So, that was a lively episode, y’all. There were deaths, rebirths, saviors proclaimed, religions explained, siblings revealed, lightning shooting from hands (told ya), medical comas induced, romances consummated and Liz still had time to identify the rare Libyan flower in Maria’s necklace.
And Ophiuchus came up again, which is very intriguing, since Noah used it to describe Max and himself, not himself and Rosa. Michael and Alex may be cosmic soulmates, but according to Noah, he and Max are also in a cosmic relationship. I think he was meant to be Max’s handler.
Max needs a Watcher or a Whitelighter. Use whatever title you want, but since female prodigies always have them, the Roswell “Savior” can survive having one, too. He desperately needs guidance. It’s not clear that he can survive without it, based on his own actions.
The CW came through with good news, after the show left us with that cliffhanger last night. Roswell, New Mexico has been renewed for season 2. If you’ve been waiting to check the show out until you were sure it would continue, you’re all set. The entire season should be on Netflix next week.
Recap
Liz’s voiceover:
“When I committed my life to science, I stopped believing in magic, in fairytales with happy endings, in gods and in ghosts. But then, I met a demon, a creature who could possess an innocent. So, I can’t help but ask: If the devil is real, what else walks amongst us?”
Michael and Max are right where we left them at the end of episode 12. Michael is holding the syringe with the antidote while Max points his gun at Michael. Michael wants to give the antidote to Noah and finally get some answers about their families and home world. Max threatens to shoot Michael if he takes another step toward Noah.
Michael tells Max that he just found his mother, but she was brutally murdered by Jesse Manes as soon as he met her. Max pulls out his shallow sympathy and refuses to reconsider. Michael knows that Noah isn’t really who he’s looking for, but he’s the only option available. He starts crying as he explains to Max how much it would mean to him to get these answers, and his plan for them both to keep Noah under control.
Max answers with violence and a pronouncement, of course. He shoots the syringe out of Michael’s hand and says that Michael is his family. That’s all HE needs to know. Max needs Noah dead. Now.
Michael screams that he doesn’t care what Max needs and sends him flying through the French doors onto the patio, unconscious. We started the season in roughly the same way, with Michael sending Max flying into a desk in the police station because he unilaterally decided to heal Liz and reveal their secret. Michael was especially angry then because it was Max’s rule that they shouldn’t use their powers or tell anyone their secret, then he broke it and risked everything.
Here we are again, in virtually the same situation. Max has made a decision and won’t compromise. This time, it’s of vital importance to Michael and time is running out. This time, Michael has a chance to stop Max, and he takes it. But that means that he doesn’t have Max’s help dealing with Noah.
He takes Max’s gun and tries to lead Noah out at gunpoint. Noah tells Michael that the antidote he stole is in the cave with his pod. Noah lurches, then falls on the floor, conveniently landing next to the broken syringe. When Michael reaches down to lift Noah up, Noah grabs the glass from the syringe and uses it to stab Michael in the neck. While Michael bleeds out, Noah picks up the other end of the syringe and sucks a few drops of the antidote out. It’s enough to keep him going, for now. He leaves Max and Michael unconscious.
Note: As usual, Noah doesn’t toy with Michael the way he does with Isobel and Max. Not even one snide remark. Michael asks him a question, and he gives Michael a straight answer. He stabs Michael, then stands and watches him while he drinks what’s left of the antidote. He barely looks at Max, even as he’s stepping over him. Michael is the one he’s worried about. He can hurt Michael, but maybe he can’t lie to him, the way he can to Isobel and Max? Does he watch Michael to make sure the wound isn’t fatal, or to guard against Michael waking up and jumping him, or both?
Also, Noah was faking being so close to death. He was still healthy enough to get rid of Michael, the strongest and smartest of the trio. He was just biding his time, seeing how far that scenario would go, before he got himself free.
Meanwhile, back at the Wild Pony, Racist Hank takes advantage of Max’s absence to check out Liz as she walks in the door. Liz doesn’t notice and goes straight to the booth where Maria’s sitting, wearing a cozy cardigan and drinking alone. Liz says she had a rough night and wants some best friend time. She notices Maria’s necklace on the table and picks it up to look at it, asking when Mimi gave it to Maria. Maria says she took it off of her own neck and put it on Maria’s the day of high school graduation.
Liz gives us a good look at the purple flower in the pendant, telling Maria that it’s a rare plant that only grows in the Libyan desert. The yellow powder that takes away the aliens’ power is the pollen of this flower. The necklace is a DeLuca family heirloom that protects them from evil. It’s always reminded Maria of the long line of strong women she comes from. Since Michael fixed it, the necklace reminds her of his various body parts…
Liz figures out that Maria is into Michael, and that they slept together. OMG, she didn’t figure out what Michael and Maria were doing together in the desert that night in Texas either? I guess that proves she and Max are meant to be together.
Liz gets excited for Maria, but Maria cuts her off, telling her that Alex is in love with Michael. Since Michael is Alex’s High School Museum Guy, he’s off limits to Maria FOREVER according to the Roswell friend code. Liz is stunned. She really thought it was okay to date whoever she wanted, as long as they weren’t with someone else at that very moment. Sorry, Cam.
She asks if Maria has talked to Alex about how she feels. Of course not. Maria just feels guilty for being interested in a guy Alex has treated badly for ten years and who he broke up with. Alex apparently isn’t required to feel guilt.
Liz counsels Maria not to feel bad, because you can’t help who you fall in love with. “If we could choose, we wouldn’t fall at all and what’s the fun in that? You can’t be guilty of something you can’t control.” Maria nods her head in understanding, but still looks sad.
She knows that as a woman threatening the happiness of a male-male couple, things will go badly for her with the fandom, and she remembers Clexa. She’s not sure she’s up for that kind of pain being sent her way for something that’s not her fault. Michael is, after all, a bisexual adult who can choose which lover he wants to be with, and most people move on from their high school partners by their late 20s.
Alex finds Kyle going through security footage from the hard drives he salvaged from Caulfield. He’s found the footage of his father being pushed into N-38’s cell. Alex calls N-38, the alien who gave Jim a brain tumor, the monster who killed Kyle’s father. Kyle shows Alex more of the footage. Jesse Manes pushed Jim Valenti into N-38’s cell, then locked him in. Jesse Manes is the monster who killed Kyle’s father.
Jesse returns to town in the wake of the destruction of the Caulfield facility. Flint meets him and apologizes for the loss. Jesse isn’t too upset. The alien specimens (in other words, Michael’s family) were almost used up anyway, their research is backed up, and they keep the bomb off site, so there wasn’t much harm done. He’s more concerned that the intruders survived the explosion. Flint is shocked by the way Jesse talks about Alex, who’s family. Jesse says they’ll deal with Alex eventually. He needs to take care of Kyle right now.
Liz goes home to the diner and calls Max to let him know that Noah’s handprint faded, so she can’t feel him anymore. She plans to grab some food and milkshakes to bring back to Max’s place.
Liz must assume that Max is done disposing of Noah’s body and cleaning up the blood. Or maybe she plans to help while the milkshakes wait in the freezer. Sounds like a romantic evening to me. 😜😱👽😳
But wait- the diner door unlocks itself- Noah has let himself in, and he wants a cherry cola! He and Liz move toward each other, meeting at a counter where a large kitchen knife sits. Noah uses his power to pull the knife over to himself. He looks at photos of Rosa pinned up on the wall, and says even though Liz looks like her sister, they’re nothing alike. Rosa was hope and fire but Liz is jaded and guilty. Liz locks herself in the walk-in freezer.
Liz still has a vial of the anti-alien pollen in her jeans pocket, so she devises a clever plan to trick Noah into the freezer, where she scatters the yellow powder. She barely blocks the lock on the freezer, making Noah think he’s overcome her when he psychically removes the barrier. He even says, “I thought you were the smart sister.” The powder takes away his powers, so Liz gets away and locks him inside the freezer.
She baited him into following her into the trap she’d laid for him.
Max wakes up and finds Michael, who’s still unconscious. He heals Michael, drawing on the house’s electricity and causing the power to go out. He’s still retching in the corner, from the energy drain, when Isobel arrives. He tells her that they have to take off before Michael wakes up, presumably so they can kill Noah without Michael’s interference.
Max and Liz talk on the phone while Max is in the car. She tells him to come collect Noah from the fridge. Noah hurls threats and insults about Liz and Arturo through the freezer door. He tells her that she hardly knew Rosa, but her sister told him her secrets. Rosa blackmailed their mother into leaving, by threatening to tell Arturo about Mrs Ortecho’s affair with Jim and that Rosa was Jim’s daughter.
Oh right, that’s new information for Liz.
With that big revelation, Noah pops open the freezer door, tells Liz that Rosa will always be “Mine!” instead of hers, takes the knife back from Liz and stabs her in the abdomen, then races outside, after Liz throws yellow cumin powder in his eyes to trick him again.
Noah’s just so much fun. How many great entrances did he just make, in that one short diner scene, 3? If we can keep Noah next season, I promise to do less complaining about Max.
But what did Noah go to the diner for? The cherry coke and a snack? Just to terrorize Liz and provoke Max some more? To look at photos of Rosa? He didn’t ask Liz for anything and he could have easily killed her with any of his powers, but he didn’t.
Isobel and Max are still in the car. Isobel looks intense. Liz calls to say Noah escaped. She thinks his next stop will be to kill someone, to regain his strength. Isobel says she knows where he’d go, based on her wifely intuition.
Noah goes to the most obvious place, the Wild Pony, where he’s killed to recharge himself 14 other times. He puts his glowing hand on Racist Hank, who thinks Noah is Mexican. He doesn’t have his hand on Hank for long, so Noah might not have drank him dry. But Noah is in a bad way and a bad mood, so there’s a good chance that we lose Hank tonight.
Poor Wyatt, he’s lost his soulmate. Never forget. 😜🤓 # Justice for Hank
Liz called Kyle to tend to her stab wound, except she didn’t tell him that’s what she needed from him. He didn’t bring his medical bag and has to use a needle and thread to sew her up. He also mentions that he was followed on the way there and it took a while to lose the stalker.
Noah’s waiting for Max and Isobel at the turquoise mine, having buzzed home for a shower and change of clothes after his Racist Hank snack. He clearly believes that to look good is to feel good, which leads to success, and he’s a success oriented guy.
He’s sitting on a log drinking Starbucks. Isobel silently gets out of the car and joins him, ignoring Max’s questions. Max doesn’t figure out that Noah’s been controlling her until he sees them speak in unison.
Always quick on the uptake, Max figures out that Noah had Isobel bring him to the mine, so he pulls out his gun and fires at Noah. Noah is faster than a speeding bullet and deflects the bullet away from himself, while taunting Max for his abysmal skill level with his alien powers. Then he ties Max’s intestines into a knot using telekinesis.
“The whole duel to the death at high noon thing is fun, man, but any redneck can work a gun. I prefer to get creative.”
Thank you, Noah, that’s exactly my point. Max is nearly a one trick pony.
Liz confesses to Kyle that Noah told her Rosa was a Valenti. She’s disturbed that Rosa knew, but never told her. Kyle hesitates, then says that maybe Rosa just never found the right time to tell Liz, letting her know that he also knows the truth. Liz figures out that Kyle lost a sister, too.
Michael runs into his trailer to change out of his bloody clothes. Alex is there waiting for him, uninvited. He asks Michael what happened. Michael just says that it’s not his own blood (some of it it is). Alex is there because he needed to talk to Michael, but it’s a bad time.
Alex starts to talk anyway. He’s probably been practicing his speech in his head and wants to get it out. He apologizes for leaving Michael behind when he enlisted, but he admits that after what Jesse did to Michael, he wanted to leave and to be the kind of person who won battles. It felt good at the time, but now, when he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t even see himself. He sees his father, and he feels like he’s still fighting his father’s battles.
At that moment, Michael gets a telepathic vision that Max and Isobel are in trouble. He tells Alex to come back tomorrow and they can talk more, then rushes out the door.
Michael has his own family battles to fight and can’t save Alex from himself or his family. Alex needs to save himself, maybe with Flint.
Max wakes up in the cave and finds Isobel unconscious next to him. Noah is melting down vats of silver. He tells Max that Isobel will be out for a while, since being possessed depletes her body. “But, she likes it rough sometimes.” Max: “I am going to kill you.”
Noah calmly flicks his hand and physically subdues Max. Max asks why Noah doesn’t kill them, what he plans to use them for. Noah pauses for a moment, with a thoughtful look on his face, as if he’s deciding which direction to takes his answers in. He stays turned away from Max when he answers:
Noah: “The alighting. They’re coming for us, Maximo. I’d hoped we could go as a family, but… plans change.”
He looks sad during this pause, like there’s more to his plans changing than just the trio’s lack of cooperation. Was he psychically connected to the aliens at Caulfield? Could he hear them through all their years of torture, but he wasn’t strong enough to help them alone, and the trio couldn’t be risked? Did he hope to rescue them eventually, then hear them die? What if Noah has been acting under the orders of his superiors at Caulfield all of these years? He might have been ordered to stay alive and close to the trio, no matter what. The other aliens wouldn’t care how many humans he had to kill to save his own life or to keep the trio safe, while he hid in plain sight.
Max: “What’s the alighting? Who are they?”
Noah: ” I told you. When we left, our home was ravaged by war. They are the ones who are victorious. Whichever side won, they’d never just leave us here. They’d never leave you here… You’re the savior. Now that you’re all grown up, they’ll come. Maybe not this year, or the next, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve had my fun with the three of you. Now it’s time to put you back in the pods, so when they come, I’ll be waiting to trade you for a ride home.”
Max tells Noah that he’s wrong, Max isn’t a savior. Noah responds that Max thinks like a human, only using a small portion of his brain’s potential and thinking he only has one kind of power.
Noah: “Unlock your mind, and you could be a god.”
Max still denies the truth. Noah becomes desperate. He grabs the front of Max’s shirt and yells at him.
Noah: “Come on! All those books, and you haven’t figured religion out? You haven’t guessed who those stories are really about? Strange creatures with familiar features, coming down from the heavens, parting the seas, striking people down with bolts of lightning.”
It seems obvious that Noah means that the gods and prophets from all the religions were aliens, which isn’t a new idea, but Max still just looks at him with a blank face. Noah puts his glowing hand on Max’s chest and says that he’s giving Max a heart attack. The others will want Max alive, but he doesn’t have to be very alive.
He’s clearly hoping to provoke Max into using new powers, but instead, Michael arrives and uses his mind to throw Noah across the cave. Michael runs over to Max, who tells Michael that he’s not strong enough. He asks Michael to hold off Noah, then runs outside. Noah is starting to recover and stares at Michael.
Outside, there’s a thunderstorm. Max runs onto a hill, then lifts up each hand, drawing a lightning bolt into each one. He’s finally put together what Noah said about powers, Gods and lightning bolts. Noah must be so relieved.
In fact, he is. He runs out of the cave, laughing. He yells, “We are Ophiuchus, Max. The man and the serpent, the serpent and the man.” He point to Max when he says serpent, and himself when he says man. “They’re not killing each other. They are one.” He gets an emotional, teary eyed look on his face. In the cave, Isobel’s eyes pop open. Michael is unconscious, and stays that way, protected or isolated from these shenanigans.
Max turns toward Noah and throws a lightning bolt at his chest. Noah stands still, with his arms thrown out to the side and his head thrown back, as if he’s ready to receive it. He does nothing to fight it or avoid it. If this isn’t something Noah wanted, his response goes completely against the character we’ve seen since it was revealed that he’s an alien, who’ll do anything to stay alive.
The lightning bolt extends between them like a serpent. The clothing on Noah’s chest burns away to reveal lightning fractals forming, but he doesn’t get burned. He stays conscious and rises into the air.
Noah enters the psychic space with Isobel. He asks her if it’s over, and she says yes. She tells him that she never told him she’s an alien (“her secret”) because she doesn’t love him and he’s not her person. She gives him back her wedding rings. Noah sadly, but calmly accepts this. Then he says, “Take care of her, Isobel.”
Isobel and Michael run outside. Max turns off the lightning and lets Noah fall to the ground. Max is thrilled with his own power.
Kyle stops at a gun supermart because the combination of alien uprising and being stalked by Jesse Manes have put him over the edge, so he wants to feel safer. The message is quite clearly that the gun dealer is very wrong in his willingness to sell the obviously upset Kyle a gun. I’m not going to argue with this. In case it’s not clear, the showrunner has given interviews stating that this is the point of the scene.
It’s interesting then, that she chose Kyle as the subject of her message. Calm, non-violent, always rational Kyle, who just happens to be Mexican-American.
We get nothing from the writers about the issues with Quick Draw Max, the white Alpha male and source of the majority of the violence on this show, excessively using his gun (and his power). But Cam, a woman, gets fired for pulling the trigger on her gun twice while off duty (obviously she can’t be trusted to treat her gun with the proper respect), and we’re told it’s scary that the Mexican-American doctor could buy a gun when he’s feeling unsafe.
Nevermind that Sheriff Mom likely has several Kyle could borrow, so why is he at the gun store anyway?
There are three people in Roswell who would make me feel unsafe: Max, Wyatt and Jesse. Now possibly Noah. But he’s killing to survive, not for the reasons the other three kill- to retain their own feelings of power, possession and supremacy. Kyle and Cam have never done anything that would make me feel unsafe (since Kyle’s been an adult).
The trio are back in the cave. We aren’t shown what they did with Noah. I don’t think he’s in one of the pods, so I assume he’s in a shallow grave outside the cave. Looking forward to either zombie Noah or true vampire Noah. Just please, please give me the classic shot of his hand sticking up out of his grave as the opening shot of season 2.
Isobel tells her brothers about her last conversation with Noah. Turns out she does love him, so now she’s feeling weird about having her last words to him be a lie. Max is all jittery and jumpy, like he’s on drugs. He says some unhelpful blather to Isobel. She tells them that Noah’s last words were, “Take care of her,” and Isobel doesn’t know what he meant. Michael says, “A lot of answers died with Noah.” Michael and Isobel are sitting next to each other, in shock and somewhere in the grieving process.
Max ignores their feelings and says that Noah was evil, so it’s a win that he’s dead. Their past doesn’t matter and has nothing to do with them. Michael rolls his eyes at Max, so Max tells him to quit being obsessed with the past. He picks up Michael’s damaged left hand, and heals it, before Michael can stop him. Michael tells him no, very explicitly, but Max fixes his hand anyway, because Max has decided and he’s the savior. Michael worries that people will notice, but Max just says, “This is Roswell,” and walks out of the cave.
I guess Max has total control of the town, so it doesn’t matter.
As they are about to remind us, when Max heals someone, they absorb his emotions (echoes). For the next several days to a week, Michael will be flying high on Max’s current over-excited emotional state, his habit of denial and his need to oversimplify everything. He’ll also be able to psychically feel Max’s feelings even more powerfully than he already was. Keep all of this in mind for the rest of the episode.
Max must have spent the night walking home from the turquoise mine, because when Liz gets to his house the next morning, he’s just getting home, by way of walking across the fields outside of his house. Liz sees the destruction the fights caused to the house and starts to panic, but then she sees Max coming. She and Max do the thing where they run to each other across a long distance and end up in each other’s arms, then kiss.
Gag. Me.
Julie Plec directed this episode. If that sequence wasn’t done as some kind of fan service, the way Damon and Elena’s kiss in the rain was, or to show us that there’s something very wrong with Max and Liz right now, then I don’t know if there’s any hope for this show. That was just bad. Max murdered his brother-in-law last night. Liz was traumatized, again. Jubilation is a strange response.
Damon and Elena Max and Liz are overcome with lust and barely make it to the bedroom for their first time together. Max pauses when he sees the bandage on Liz’s abdomen, but he listens to her when she tells him to keep going, instead of stopping to heal her. I guess Liz likes it painful and rough, too.
Then she tells him to put his healing hand on the spot where her bullet wound was, so HE CAN FEEL WHAT SHE FEELS. Her turn into the Giving Tree is complete. If he’s going to use his hand, why not let him heal the wound? Trust me, it hurts when a man lays on your stomach and you have an injury there. Been there, done that, found another position.
Actually, it took me a while after writing the first draft of this recap, but I finally realized why she won’t even tell Max anything about the wound. She didn’t mention it the night before, either. It’s a stab wound from Noah, which was sewn up by Kyle. She’s currently doubly marked by other men. Max would go insane with anger and jealousy and probably pee all over her, or worse, to mark her as his in some painful way, then kill Kyle too, if he knew what happened. Sooner or later, a guy like Max wants to create a permanent mark of his own. Just sayin’.
Also?? After another encounter with the glowing hand, Liz becomes a little Max zombie again for the next week. He wasn’t influenced by her feelings the last time. She was influenced by his.
They have epic, first time, glowing hand sex in Max’s bed.
Isobel and Michael spend the morning searching for Noah’s cave. She worries that loving Noah means she’s bad, too. Michael tells her that she’s not. He says, “We’re only defined by what we can control. Love is out of control. Love is the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I was in a spaceship crash.”
Isobel tells him that her relationship troubles are now worse than the flimsy closet he’s been in because of Alex.
Michael: “He knows everything. His family is involved in the conspiracy that tortured and killed the other aliens. He’s tangled up in all these terrible memories in my life and I love him. I probably always will. But lately, that love just hurts. Coming back to him, it always feels like a crash landing.”
Isobel tells him that maybe they should start looking forward, like Max said. Then she sees the cave opening.
The cave is filled with candles and books, just like Max had in the trio’s cave while Isobel was in the pod. They find Noah’s pod, covered with a blanket. Rosa Ortecho’s perfectly preserved body is inside the pod.
Now that Max and Liz are done, Liz jumps up and gets ready to leave. Max tries to get her to stay, but she won’t. She has to visit Rosa’s grave, right away. It can’t wait. He gets a text from Isobel, and Liz tells him to go to her, because Isobel has been through enough.
What just happened? That was clearly supposed to be the most epic sex ever, and it was their first time, but then Liz couldn’t wait to get out of there? And the best excuse she had was that her dead sister was waiting for her at the cemetery?
Jesse Manes finds Kyle back at the Project Shepherd bunker, working on the surveillance tapes. Kyle stands up and turns around to say something, but Jesse shoots him in the chest before he has a chance to get it out. Jesse tells him to say hello to his dad. He leaves Kyle on the floor to bleed out and puts his gun down to have a celebratory sip of whiskey.
Kyle jumps up from behind and hits Jesse in the head with something rectangular and hard that I’m sure is kept around just for these occasions. While Jesse falls down, Kyle takes his gun.
Kyle is also clutching his chest. It turns out that he decided not to buy a gun, so New Mexico is safe from random crazed doctors for another day. Instead, he bought a bulletproof vest. Good thing Jesse didn’t go for the head shot.
Kyle and Jesse have a back and forth about who killed who and who covered up what. Jim wanted to shut down the Alien Guantanamo, even though he knew Rosa was killed by an alien. Jesse wanted to expose the aliens and start an intergalactic war. He’s starting to warm up into his villain monologue about his dream of becoming Will Smith or Darth Vader when Kyle jabs a syringe into his neck and yells that it’s barbiturates. Jesse will now be entering a medically induced coma, but Kyle will be sure to take good care of him once they get to the hospital. He has ethics as a healer, after all.
The syringe is mightier than the sword, y’all.
Isobel and Michael called Max in to consult about Liz’s sister, so he’s in the cave now, too. They come up with some theories for how Noah got Rosa’s body from the morgue to the pod and Max gets angry. Michael and Isobel don’t want to tell Liz, but Max can’t keep a secret this big.
Don’t choke on the irony, kids. Michael and Isobel kept their secrets from their people forever, no matter the consequences, based on Max’s orders. Max can’t keep a secret from Liz for a second, because he’s special.
Max starts quoting Noah, just like Noah probably planned, wondering if he can unlock his potential to be the kind of savior who brings back the dead. Isobel buys into his dream, but Michael stops them. He doesn’t believe they can bring back a girl who’s been dead for 10 years. He says they should take some time to be normal and happy now, then make a proper burial plan for Rosa. They all seem to agree to the plan and leave the cave, but Max takes one last lingering look at the pod.
Michael goes straight to the Wild Pony. He judges his welcome by asking Maria if the bar is open or closed. She accepts his proposal that they spend time together by saying that they’re open. They passionately kiss several times, then just hold each other for a moment. Maria says that they really need to talk. Michael says that they will, but he really needs to settle himself by playing the guitar for a while first. Maria continues counting money at the bar while Michael plays acoustic guitar nearby.
Liz brings a red rose to Rosa’s grave and speaks out loud to her. As she begins, an acoustic cover of Dido’s Here with Me, the original Roswell series’ theme song, begins to play.
Liz tells Rosa that she’s in love with Max, even though Rosa told her to keep a cage around her heart. And even though she feels guilty for loving him because of what he did to Rosa. She knows Max loves her too. She wishes Rosa had lived long enough to feel the kind of love she has with Max and to let her heart out of its cage. She especially wishes she could still talk to Rosa for real, in the flesh.
While Liz speaks to Rosa, Max has gone back to Noah’s cave to bring Rosa back to life. He takes her burned body from the pod and lays her on the ground, then puts his hand at the base of her neck. He turns on his power and starts putting energy into her.
As Liz is saying she wishes Rosa was still alive, she feels something go wrong with Max and runs to her car.
Isobel sits in her house and concentrates on using telekinesis for the first time. She successfully smashes a framed photo of herself with Noah.
Alex waits outside of Michael’s trailer to continue the talk he tried to start the day before.
Michael keeps playing guitar. Maria notices that his hand is healed.
Max strains to heal Rosa.
Michael and Isobel, who notice whenever anything is wrong with their siblings, even when they are at the caves, continue like nothing is wrong.
Liz arrives at Noah’s cavesite, parks, and calls for Max. She hears someone call back to her and turns to see Rosa. We see the same distance shot of Liz and Rosa running toward each other, then embracing, as was used earlier for Max and Liz. Where it felt overdone and unearned for the first couple, it feels completely right for Rosa and Liz. I get chills every time I watch it. Every time.
The Dido cover is still playing.
Liz looks at Rosa and says, “How? I don’t understand?” Rosa replies, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here, okay? I’m here. It’s gonna be okay.”
Then Rosa looks at Liz with tears in her eyes and Liz asks where Max is.
Liz runs into the cave entrance and sees Max lying on the ground with his eyes open and his arms spread wide, apparently dead. She cries over his body.
Commentary
Amber Midthunder/Rosa Ortecho has been promoted to series regular for season 2. Can’t wait to see more of her and her relationships with everyone.
The ending sequence, starting with Liz getting out of the car and hearing Rosa call to her, will go down as one of the most iconic for this show.
Carina talks about Kyle’s gun store scene:
TVLINE | I have to say, I was a little disturbed by Kyle’s darker turn this week. Are we saying goodbye to the Kyle we knew and loved?
Carina Adly MacKenzie: “I was so proud of Michael Trevino in that scene, which we shot in a real gun store in a mall in Santa Fe. That scene was actually the most important one in the whole episode. We knew we were running long, so we didn’t have enough time to shoot everything we wanted, and people kept suggesting that we cut that scene. I just sort of said, “Hey, listen, we’re done suggesting that we cut that scene. Suggest something else.” There are a lot of guns on the show, a lot of casual-seeming gun fights, because we’re talking about cowboys and cops in New Mexico. I wanted to say something about how easy it is to get your hands on a gun in New Mexico when you’re clearly in a state of distress.”
Michael & Alex & Complications
I feel bad for Alex, because I don’t like to see people hurting, but I don’t blame Michael for moving on. If you go back and watch the season over again, you’ll be reminded that Michael has very good reasons for turning to Maria. He opened his heart to Alex over and over again and Alex shut him out, over and over, often with cruel words and actions.
Even Alex’s final speech to Michael was made while ignoring Michael’s current needs, even though Michael was literally covered in blood. No matter how much two people love each other, love isn’t always enough. Sometimes, the obstacles in the relationship are just too much for even the strongest love to overcome. Some of the greatest real life love stories of all time have ended with the couple apart, when they have huge, conflicting personalities or things they need to do separately.
Right now, I think Alex and Michael have a lot they need to do without the complications of being a couple. Michael isn’t free to hate Jesse the way he needs to and to work through his grief, if he’s with Alex. Alex isn’t emotionally free to explore his family’s true reasons for doing what they’ve done with the aliens if he’s in a relationship with one. Michael needs to continue the search for living aliens eventually, and I can’t imagine he’d feel completely safe sharing that information with a Manes at this point.
I might as well say it now- Michael is Harry Potter. Not literally, obvs. But he’s the important kid who was hidden so deeply that it looked like he was forgotten, so that enemies wouldn’t bother with him. Maybe one reason Noah wants to pump up Max’s ego and have him show off his powers is because Jesse has been paying attention to Michael lately. Noah needed the alien hunters’ attention shifted away from Michael, toward Max and Isobel instead. Plus this increases Max’s powers so he’s a better protector.
St Max of the Handgun
Max tries to solve every problem, no matter how small, large or inappropriate, with his gun. This makes for an obnoxious, dull character, whether it’s a hero or a villain. He’s a blunt weapon of destruction, a peacemaker bomb, not a philosopher. In fact, he actively discourages everyone around him from thinking and questioning.
If Max is a savior, it’s of the political variety, and he’s meant to rule as a military dictator and front man, to stop the dissent that’s causing continuous war. More likely, he’s the terminator, and Noah is his handler. Noah understands exactly how to motivate Max and exactly what his capabilities are. He can get Max to do whatever he wants, even when he’s in poor health and on autopilot. No one who’s that easily manipulated will make a great leader.
OMG, THEY KILLED MAX!
LOL. Don’t get too worked up. Within moments of the episode ending, Carina was pointing out that they foreshadowed Max’s death in episode 2, when he told Liz that things never end well for the guy who can work miracles with his hands. The thing is, those guys also have a habit of coming back from the dead after a few days.
In the scene from episode 2, So Much for the Afterglow, which takes place in a church, Liz has just confessed that she no longer believes in God. She asks if Max does. He replies, “I read a lot of religious texts. Like, all of them. The stories don’t generally end well for guys like me. You know, men who work miracles with their hands tend to die bloody.” Liz says that she asked him to meet him there, where she’s just lit a candle for Rosa, because of his hands. She wants him to use the connection they share because he healed her to show her his memories of her sister.
He shows her the memories, but goes further than he planned, and she sees his memory that includes “fraudulent zodiac” written on Rosa’s hand. Liz doesn’t know what that memory means and asks Maria about it. Maria tells Liz that Rosa wrote those words on her hands a few hours before she died, and the season long mystery begins, which includes figuring out exactly how the aliens were involved in Rosa’s death.
This episode brings us full circle from that moment in episode 2 in so many ways, not least because in the seemingly throwaway scene before it, Isobel is worried that Max is troubled about something and holding it in. Noah offers to talk to him, but Isobel shoots him down and approaches Michael instead. That scene now takes on layers of meaning. Noah must have been monitoring Max through Isobel all along, and finding excuses to be around him.
Ophiuchus
Fraudulent zodiac refers to Ophiuchus, Noah’s alias, which he brought up again this episode (more on that later). How much does Rosa know about the meaning of the alias and all of Noah’s secrets? Fraudulent zodiac could still be seen on her hand in the pod.
Max refers to himself as a savior in episode 2, then pretends to be just a guy from Roswell with severe control issues, then a God, then a savior who doesn’t want to live in the past and won’t let his siblings do so either, even if they did lose a close family member moments or hours before, then he decides to just go all out on the savior thing.
He’s been very consistent, all season long, with the idea that everyone has to act normal, unless he decides that he wants to use his powers for something. All of his rules have a Max exclusion clause. Since Max is a bonehead, this exclusion usually means trouble. I know I’m supposed to be all “OMG, Max sacrificed himself for Rosa and Liz!” But, while he was trying to do something nice for Liz, he died because was drunk on his own power and got carried away:
Carina Adly MacKenzie: “He kind of feels like a god, and he makes the rash decision without remembering that he had a heart attack earlier that day; he’s not as strong as he feels.”
After watching how cruel he was to Michael when he’d just lost his mother and wanted to get answers to the questions that had plagued him his entire life, Max still gets no sympathy from me.
I hope no one who reads Metawitches regularly was too surprised that Rosa came back, since we’ve been talking about that for weeks now. The way Noah spoke about her in the present tense in the last few episodes was a dead giveaway, if you hadn’t figured it out before that. I didn’t correctly guess the twist that brought her back, so I’ll probably be wrong about how Max will come back, too, but, honestly, sometimes I have more fun making up alternate versions than I do watching the show. As is obvious, we have a love/hate relationship.
Max compared himself to Jesus in episode 2 and in this episode Noah told Max that he’s a God and the Savior. Just what Max’s ego needed. OMG. Then Max went and proved he’s Zeus or Thor-like by pulling the lightning out of the sky, and shooting it from his hands, as expected. It took a lot of lightning to take out Noah, who tried to tell Max that they’re bound together as Ophiuchus and the serpent.
Let’s review who Ophiuchus and the serpent are. When Noah as Isobel was platonically courting Rosa, he signed his love notes as Ophiuchus, which is a constellation and considered in some systems to be the 13th sign of the zodiac (November 30-December 18ish). The night she died, Rosa wrote “fraudulent zodiac” on her hand, which refers to both a Third Eye Blind song and Ophiuchus the astrological sign/constellation.
Mythologically, Ophiuchus is the serpent bearer, an image of a man holding a large snake who’s wrapped around his body. The man is generally described as struggling with the snake, but there is one myth that turns the snake into the man’s legs and another which has the man learning about healing herbs from the snake. Because of the association with snake venom, Ophiuchus is associated with poisons, medications and healers. As Kyle showed in this episode, a medication and a poison are only differentiated by the dose given and the skill of the healer.
There are two interesting stories about Ophiuchus and the serpent that might apply to Max and Noah. One is that they will struggle together forever, because their powers are equal. The other is this one (from wiki):
According to Roman era mythography, the figure represents the healer Asclepius, who learned the secrets of keeping death at bay after observing one serpent bringing another healing herbs.
This would suggest that Max and Noah are immortal. Maybe Michael and Isobel as well, since Noah frequently lumps the three together as being valuable to their people, and all three had super premium pods, plus they aged very slowly in the pods.
But, more importantly, we just saw Kyle, a healer, put Jesse Manes into a coma, using poison, a deliberate reminder of Ophiuchus, in the same episode when Noah brought the serpent bearer up. It took only a few drops of the antidote to bring Noah back, which I expected, because he’s so strong. Then Max pelted Noah with energy until he was overloaded.
I don’t think that Max and Noah are dead. They are both in deep alien comas. All of the energy Max threw at Noah could be what he needed to heal him from the damage he sustained in the crash and during his 60 years in the pod. He could be dormant right now because he’s healing.
Max is probably very depleted, but basically unkillable. He just needs to suck some energy out of some people. Non-fatally, of course.
Or Isobel and Michael will discover their healing powers and bring him back. In the books, the aliens all have the same powers. Since Noah started showing off his multiple powers, I’ve wondered if the show was going to ultimately go in that direction. Given Michael’s increasing telepathy and and Isobel’s new telekinesis, it looks like that’s what they’re doing. They all just practiced whatever power came to them first and easiest, and left it at that, because that’s what Max told them to do. But in reality, they all have all the powers, they just need to practice. Noah is the snake that was supposed to teach the trio how to use them.
Maria’s Pollen Pendant
Noah said that aliens have been coming to earth for a long time, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising that Maria’s family would know of a way to stop them that’s native to northern Africa. But it does bring up some questions: How many people know about this pollen’s power against aliens? Is Maria’s family from that part of Libya? Is there or was there an alien stronghold in Libya? Did Mimi’s dementia start after she gave Maria the necklace? Is Maria part alien and the necklace suppresses most of her powers (except her psychic powers)? Did Isobel pass out when she tried to get inside Maria’s mind because of the pendant?
Images courtesy of The CW.
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