The Ingenious Are Always Fanciful
REVIVAL – Episode 109 – Mother of Babylon (limited spoilers) ⁓
Lester Majak
Ibrahim (Andy McQueen) has been captured and tied to a chair by Blaine (Steven Ogg), who asks him “What started Revival Day?” Ibrahim doesn’t know, and is terrified of Blaine. Finally he quotes the Quran “Kullu nafsin dha’iqatul mawt” which means “Every soul will taste death”. The rest of the quote is “then to Us you will ‘all’ be returned.”
Ibrahim and May
Sheriff Cypress (David James Elliott) arrests Blaine for murder, accidentally freeing Ibrahim. Blaine denies killing Rose or Em, and May (Katherine King So) finds out that Blaine put up the anonymous $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Rose’s killer. When Jesse fled Wasau, the money went to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Fund (something akin to the Our Sisters Are Sacred Fund). Blaine does have a video recording of Wanda being killed by one of the glowing creatures.
Blaine’s father was arrested years earlier for defrauding his religious followers by faking stigmata on his son Blaine’s hands. Blaine’s father also tried repeatedly to purchase land owned by the Blackdeer family.
Dana and Nella
At the Sheriff’s Office, May finds Ibrahim reading the Quran and he becomes defensive.
IBRAHIM: “I’m a scientist. I shouldn’t be looking for answers in religious texts.”
MAY: “Says who? The dead have risen, Doc. Pretty sure there are no rules. You know, Rose and I always used to say that whoever died first would come back and haunt the other, just to prove there was an afterlife.”
IBRAHIM: “Like Harry Houdini and his mother — Have you heard from her?”
MAY: “Not yet. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Good luck with your soul-searching.”
Dr. Carla Morel and General Louise Cale
Carla (Paige Evans), who tortured revivers with snake venom to develop a means of controlling them, reports to General Cale (Konima Parkinson-Jones) that Em (Romy Weltman) needs triple the dose of the aforementioned control medication, and that her body heals faster. Carla also points out that Em has “demonstrated an unmatched threshold for violence”. When Rhodey (Kaleb Horn) is sent to determine how docile has become, she breaks his neck. (He’s a reviver so he doesn’t die.)
Nithiya (Gia Sandhu) drops in to assess Em’s mental state and while she’s there, Em hallucinates her mother Patty (Lara Jean Chorostecki), who lays a guilt trip on Em about her affair with Aaron. When an opportunity presents itself, Em grabs a guard’s gun and threatens to kill him, but then, at Nithiya’s urging, reconsiders. “See, Mom,” she says after everyone else has left the room, “I am the Martha you raised. I did the right thing.” When she turns around, Patty’s ghost has vanished.
Em and her hallucination of Patty
Em explains a little about how the accident that killed her mother came about. “Dana got into a fight at Nella’s bar,” she says, “because some townie was heckling her for the Blackdeer case and my Mom called my Dad because she didn’t like to drive in winter, so I drove. And when I was driving, a deer just came out of nowhere. It was all my fault.” Later on, The Sheriff and the Mayor (Conrad Coates) have a conversation about the same thing, and we learn that Nella called Wayne to pick up Patty, Dana, and Em that night, but Wayne was busy having an affair with the Mayor’s wife (Precious Chong) and wasn’t answering his phone. Em was driving because Patty didn’t like to drive in the winter.
Em at the old Abel church with Tyler Barrow (Luca Villacis) in the background.
After learning that General Cale plans to move all the revivers to a secret location called Ember Point, the Sheriff devises a rescue plan. Ibrahim convinces Dr. Carla, who is having second thoughts about things, to give the captive revivers each an injection of Moore Creek water. Most of the revivers are freed, but Em is not with them. Unknown to the rescuers, she has been spirited away by Tyler Barrow (Luca Villacis), one of Blaine’s followers. JP (Glen Gould) and Nella (Lanette Ware) are using old bootlegging tunnels to get the freed prisoners across the border. Then Lester (Peter Millard) calls and says trespassers with guns are on his property and they have a girl with them. The Sheriff figures they’re at the old Abel church with Em.
As one of the creatures is abut to rise from the creek, three of Blaine’s followers wait on the bank with a net. All three are shot dead by a sniper.
At the church, Blaine calls Em the “Mother of Babylon” and is almost certainly misquoting Revelation 17:5. He might find it useful to read Revelation 14:9: “And a third angel followed them, calling out in a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on his forehead or on his hand, he too will drink the wine of God’s anger.'” All of Blaine’s follwers were marked on the left hand by Blaine’s “Angel”.