an entire city down just because, it’s certainly on that trajectory.

The Blackbloods who remain seek solace from their newly appointed High Priestess (for such has Wren now become) and for someone who didn’t want the job and keeps claiming that she isn’t in any way up to it, she does a pretty good job, though I suspect mainly the writers wanted the opportunity to take advantage of Izuka Hoyle’s amazing singing voice. Still, Wren is determined now to preserve the culture and history of her people more than ever, given they’re now facing possible extinction thanks to the Blackfist.

Oddly, where the show has one of its more nuanced moments is in relation to Talon and Zed. We expect Zed to blame Talon, having petitioned her many times before to bring the rest of their people through the portal. We also expect Talon to blame herself. But the way in which each of them approaches things may surprise. Zed is angry, yes, but not for the reasons you might expect. Talon feels guilty but she also has a very clear-eyed view of how and why everything had to play out like it did. Refreshing stuff.

Tobin and Garret find themselves in alliance as well, in the most surprising of circumstances. This doesn’t really fully work given the device by which the writers choose to do it, but then again given his wife’s increasing instability it is perhaps forgivable that Tobin manages to U-turn on something quite so quickly.

Thanks to Janzo mucking up, Wren finds herself in an impossible position – Falista wants something from her, but is it even in her power to give, and if it is, does she want to?

Overall it’s one of the stronger entries in the show for a while (which I will admit by my estimation of it is a low bar) but pretty much everyone gets to do something here, and with the exception of Falista’s increasingly nonsensical scenery-chewing, it’s all actually pretty good. Fingers crossed it continues in this vein.

Verdict: A distinct improvement. Elements of this are still feeling very rushed but overall this is a decent episode. 6/10

Greg D. Smith