In episode 5, Hanna has made it to London and is hiding out in Sophie’s garage, sleeping in the family’s camper van. She’s thrown head first into the deep end of normal teenage social life in this episode, which she does her best to navigate. Between her sheltered upbringing and her heightened responses due to her manipulated DNA, she has a tougher time than most girls her age. As always, Hanna’s common sense and abilities also come in handy when she needs to read people or defend herself.
Both Hanna and Erik struggle to deal with the consequences of Hanna’s discoveries about her background. Erik is seriously wounded, which stops him from searching for Hanna, leaving him in despair. Hanna is depressed, grieving the relationship she thought she had with Erik.
Sawyer and Marissa develop a power struggle over the case. Sawyer continues to use heavy-handed methods and takes Marissa off the case, despite the depth of her experience with Erik. As usual, Marissa takes matters into her own hands.
Recap
Marissa checks the morgue for Erik’s body. The corpse in question isn’t him, so it’s a wasted trip.
Hanna mopes in Sophie’s camper van in the family’s dark garage. She keeps a cloth over her most of the time, blocking out the world, and reexamines her birth certificate and the Utrax form.
It’s a sunny summer day outside of the garage as Sophie cheerily sneaks a plate of food down the lane to Hanna.
Hanna has been in the garage for a week and eating mostly chocolate, when she bothers to eat. Sophie is worried about her, and wishes Hanna would give her the name of someone she can call who would help her. Hanna would rather leave than let anyone know where she is. In reality, there isn’t anyone to call, anyway, which is heartbreaking.
Sophie tells Hanna, “I don’t want you to leave, I just want you to trust me.” Hanna replies, “I can’t trust anyone.” Which is also heartbreakingly true, and something Sophie, with her uber normal life surrounded by friends, family and community, couldn’t begin to fathom.
I don’t think Hanna even knows how to translate her experiences into terms Sophie would understand and believe at this point. Sophie is a great person and a great friend, but she’s very young, in a way Hanna has never been. Sophie can still be irresponsible, while Hanna had to learn to kill to protect herself as soon as she was agile enough to do so. People literally die when Hanna makes a mistake, and all she can do is try to make sure it isn’t someone she cares about.
Sawyer informs Marissa that she’s going to take a leave of absence and go through counseling to deal with the trauma of being held hostage by Erik. She’s being sent back home to Paris for her psychological treatment.
Marissa reminds him that she’s their best chance of finding Erik and Hanna, but Sawyer disagrees and tells her to get out of his way. Marissa gives in, but warns him against portraying her as unstable.
He says that it wouldn’t really be a fictional story and reminds her of her history with Utrax, when she was found to have “mental health issues” after closing down the facility in 2003.
Sawyer: “It’s understandable. What you were asked to do to those babies would have been tough on anyone. For a woman it must have been…”
Marissa: “F–k you.”
Sawyer: “I’m the one protecting you, Marissa. You should be on your hands and knees, thanking me right now.”
Marissa: “Oh, yeah, wouldn’t you love that?”
She gets up and leaves his office at her usual measured pace, but by the end of that meeting, though calm, she had the eyes of a predator. Sawyer is too stupid to understand what that means. Marissa is like a panther. When she’s still and focused, she’s preparing to strike.
Erik is in bad shape. He was shot in the abdomen and the wound is infected. Elsa brings a medic back to examine him, but the medic isn’t capable of removing the bullet. He has an agreement with a hospital where he brings his undocumented patients and the staff doesn’t turn them in, but Erik refuses to go.
Since his face has been all over the news as a murderer, Erik is probably right in thinking that someone would turn him in. The medic cleans the infection from the wound and leaves them with antibiotics.
Carl Meisner continues going through Erik’s history and finds Dieter Schultes, Erik’s squadron leader. They wonder if he could be the one hiding Erik.
They should already know that Dieter is one of Erik’s accomplices. Dieter’s license plate was clearly visible when he rescued Erik from the airport. None of those high level operatives thought to note it? Marissa wasn’t even shooting.
I want Dieter and his family to come out of the season intact, so I’m not going to complain. We’ll just chalk this up to Sawyer’s incompetence and Marissa’s ambivalence.
Carl asks Sawyer what Utrax is, and if Marissa knows about it. Sawyer shuts him down, telling him it would be bad for his career to keep asking questions.
Sophie is about to have another tragic event or three. Her brother eats the food she had set aside for Hanna. Her parents decide to go out for marriage-saving bonding time on the night her best friend Dan is having a party, and she’s expected to babysit. And the cutest boy EVER, Anton, will be there, when she hasn’t seen him all summer. Plus, the family erupts into another argument over dinner, because her parents turn everything into an argument.
Marissa dutifully goes to the counselor, who can tell that she’s not at all traumatized by having been held hostage. However, Marissa is still traumatized by the baby killing incident, so for her, there are worse things that can happen than her own death. Killing is worse than dying.
The counselor has to drag that admission out of Marissa, but Marissa still demands to be put back on her case, with sufficient support to do the job. She knows something went wrong between Erik and Hanna, because they should have been together at the airport, and they weren’t.
Marissa is probably the only person that’s looking for her who knows about Hanna’s connection to Sophie, now that Jacobs is dead. She kept Jacobs off the books, so she wouldn’t have included him or his information in her reports. Hanna didn’t tell Erik who her friend was, at least on camera.
Hanna makes progress, moving from the van to watching the neighborhood through the garage window and looking through the things the family has stored in there.
Sophie texts with Dan, and decides to go to the party anyway, leaving Jay at home alone.
Marissa goes home to her apartment with Olivier and Benoit, where she surprises Olivier. He notices the abrasions on her wrist from being strapped to the chair, but she brushes it off. Benoit is at a movie with friends, then they all planned to have dinner at the apartment. Marissa looks like she’s already having a hard time making the transition from steely eyed agent to normal partner and stepmother.
On her way to the party, Sophie brings Hanna a magazine and a chocolate bar. She’s tells Hanna about Anton and tries to convince Hanna to come with, suggesting it will be as fun as the club in Spain. Hanna refuses, since she knows she shouldn’t be seen and she’s not in the mood. Sophie eventually wears her down anyway.
The party was supposed to be a small gathering, but it’s turned into a massive blowout that’s spilling into the street. The music is loud and the lights are colored. Hanna goes back outside for some relief, but there are fireworks in the yard, which remind her of the firefight at the airport.
She goes inside and upstairs, wandering down the hall and looking in a couple of rooms. She opens Dans door, where he’s on the bed making out with a guy. She stares at them for a minute while Dan repeatedly tells her to get out. She wander back downstairs.
Hanna decides to use the method that worked in Spain, getting drunk and dancing. She dances by herself, but is spotted from across the room by a cute boy after a few minutes. The circle each other, making eyes.
They are getting close to talking when Sophie finds Hanna and says her parents have come home early, so they have to leave. The boy, who turns out to be Sophie’s crush, Anton, comes over to say hi and get introduced to Hanna. Sophie gets nervous and calls Hanna, “Sanna”. Anton invites them over to a friend’s house the next night for a movie night.
Dan watches them leave and recognizes Hanna as the strange girl who opened his bedroom door. He might have seen Anton and Hanna flirting, too. Sophie tells Hanna that she has to run home quickly. She’ll check on Hanna tomorrow. Hanna wanders home slowly, foraging berries from the neighborhood hedges and enjoying the night.
Elsa brings Erik his medicine and tells him that Hanna hasn’t shown up at any of the places they’ve looked for her. Erik isn’t surprised, he knew she was too smart to go there. But he doesn’t know where else to look, and he’s worried that Sawyer and Marissa will find her before he does.
Marissa is still triggered. The sound of a baby crying in a nearby apartment sets her off and she can’t sleep.
Hanna has just gotten back to the van when she hears Tom coming into the garage. She hides half under a blanket and half under the bed. Tom sees the mess left from Sophie and Hanna eating and drinking and is upset for a minute, then gets onto the bed and sobs.
Sawyer visits Dieter at his produce business to harass him about Erik and Hanna, but they have no evidence connecting Dieter to the fugitives, so they can’t do much. Dieter tells Sawyer as little as possible, and doesn’t react to Sawyer’s baiting.
Tom decides that Sophie is having sex in the van and grounds her for a month, which means that she can’t go to the movie night. Hanna worries that she’s causing too much trouble for Sophie, but Sophie wants her to stay.
Hanna asks how bad it is between Sophie’s parents. Sophie thinks it’s pretty bad, and wonders if she should run away, like Hanna did. Hanna tells her that she can’t do that to her parents and that their situations aren’t alike at all, but she won’t explain. Hanna wonders again if she should leave, but Sophie says that Hanna’s the best thing in her life. Hanna says that Sophie is the only thing in hers.
Anton texts Sophie to give her the movie night address and asks if they’re coming. Sophie shows the text to Hanna, and says it’s just around the corner.
Marissa picks Benoit up from school, where there are more babies to agitate her. She and Benoit have an argument. He’s rude to her and tells her she’s not his mother. Then he walks away from her with his best friend. She realizes what Erik and Hanna were arguing about and where Hanna probably went.
Marissa calls Carl to get more information about what the SWAT team saw between Erik and Hanna at the airport. They said that it looked like Erik and Hanna were changing their plans. Marissa asks if they said anything else, if it looked like they could be arguing. Carl asks what they would be arguing about.
While they’ve been talking, Marissa has been looking through the Instagram accounts of Sophie and her friends. She finds photos from the party. Hanna is in the background of one. Carl is being reassigned back to Virginia (Langley), so she tells him to have a good flight. As she’s hanging up, he asks her what she knows about Utrax, but there’s no way she’s touching that.
Hanna hangs out on top of the van and reads Sophie’s magazine, with the very important quiz, “How Do You Know If You Like Him?” which Sophie has already answered while thinking of Anton. The answers all lead to the conclusion that she definitely likes him. But does he like her?
Dan comes over to visit Sophie and asks about Hanna. She tells him the truth about Hanna’s situation, what she knows of it. She’s a generous friend, but she talks too much is too open and honest to be a good secret keeper.
Dieter gets home from work and discovers Sawyer playing on the floor with his children. They continue to play, while Sawyer makes vaguely sinister comments, and a red laser targeting light shines on Armin’s face. There is a sniper in their neighbor’s apartment. Dieter has no choice but to cooperate with Sawyer’s demands for information on Erik’s whereabouts.
Sawyer becomes a likely suspect for the evil slime who ordered the murder of the Utrax babies. He’s an evil slime for threatening Armin, who’s adorable, anyway.
Olivier returns to the apartment to find Marissa packing to leave again and the kids watching TV. She’s in a camisole and has a huge bruise on her shoulder. He knows she won’t tell him how she got that, either. She starts to promise that they’ll do something when she gets back, but he’s done with her whole lifestyle.
An argument ensues. He wants her to give him straight answers to questions a CIA operative can never answer. He wants her to keep regular hours. And he wants to have a child together.
She told him from the beginning that a child wasn’t possible for her, but he thought she’d change her mind. She tells him he doesn’t know her very well.
Hanna goes to the movie night alone, without telling Sophie. Anton is happy to see her, but Dan gives her the side eye. She and Anton sit together on the couch while they watch a violent zombie movie. Anton asks if she likes the film. She doesn’t. It’s triggering for her. When she gets up to go to the kitchen, something about standing in front of the TV and seeing the violence, or the similarity of the scene to her own experiences in Berlin, sends her into her fighting trance. One of the other guys yells at her to move out of his way. When he throws popcorn at her, she turns around and kicks him in the face.
Anton had left the room, but he comes back to check on what’s going on. Hanna runs out of the house, with Anton chasing her. He tries to find out what happened, but she runs away. She doesn’t know what happened herself. As with Sophie, there isn’t anything she knows how to explain to him that he would understand or believe.
The next morning, Sophie isn’t speaking to her parents because she’s angry about being grounded for the rest of the summer. Her grounding is now because she left Jay home alone, instead of Tom’s unfounded accusations about her having sex in the van. Tom says every miserable, bitter, hurtful thing that comes into his head. Rachel tries to smooth things over, but she’s also critical of Sophie. Sophie tells her parents to get a divorce so they’ll stop being so terrible.
It’s a rotten thing to say, and it crosses a line, but she’s the child in the situation, and she’s responding to the things Tom has said about her. Tom then crosses an unforgivable line in my book, and blames Sophie for his own failings: “If you behaved for five seconds, we wouldn’t fight all the time.”
Rachel sends him to work and tells Sophie that he didn’t mean it. Sophie says that he did. Who knows what’s really going on in Tom’s head, since his unhappiness is a plot device in Sophie’s story and the show isn’t examining his motivations closely. But he is using Sophie as his scapegoat instead of dealing with his own issues decisively, while Sophie is just being a gregarious teenager who’d like her parents to listen to her more often, like every teenager. She’s breaking the rules, but she hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary.
Marissa arrives in London, using the name Clare Simmons and a British passport.
Hanna has decided to run away again, and sorts through the family’s cast offs looking for what she needs. Sophie and Dan open up the garage door, with Sophie exclaiming that they’re going on a road trip, she doesn’t care where. Hanna wants to go to the forest, so Sophie grabs the camping equipment. None of them has a license, but spiritually, Dan knows how to drive, if not legally, so he’s the chauffeur.
Sophie is supposed to be grounded, but there’s nothing like telling someone that everything is their fault to make them decide that they might as well do whatever they want, rules or no rules.
While Sophie runs out into the alley to guide Dan as he backs out, he asks Hanna if Sophie knows that she came to the movie night. Hanna just looks down and sighs before getting in the back seat. Once the van is clear, Sophie runs off to Anton’s house to invite him along. The van follows and picks them up. Sophie sits in the front with Dan, so Anton and Hanna are cozy together in the back.
The first thing Anton does is tell Hanna that what happened the night before wasn’t her fault. It was Nico being a jerk, as usual. Sophie is confused, because she didn’t know Hanna went. Things get uncomfortable for a minute. Dan, who is a treasure and doesn’t miss anything, breaks the awkwardness by suggesting they get going already.
Erik feels well enough to go outside and exercise a little. Elsa comes outside to tell him that she can’t reach Dieter. She’s in the process of telling Erik to come inside and rest, when she’s suddenly shot in the head and killed.
I never need to see another head shot in my life after this season is done. It was completely unnecessary to kill another unarmed woman that way. I don’t think we’ve seen her kill anyone, all season.
Erik hides behind a tree then out runs all of the gunmen to make it back into the foyer of the apartment building, where he’s surrounded. Dieter and Sawyer catch up to him, so he knows who betrayed him this time.
The kids have switched seats, so that Sophie and Hanna are together in the back. Sophie asks about the movie night. Hanna apologizes for not telling her about it and says that she didn’t stay long. Sophie asks if Anton said anything about her, so, to make her happy, Hanna tells her that Anton asked about her. Hanna says that she told Anton that Sophie saved her life. A raucous dance party to Shock It Out by Miss Red ensues.
Hanna looks out the van window and feels more at home when they drive under tall trees. By that evening, the kids are sitting around a campfire, drinking and smoking, having eaten a rabbit that Hanna caught and skinned. Everyone is laughing and silly. Sophie and Dan get extra silly, then Sophie wants to get a snack from the van. Dan realizes how wasted she is and goes with her. She passes out once she reaches the comfort of the van seats. Dan can see that Anton and Hanna like each other, so he gives them their privacy and stays with Sophie.
Anton asks Hanna about her past. She wonders if he thinks she’s weird, but he says she’s wonderful. After Sophie and Dan leave, he asks how long she’s staying. She says probably not long. They watch the fire, then kiss. That quickly leads to them shedding clothes. When Anton stops to put on a condom, Hanna has no idea what he’s doing.
Bad dad, Erik.
Once protection is in place, they resume what they were doing.
Dan eats some chips and messes around in the van. He discovers Hanna’s birth certificate and the Utrax form. He knows this is strange.
After they finish, Anton and Hanna cuddle and fall asleep together, still naked, under a blanket.
Marissa has rented a car and is on her way to Sophie’s house.
Commentary
Hanna has had a great soundtrack all along, but this episode raises the bar, starting with Alright, by Jain and ending with Bay of Skaill by The Magnetic North.
If Carl is out of the picture for the rest of the season, his curiosity about Utrax could be foreshadowing for season 2. He could open up a larger investigation, once he’s based in the Washington area.
Erik, Elsa and Dieter never mention Rudi or Lukas’ deaths. They might as well have been anonymous henchmen instead of old friends who gave up their lives to help Erik and Hanna. It seems like that deserves a moment of sadness, at least, from Erik.
Marissa’s Issues
Olivier is one of those guys who seems like a great catch, but actually tries to quietly mold you into the woman he thinks you should be, so you can’t figure out why you’re so miserable with someone who seems so nice. It’s because you’re never quite good enough for them, and always feel you should be something else when you’re around them.
Marissa is confident in her work, but not so much in her private life. She picked someone like Olivier because she wanted to be molded into his image of the French wife who does it all and does it all well. She’s used to achieving her goals through sheer force of will, and thought she could do this, too. But it was always doomed, even if Erik and Hanna hadn’t been found. Olivier wanted to change her too much. (Seriously, when someone tells you their relationship issues up front, believe them. Especially when it’s something as huge as having children.)
I think Marissa was also just playing house because she thought she should, or maybe after the Utrax horror, the counselor told her to build a life outside of her work. Either way, while she does have a protective side and is capable of love, she wasn’t free to be herself with Olivier the way she is with Erik, so ultimately being with Olivier and Benoit was another job. She’s never going to fit that middle class domestic role, at least as dictated by “normal” societal standards.
You can see in the flashbacks that she was a more confident, unconventional person before Erik’s betrayal (from her point of view). I think she’s still trying to regain her equilibrium from losing him and what it did to her career, in addition to how shutting down the Utrax facility affected her. She’s tried to cope by becoming mainstream, but Erik and Hanna coming back into the picture, and Sawyer turning the operation into a war between them, is ending that period.
Hanna’s Issues
In this episode, Hanna is dealing not just with the revelation that Erik isn’t her birth father, but that her mother signed her away, and Erik talked her into it. They both tried to make up for that mistake later, and Johanna died in the process, but it doesn’t change the devastating effect of seeing her mother’s name on the Utrax form, agreeing to hand her newborn over to a corporation.
Right now, all Hanna can think about is that, and the “father unknown” on the birth certificate, and feel very alone. Since Erik never told her she was adopted, she doesn’t think she can trust anything else he’s said. It’ll take some time for her to remember how devoted he was to her for all those years, and that the reasons he gave for their isolation and her training have turned out to be true.
And for her to realize that he could have left her with someone else to raise her, instead of taking care of her himself. He kept her out of love for her and her mother, instead of leaving her someplace where she’d become anonymous. He trained her not just so they could get revenge, but because he knew she’d stand out in normal society and need to protect herself.
Images courtesy of Amazon Prime.
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