XIII – Defender

• Title: XIII – Defender
• tv.com: link

Framed by his mysterious double for both the bombing of Synequanon and the attempted murders of both Vargas (Bruce Ramsay) and Jones (Aisha Tyler), the former who is being tortured for information by the U.S. Government while the later is in surgery to save her life as episode opens, XIII (Stuart Townsend) is unable to convince Betty (Roxane Mesquida) or the other surviving members of The Veil of his bizarre story of brainwashing, doppelgangers, and an elaborate frame that has him hunted by Synequanon and the U.S. Government. Searching for XIII, Amos (Greg Bryk) begins looking into Betty, her murdered brother, and the stolen Synequanon documents that got him killed.

XIII’s quest to clear his name and take down the his double begins with the information left in an abandoned bus locker leading him to a climatologist (Krista Bridges) working with Tesla coils whose life was destroyed searching for the scientist’s lost letters, one of which XIII had in his possession not that long ago. After blowing up her lab to protect Alice from his double, XIII and the climatologist have to worry about the Synequanon security agents posing as Homeland Security who arrive to tie up eliminate any loose ends.

Losing the election to President-Elect Harriet Traymore (Ingrid Kavelaars), President Carrington (Stephen McHattie) becomes obsessed with catching XIII, dead or alive, before the end of his presidency. With the help of Martin (Demore Barnes), Betty continues to investigate the clues left to her by her brother which include a mysterious connection between Synequanon, the HARPE Project, the XU Corporation, and a man named Andrej Kalishkanov.

The episode introduces the idea of using Tesla’s lost research for some kind of super-weapon which is worth killing to keep secret in order to give this season its big, but still vague, threat. As a fan of Atomic Robo, which using the idea of Tesla’s lost designs to great effect, I’m willing to give it time to play out even if the episode struggles a bit to sell the premise. I was more than a little surprised to see both Jones and Vargas had survived last week’s episode (which strongly suggests both were left stone cold by XIII’s double). I’m not sure anything is gained, at least for the foreseeable future, by having them survive, but I’m willing to see if the series finds a way to make their eleventh-hour reprieve worth it.