After lots of set up and dragging its feet a little bit over the first three episodes, events finally turn at the halfway point of the series with “Our Lord” by revealing the connection between Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) and Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce) and the secret society preparing for their alien saviors from outer space. It’s here we we also see the continuing attempts of Evans to explain human society to San-Ti whose question about the the fairy tale he reads to them leads to a fundamental misunderstanding between the aliens and their prophet on Earth, changing everything.
I’ve got some complaints here as the timing seems a bit too coincidental. If even the smallest misunderstanding could crash the alliance between the San-Ti and the humans, are we really to believe Evans, who has been talking with the San-Ti for half a century, that something like this hasn’t come up before this point? Given its the pivotal point of the series up until this point, you would like to it have been built on a more solid foundation. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, although the fallout of this event does lead to some very interesting results.
The fallout of this single radio conversation reverberates in “Judgment Day” (named after Evans ark of the faithful) as Da Shi (Benedict Wong) and Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) convince Auggie (Eiza González) to reactivate production of her technology and put it to brutal and bloody use in taking out all members of the ship without a shot being fired. Auggie’s countdown does not return, as Da Shi correctly guessed the Shan-Ti are no longer protecting any of their human followers.
The sequence is one of the most memorable of the show so far, but it will soon be outdone by the cliffhanger ending as the aliens announce their existence to the world in a terrifying display letting humans know how small they are to the alien conquerors now on their way to take their world. The good news is the human race has several hundred years to prepare for the would-be conquerors to arrive. The bad news is the San-Ti have proven they can consistently fuck with humanity’s attempts to fight back. Now the real story begins.
