True. It is titled THE OUTPOST, not TALON, so maybe they always intended to make it more of an ensemble show? Quite the eventful episode: our first glimpse of the other realm, Naya exposed as the spy, and a royal wedding . . . sorta. Nice cliffhanger, too.
It certainly was more centered on Talon in season 1 than it is now. So she certainly seemed to be the intended lead then. And the fact that the season 2 intro narration is all about her suggests that that was the initial intent for season 2 as well. But something seems to have shifted. Then again, maybe it's a narrative thing. Creating a rift between Gwynn and Talon led to the current situation where Gwynn decided she needed a marital alliance, and left her vulnerable to capture by Garret. And Talon going on her quest cleared the way for Janzo to focus more on Naya and advance their arc. So hopefully it's just a temporary thing and Talon will return to a more central role toward season's end. (We're 7 episodes in and season one had 10, so we're probably nearing the endgame.)
At last, an episode with plenty of Talon in it. Maybe she was sidelined for narrative reasons after all. Plus we got a big action scene of the sort that's been rare lately, although it had so much quick cutting that it obscured the fight choreography.
Looks like I never posted my thoughts on last weeks. The big thing with last week's was Naya being revealed as a spy leading to her leaving. I liked her and her relationship with Janzo, so I was disappointed to see her go. I knew once Gwynn agreed to marry Tobin that Garret was going to show up during the wedding. As for this week, we got some pretty good action scenes here. Did they ever explain exactly what the red stuff that Garret keeps drinking is? I'm wondering if it's something that's keeping that made him more susceptible to the First Order brainwashing.
Yes, they established back at the start of his brainwashing arc that the doctor was giving him "medicine" that she insisted he take regularly, and it was stated in the next episode (I think) that he needed to keep taking it to reinforce the conditioning. Which I expect is going to be how they get him back -- the potion will wear off and he'll start to remember the truth/break free of the brainwashing.
What exactly the potion does is a little fuzzy, but the evil gaslighting doctor insisted he keep taking it.
Well, now we know what the potion does. It made Garret suggestible so he could be easily convinced of the Prime Order's lies. Except... if he kept taking it now so he was still suggestible, then wouldn't that make it easy to convince him of the truth again? I'd think that reinforcing the lie would be just as important as keeping up the dosage, if not more so. I was confused by the part where Talon took the other guy to some graves where the jewel they needed was buried, and she said they were the graves of her adoptive human family and the Blackblood who murdered them. Huh? I thought she was adopted by humans after, and because, all the other Blackbloods were killed. What am I forgetting?
That's a good point about the potion, that didn't even occur to me. But even with that, it was still nice to see them finally address it. I was a little surprised by Talon and the other Black Blood, whose name I'm brainfarting on, hooking up. The fight with them and the Prime Order soldiers was pretty cool. They seem to be sticking with Tobin as a decent guy now. I keep expecting something to turn him back into the asshole he started out as, but they haven't. His cousin's turn was unexpected.
The fight scenes in this show don't work for me because they keep cutting to a new camera angle every half-second and you can't see any of the action choreography. I was literally talking back to the screen in frustration during that scene, saying "Move the actors, not the camera!" Poorly phrased, but sincere. Also, I didn't care for the callousness -- killing a bunch of people and then saying "That was fun."
You're conflating two massacres. First, her Blackblood village and family was slaughtered by mercenaries hired by the First Order. Then, she was taken in by a kindly human family. Then, her human family was slaughtered by a rogue Blackblood who was after Talon's demon-summoning magic. Can't remember where he came from. So poor little Talon saw two families massacred.
Then there's still a massacre missing. If there were still BBs in the world after Talon was orphaned, when were the rest of them massacred (or driven to the Plane of Dust or whatever it's called)? Or was Talon's village just the start of Dred's genocidal campaign, rather than the end of it as I thought?
As I understand it, Talon's village was the last of the Blackbloods. This other guy escaped from the Plane of Dust somehow, killed Talon's foster family, then was killed by Lil' Talon, who did not understand the significance of his pendant. It's possible she didn't find out where he came from until much later. This whole bit of backstory about Talon's second family getting massacred comes from the Season 2 premiere, and the culprit was the brother of Rebb, the evil Blackblood woman from the first part of Season 2. Been trying to look up where he came from, but can't readily find a synopsis on-line since (as I recall) he only appeared in a flashback in one episode.
More or less. "All my people were slaughtered when I was a child . . . except for that one guy a few years later who killed my human family."
Well, Garret was cured awfully quickly. I guess that medicine was more important to the brainwashing than I thought. Still no cure for his overacting, though. Conversely, Zed turns out to be a creep after all. Give him mind control powers and the first thing he does is to torture someone. It occurred to me while watching that it's strange Talon's people don't have a name for themselves other than "Blackblood." That sounds like a term (or slur) invented by humans, since it refers to one of their two main differences from humans. I'm confused by the geography here. Talon said they were on the border of the human and Grayskin lands (good grief, this show has unimaginative species names). But I thought the whole point of the Outpost was that it was the defensive line between human and Grayskin lands (presumably at the only crossing point in the mountains). If they can just casually cross over in the woods somewhere, that makes the Outpost seem rather less important. I'm also confused about Elinor's plans. I got the impression a week or two ago, when she started selling colipsum to the enemy army, that she was already planning to do something like what she did here. But it was presented here as if it had only just occurred to her. And once again, the episode cliffhanger is Talon getting stabbed somewhere around the midsection. I think that's happened at least 4 times now, which is an astonishing 20% of the cliffhangers to date. I'd say they need to get more writers, but this is one of the few episodes not credited to the main writers Jason Faller & Kynan Griffin (although it's the third episode by the only other credited writer we've had, Katherine DiSauvino).
Wow, things turned bad with Zed almost as quickly as they hooked up. I was a little surprised Garret turned back so quickly once he was in Gwynn's room. It was nice to see Naya again. Yeah, I've got to agree with @Christopher about the names for the races.
Caught up with the show over the weekend, I actually thought the season would be done(last one was 10 episodes), but it seems there's three more left. So I'm guessing that The Three have some of those missing Kinjes(sp?) since that would explain the weird healing powers they exhibited. I wasn't paying attention but did we see their ears under those pope hats?
Speaking of CW fantasy series, in a couple of hours (8 PM Eastern) they're showing something called Warigami (as in war + origami), which apparently is a 10-episode webseries of 10-minute installments that they're showing as a "movie." Looks like it's got a mostly Japanese-Canadian cast but also David Hewlett, and is about people who can turn folded paper into weapons. Sounds bizarre, but I think I want to check it out.