Episode 3 of Dominion give us traitors galore and lots of symbolic bloodshed this week, though not as much of that cool angel-on-angel action we’ve already come to love. Still, the Son of Whele seems to grow some balls of his own, while Lannen’s vacation from Vega is cut short – literally — while Gabriel plays with his horn.
Big Bad Angry Archangel Gabriel likes to spend time by himself. This time, we see him fly to a dusty ol’ diner in the outback, not unlike the birthplace of Lannen himself back in Legion. But he’s there for a reason: to meet with William Whele, son of the diabolical mastermind, the Lex Luthor of Dominion! The oily little creep is a traitor! Gabriel butters him up a bit, but William’s disturbed: Claire was hurt during the last attack on Lannen, and – whoops, no time for talk, Gabriel has to stick a fork in the waitress’ face and slaughter everyone in the diner before he answers any questions! Apparently it’s some sort of object lesson to William. Go back to Vega, Gabriel tells him, “strengthen your acolytes. Tell them the Chosen One has been found. Their time is near.”
After a confusing post-titles sequence (no, Claire isn’t with Lannen, he just wishes she was), we see Gen. Reisen talking with his eight-ball paramour: the higher angels, he tells her, disguised as humans, have infiltrated Vega, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Except, you know, screw the eight-ball some more.
Back inside Vega, Whele taunts and seduces AREEKa, the last remaining sex-nun from the weapon-loving Order of Helena, not absolved of all wrong-doing and back in her suite. Whele’s still looking to cut a deal for airplanes from Evelyn that he can use to attack Gabriel’s aerie.
In front of the Council, we’re told again of the new and game-changing involvement of the Higher Angels, who can impersonate humans and are undetectable by Michael: he had no idea there were Higher Angels inside the city walls. Whele taunts Michael a little too much, but at least Anthony Head’s American accent doesn’t make your ears bleed this time. He seems to be getting it under control.
Lannen, out on his own, comes upon a car wreck with dead humans and eight-balls strewn all about. He finds one survivor, and shoots the guy to put him out of his misery. What a hero. Not quite sure what that was all about; he didn’t seem to gain any information nor we any insight from this encounter.
We’re seeing far more of the bad Angel Gabriel than in previous episodes. His enforcer angel Wong – no, wait, he just LOOKS like Wong, make that “Furiad” – asks why Gabriel doesn’t just go snatch Lannen from Vega himself. He must come of his own free well, Gabriel says, and basically: don’t screw with me.
We spend a couple of minutes with Lannen’s soldier-buddies, who really haven’t had much to do so far, and then with Claire and That Turncoat Bastard William, who’s hot to move forward on the arranged wedding, but she? Not so much. This feels like a relationship that’s got nowhere to go but down. Michael, meanwhile, wanders the marketplace like a regular guy (does no one actuall know what the archangel looks like?) and has a secret “don’t look at me!” conversation with one of the hidden Higher Angels he’s been letting crash at his pad (ie, Vega) – hey, wait, he can sense them, or at least some of them! He…he lied to us! Isn’t that just like an angel?
Later in this very talky day, at the angelic HQ, Lannen’s male soldier-buddy Mack confronts Michael, and asks him whether he sent Lannen away. Turns out the ‘all-seeing’ Michael didn’t even know he was gone, and zoom, he’s outta here, faster than Batman on a mission. Not far away, Claire finds her young students have all disappeared – Daddy has been rounding up anybody who had contact with the now-dead sex-nuns or their now-reeleased leader. Clare’s pissed, but her Dad doesn’t care: he does what he wants ’cause he’s the Lord of the City, little girl, and the kids have already been interrogated and released. He just pushes her harder to marry The Traitorus Bastard Willim Whele and take over. So what’s the big hurry, she wonders? “I’m sick, Claire,” he says. First she’s heard of it. And the last to know. Old news, baby!
Far far away (well, a couple of hours in a dusty Land Rover away), Lannen keeps doing his impeccable Road Warrior imitation…until Michael intercepts him. (Hmm…we’re halfway through the episode, and there’s been a whole lot of talking, but no angel fights or blowing ups yet. We’re getting antsy.) Michael’s staying with him, whether Lannen likes it or not. Even pulling a gun on the angel doesn’t stop him. C”mon, Lannen says, all I want to do is go to New Delphi, get a fresh start. Just make one stop with me, Michael says, and I’ll leave you be.
Back to the council, and MORE talk, this time between Whele and Becca, the Counsel. He tries to get Becca to rat out the Archangel and report back to him, but she’s having none of it. So he blackmails her: tell me what he’s up to, or I’ll tell everybody you’re sleeping with him. (Which we’ve known since the first scene of the pilot.) Apparently sleeping with an angel’s like TOTALLY bad. And this is the week for revealing things to us that we already know.
In the not-so-distant wilderness, Michael take Lannen back to the Chosen One’s boyhood home, now abandoned (like pretty much everything outside the walls of Vega, it seems) There’s more mysterious tattoo-writing on the wall, and Lannen has acid-flashbacks to his Dad freakin’ out, trying to decipher the tats himself and failing. Michael’s doing a heavenly job of guilt-tripping the new Messiah into hanging around a while longer.
In Vega, Mack the Soldier-Buddy tries to escort AREEKa somewhere. She immediately smokes him out as a closet gay (and this is important…why?) and tries to pump him (so to speak) for information on Lannen. They are interrupted when the Vegas version of UPS shows up with a trunk from her lover, the leader of the Order of Evelyn far far away. It contains … eww, the dismembered parts of a body – Arika’s sister’s body. (Grotesque, but tastefully arranged.)
Michael is still working on Lannen. He tells the story of how Lanen’s Mom died here in this house, trying to protect him, and how it nearly killed Jeep (his Dad) as well. Michael confesses: he sent Jeep away all those years ago (the main source of Lannen’s angst, it seems, not the fact that he’s, like, Jesus 2.0); he ordered Jeep to abandon his own son so the boy could grow up strong. And FINALLY, two-thirds of the way into the episode, we get a hint of some action: the enforcer angel Furiad, once again dressed like Magneto with wings, has angel-vibed Michael, now outside the confines of Vega…and he’s comin’ for him.
Back in Vega, Arika mourns the death of her disassembled sibling – a weird gift form her own lover, who seems to be telling her to bugger off. Arika is shaken, and Whele is there to shake her even more. She turns on a dime: give me amnesty, she says, and I’ll overthrow my “friend” Evelyn, and then we’ll do business. Which makes one wonder if it was her lover back home who killed the sister or maybe Whele himself, being diabolical.
And we’re still not done with the Micheal-Lannen talking. Back at their abandoned house, Alex presses the angel for more information about his parents and his birth…but Furiad the Magneto angel and his colleagues show up. Finally ! Angel fight! Swords and fists! Michael is pierced, right through the belly and out the back, by Furiad’s sword, who then flies off, leaving Lannen in one piece (What? Doesn’t take him? Doesn’t kill him?)
Back in Vega, Daddy Whele pushes his son, Rat Bastard Candy-Ass Traitor William to close the marriage-deal with Claire, and fast. William turns out to his some steel in his spine but it’s clear: Whele has no idea that his son is a turncoat, a Gabrielist. And William – who looks a lot like Brother Blood from Arrow – cannot wait to get outta there and meet with his mysterious Gabrielist acolytes, to tell them that the Chosen One is amongst them. He even blood-sacrifices one of his own guys in front of his masked followers just to make his point (See? Lots of painful symbolic bloodletting and violence this week – Gabriels diner massacre, Riesen’s kidnapping of children, Michael’s forced abandonment of Alex Lannen as a child, William The Bastard’s behind-the-back murder of his own acolyte…wow). And just to murk up the water a bit more, we get a quick glimpse of Counselor Thorn, one of Riesen’s few allies in the Council, as she sends sets up some kind of secret beacon to…who? So SHE’S a traitor too? Damn, is ANYbody not a traitor around here?
Well, maybe Claire. She meets with the Turncoat William – who’s getting a lot of airtime this episode, after spear-carrying for most of the series thus far – and tells him she got Dad to make some concessions for the caste-members in return for willingly marrying William. Whiled in Gabriel’s aerie, Furiad interrupts Gabriel playing his trumpet – GET IT? – and says he put a sword in Michael to get him to back off, but left Lannen alive and well, as ordered (oh, that explains it. “He must come willingly,” and all that crap.) But he’s overstepped his bounds, forgotten that Michael, though the enemy is Gabriel’s brother-arch-angel, and the news pisses off Gabriel so much, he kills one of the dark angel assistants right in front of Magneto. So MORE symbolic bloodshed.
…and we end with Alex driving a mortally wounded Michael back to Vega to seek help. Yeah, that was a long absence. One whole episode.
So let’s lay it out: Lannen’s back already, William Whele is a rat bastard traitor, a death-cult leader and a spy for Gabriel, ArEEKa the sex-nun is now Whele’s ally, ready to overthrow the Order of Evelyn, Michael’s got a sword in his gut, and a couple of minor characters are wandering around, too. A lot more talk this week than last, lots of plots and counter-plots, but a lot less action. One diner slaughter at the front and a short and inconclusive sword-fight at the end leaves us bloodthirsty for more. Let’s hope next week is has less intrigue and more wing-fu.
