Only Love Can Make Him Wag His Tail
ORPHAN BLACK: ECHOES Season 1 Episode 7 – SPOILERS ⁓
Jules and Xander
Xander (Vincent Tran), displeases his creator Darros by inadvertently allowing Jules (Amanda Fix) to escape. Jules joins him in a “return to the womb” experience with the printer that created them and doses him with the designer drug she and Lucy (Krysten Ritter) used to explore their memories. After that, Xander has a vision of his own, in which a younger version of Darros comforts his ailing younger sister Zora (Milan Deng).
GIRL: “He did it again? Are you okay?”
DARROS: “Don’t worry about it. If it keeps him away from you…”
GIRL: “We’ll get through this together, big brother.”
Since he was completely unaware that Darros had a sister, and was supposed to know such things, he confronts Darros, and is told he wasn’t ready for that information. Darros also tells Xander he will be “repurposed”. Xander ponders his fate for a while, then seems to make a decision. We aren’t told what that is.
Milan Deng as Zora, younger sister of Paul Darros who appears in Xander’s vision.
The eldest of the Eleanor replicas (Rya Kihlstedt), is shocked by a visit from Lucy. Kira did not tell her newly re-minted wife that she had died and been brought back to life, so the new Eleanor is unprepared to learn of her own origins and storms out.
The first thing she decides to do is tell her son Lucas the truth, and he is also unable to process the news, though when Lucy shows up looking for Eleanor, the presence of a second, younger version of his mother helps him accept things.
Elder Eleanor later explains to the younger versions of herself what their shared vision of blood in a Boston bathroom is about. “Our father was clinically depressed,” she tells them. “Being alive was so hard for him…I came home from school one day and found him in the bathtub. He’d slit his wrists. I’d always had this feeling that, I don’t know, I was responsible somehow.”
Jules and the dog
The three copies of Kira’s wife – Jules, Lucy, and Eleanor – might symbolize The Fates: Clothos (the maiden), Lachesis (the mother), and Atropos (the crone). In Greek myth, The Fates made sure that every being, divine or mortal, lived its life without violating the laws of the universe. The Fates were connected to Zeus, who sometimes took the form of animals to anonymously interact with humans.
Jules manages to escape Darros’ compound, then meets a stray dog in the woods. The dog seems to recognize her, and leads her to a road that takes her to a gas station with a public telephone.
The unnamed (and uncredited) canine creates a distraction by stealing a bag of snacks, making Jules able to negotiate with the store clerk (Katherine Genge) for the price of a phone call, in exchange for recovering the snacks. Jules calls Craig (Jonathan Whittaker) at Settlement House, who drops what he’s doing and comes to give her a ride. The dog goes along with them.
Katherine Genge as the store clerk
Tom (Reed Diamond), who is following Jules at the behest of Darros, learns about the dog from the store clerk, and gets its tracking frequency from the nearby animal shelter (from which the dog has somehow escaped). This brings to mind Daniel Rosen (Matthew Bennett) tracking Sarah Manning in “Mingling Its Own Nature With It” (Orphan Black episode 2.3). Tom is led by the tracking device and the three versions of Eleanor to a deserted container yard where Lucy broadsides his truck with her own vehicle.
After the Eleanors and Craig leave (without the dog), a wounded Tom staggers from his wrecked vehicle. The earpiece he used to stay in contact with Darros isn’t working, and when he drops it, the dog picks up the earpiece and carries it away. Well, it seemed like it was an earpiece, but turned out to actually be most of his ear.
Emily
Meanwhile, Kira goes through Josh’s computer files and discovers he was communicating regularly with someone at Darros’ facility, and that Darros has something planned for Wednesday the 9th. (In 2052, the only month when the ninth falls on a Wednesday is October.) Then she calls Emily (Tattiawana Jones) and tells her she needs a favour. The two meet at a restaurant. “Thanks for coming,” says Lucy. “Of Course,” responds Emily, clutching the handgun beside her in the booth. “You said Josh was in deep with Darros. How much do you know?”
Miscellaneous Info
Both Milan Deng (Zora) and Marnie McPhail (Dr. Teller) are also in the cast of M. Night Shyamalan‘s psychological thriller TRAP, the story of a father and daughter who attend a pop concert and stumble into an FBI ambush.