(Full Spoilers Below)
Falling Skies has certainly changed a lot since it first started, and I don’t think that’s ever been more evident than with the first two episodes of Season 4. With The Eye, the second episode of Season 4, the show proved once again that it is willing to push boundaries in order to defy our expectations, but I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing. The plots are getting crazier, and while I really liked seeing more depth added to the four different plot lines going on, it’s starting to get a little absurd, and I hope to see the show find a way to ground all the different stories soon. However, I still really enjoyed watching The Eye. It gave me exactly what I wanted, good action and fun plot twists, but I’m still nervous about the overall direction the show is trying to go in.
While last week’s episode only gave us a brief glimpse into the way Tom is acting as the vigilante known as ‘the Ghost,’ The Eye expanded it, and showed us just how much of an inspiration he has become to all the men and women who are stranded in the ghetto with him. It’s really cool seeing Tom branch out like this, and while I find it hard to believe that the Espheni would find him to be such a threat in such a seemingly short amount of time, I appreciate that the writers of the show aren’t milking the vigilante angle, and having Tom reveal himself in order to protect everyone was a nice way of showing that. Also, it was pretty awesome seeing Tom roast that flying skitter with the flamethrower, and it’s probably one of the coolest alien takedowns we’ve seen from the show yet. Hopefully we get even more flamethrower action when Tom and his band of rebels try and break out of the prison.
The most interesting thing that happened with Tom, however, was his meeting with the alien overlord/prison warden. It was a suitably tense and creepy confrontation between the two that added yet another plot thread into the mix that will need to be addressed. The warden’s plan to take the strongest remaining humans and mutate them into some kind of strange alien hybrid or soldier came as a shock, and while the results could be really creepy, I just hope it ends up making the Espheni threat feel more real, as they’re starting to feel a little stale with their repetive threats and such. But still, it’ll be interesting to see how Tom deals with this information next week, especially as he continues his plan to break out of the prison.
So far, Ben’s storyline in the strange utopia has been the most interesting one to me, and that was only amplified this week, as Ben continued to question Lexi and her dangerous, alien-like abilities. What really struck a chord with me, however, was just how much he seemed cared for her. He didn’t want to test her blood to see if she was a threat, he wanted to test it to see if he could find a way to save her from dying, which seems to be one of the unfortunate side-effect of her sped-up aging process. It will be interesting to see just how far Ben will go to protect Lexi in the coming episodes, especially now that he’s discovered that she’s serving the Espheni themselves. The only problem I had with Ben’s story this week was his weird moment with Maggie, which seemed to hint at a romance between the two that would just be weird, considering Maggie and Hal have been a couple for almost two seasons now.
Out of the four different story arcs this week, Matt and Anne were the ones who got the least amount of screen time, but in this case, I think that was a good thing. With so much happening with Tom and Ben in their respective stories, there just wasn’t the time to give either Matt or Anne any more screen time than they got. But what they did get was really great. Seeing more of Matt in his creepy alien reeducation camp was suitably creepy, and although there wasn’t much, the fact that his friends, and fellow rebels, mysteriously disappeared at the end is certainly an intriguing and frightening tease for what the Espheni plan on using the children for.
Anne also got a great scene this week, as she got once-step closer to discovering what the Espheni are using the kidnapped children for. Seeing how she brutally interrogated that injured skitter while it was psychically attached to one of her previously harnessed soldiers was a real standout moment for the episode, as she violently murdered the creature after it didn’t give her the answers she wanted. It was an eye-opening, although slightly exaggerated, moment that demonstrated just how much of an impact the last few months have had on Anne, and I can only imagine it will get worse for her as she continues to chase after answers she can’t find.
Falling Skies delivered where it needed to with The Eye, and even though a big portion of the episode was simply setting up bigger plots for the future, I’m still not quite sure where the new showrunner is trying to take the show with this season. There’s just so much going on that it’s getting a little hard to keep track of. I still enjoyed the episode quite a bit, but I really hope Falling Skies can tie all of its plots together soon, or else I fear it could end up derailing itself in the future with its own weight ambitions.
