This week on Orphan Black, Evie Cho can’t wait to exercise her will over Neolution, and Duko goes on the hunt to begin the cull of the troublesome Ledas. With Donnie in jail for drug trafficking, a couple of Neolution enforcers put the squeeze on him while Duko offers Alison a peaceful life if she hands over Sarah.
Rachel’s recuperation leaps forward, impassioned by the need to take control of her life and resume some semblance of relevance in the organization that bred her. By siding with Ira, they decide to force their mother to work with them for a cure to their diseases and take back her position within Neolution. But Susan prefers to occupy herself with Cosima after MK connects them through a chat.
After debating whether to sacrifice her husband or her sister, and with a little prodding from Felix, Alison decides to lure Duko into a trap set by Sarah. After a little torture from Mrs. S, Duko reveals that Evie’s plans with Bright Born implicate more than just the clones, possibly the whole world. After getting what she needed, S gets revenge from her mother by killing Duko in the comic shop.
Cosima and Susan figure out that the closest they can come to replicating Kendall’s original genome is with Sarah’s eggs and Ira’s sperm. When Sarah reluctantly provides the samples she needs, Cosima leaves Toronto and heads north to Susan’s private island.
The way Duko goes about getting to Sarah seems unnecessary. Neolution, Dyad and the American military all know where Felix lives after crashing his place again and again. Duko could’ve grabbed Sarah by watching his loft for a couple of hours. Granted it would’ve made the episode considerably shorter, and done away with a well-done mash-up with a few different scenes, but it felt like a big distraction from the promise of more intersting science that’s going to come from Cosima and Susan. This is the closest anyone on Orphan Black has come to developing a cure for either side of the clone divide.
There’s a little foreshadowing in the final scene. As Cosima rides the helicopter to Dr. Duncan’s island, fulfilling a promise from the constant title-dropping of the Island of Dr. Moreau, there’s some visual similarity to another sci-fi story where everything goes wrong for the creators of some genetically-tailored monster(s). It makes Cosima’s path seem a little dark and ominous, providing contrast to the expectation she has now that her terminal illness could be cured.
Another dark vision has been provided to Rachel. Someone has been sending her corrupted visuals of a swan through her bionic eye. A few times it appeared decapitated, and now a mysterious man can be seen handling the camera. Is someone trying to get a message to her? A warning? Now that the sisters have a bit of hope, it’s possible a new player has arrived on the scene to take it away.
