Previously on Orphan Black, Cosima told Delphine she was bad at making crazy science, Sarah couldn’t kill Helena so she shoved her in the trunk, and Alison said “eff it” and lost her damn mind.
Sarah has kindly removed Helena from her trunk – and zip-tied her to a pole in the basement. She introduces her to their birth mother, Amelia, but Helena was raised by nuns and doesn’t quite get the concept of surrogate mothers, so she tries to call Sarah’s bluff. But the idea that they are twins, actual sisters, intrigues her. Sarah points out that this means Helena’s not the original, that she’s the same as all the others, but I think the little psychopath is beyond reasoning with.
While they’re downstairs, Mrs. S rifles through Amelia’s belongings, and finds a picture in her bag, but is interrupted by Kira making creepy child prophecy predictions.
The basement family reunion gets interrupted by very aggressive door-banging. Sarah runs upstairs to find herself ambushed by the police officers she had been playing cop with and arrested on the spot, with little Kira watching intently from the stairs.
In the midst of the chaos, Helena manages to knock an entire support beam over with the strength of her anger and escapes through a window, free to be absolutely terrifying wherever she wishes.
Meanwhile, in the suburbs, just when you think she couldn’t get any more adorably absurd, Alison is doing a hip-hop workout.
The doorbell rings and she flounces over to find Dr. Leekie lurking. He offers the housewife clone a – treaty of sorts. Well, first he offers her answers, but all she wants is for him and his Neolutionists to leave her the hell alone. His treaty is supposedly just that – a promise that she’ll be safe from Helena, that her family will be protected, and that she will live her life unmonitored. The only catch would be regular medical testing – they have some concerns about respiratory disease like the Russian had, and a permanent residency in CrazyTown like Helena. He tells her that he’s going to give her time to talk it over with the clone club and that, in the meantime, her monitor has been lifted.
At the police station, Sarah is trying to reason with Art while Felix has to deal with LadyCop. Unfortunately, she has no sense of humor and possibly no soul, so even Felix can’t sass and charm his way out of this mess.
Cosima has decided to join the fray in person instead of just via skype, and arrives in Town via bus. She has a bit of a coughing spell and is alarmed to pull back her hand to see it covered in blood. Before she can have a full-on panic attack about it, Dr. Leekie materializes out of nowhere. He offers her a ride to her hotel, and begs her to hear him out. He hands her a little external hard drive and says its her entire genome sequence to study. A peace offering of sorts. He refers to the other clones as her sisters and promises he means them no harm. He wants to offer her a contract to work with him at the DYAD Institute, free reign to study herself and the other clones.
In the interrogation room, Sarah is begging Art to give her the benefit of the doubt, to trust that she didn’t kill Beth, that there’s more going on. Art tells her to explain herself, no matter how unbelievable she says it is, and she’s about to make him a card-carrying member of the clone club when a fancy lawyer swoops in and escorts her out. Clearly employed by the Powers that Be, he tells Sarah that her and Felix are now free to move about the city as they please, and that her audience is being requested in a Big Fancy Building.
When Sarah gets to said Big Fancy Building, Paul is there, lurking around the elevator bank. She’s not all that surprised to see him, but he tells her to listen to the Powers that Be. Though he also tells her that he’s still being blackmailed, which suggests, to me, that he still cannot be wholly trusted.
When Sarah enters the Big Fancy Room in the Big Fancy Building, the woman we saw Leekie on the phone with reveals herself to, in fact, be yet another clone. Posh, British, and equipped with quite the smug look of importance, BitchFace Clone welcomes Sarah. Rachel Duncan offers her the same deal Leekie offered Alison – answers, freedom to live as she pleases, as long as she stays available to them.
At Felix’s loft, the clones gather for a much-needed meeting of the Clone Club. When Cosima arrives, she gives Sarah her puppy-dog eyes and says she’s sorry for not listening to her about Delphine. Sarah gets it, and hugs the sad little scientist. When they all settle in, Alison tells them that since her kids are safe and she really wants out, she’s seriously considering taking the deal Leekie offered her. Sarah and Cosima are a little surprised, but they support her in her decision. They’ve both been offered deals themselves and no one is sure what they’re going to do. Alison inquires about Rachel and Sarah explains that she was raised by Neolution. A ProClone, as Felix calls her. Before they can discuss it further, Cosima gets a text: Delphine is in Town, probably because it’s part of her contract to never be more than 500 feet away from Cosima at all times. Or because, like me, she would follow that adorable, bespectacled face wherever it went. Sarah calls the meeting of the clone club to a close for now and heads to Mrs. S’s to see Kira.
Back in the suburbs, Alison sees Aynsley packing up her house. She meanders over to ask what’s going on an Aynsley says she’s moving. Alison really just wants to hear the words come out of her mouth, so she demands to know the truth. Aynsley looks at her, bewildered, and shouts “THE TRUTH IS YOU AND MY HUSBAND SCORED A TOUCHDOWN TOGETHER OF COURSE I’M GETTING THE HELL OUT.” She even has a breakup box of things Alison, her very best friend, had given her over the years. In her fury, she takes a little hand-crafted, felt Christmas angel out of the box and decides to use it as a symbol of their relationship and shove it down the drain. She goes so far as to turn on the garbage disposal, getting her fancy scarf caught in it. Since Satan himself designed the kitchen so that you can’t reach the switch from the sink, she is being choked and her face is turning as blue as her scarf. She calls to Alison for help, but Alison’s eyes are wide and evil light bulbs are going off. She walks over to the switch, and her fingers hover over it for a minute, but thinks better of it AND WATCHES AYNSLEY DIE.
Maybe she does have Helena’s mental disorder after all.
Alison then does her adorable little tight-step speedwalk back across the street, first stopping to adorably wipe her fingerprints off the doorknob.
At Mrs. S’s Sarah says she’s going to pop over to visit her birth mum while Siobhan rocks back and forth with her rifle, worried about Helena being on the loose.
When Sarah gets to the apartment where Amelia is staying, she starts to say something about being wary of Mrs. S but before she can get out her warning, she is stabbed right in the gut. She falls to the ground, taking the wig with her, and revealing Helena as the second clone to kill a person so far today (but not the last).
When Sarah gets to the apartment, she follows the bloody trail to the basement, where she finds Amelia in poor shape. She tries to warn the right Sarah this time about Siobhan, handing her a picture of Mrs. (Dr.?) S. in a lab coat, but sadly doesn’t have enough breaths left in her to explain. Helena appears behind them and has a flare, because of course she does. She spits on Amelia’s body while Sarah laments the loss of the woman she had been searching for her whole life. Helena gets in her twin’s face and Sarah says she’s not her sister, just some psychopathic, religious-freak, loony toon in her t-shirt. Helena channels Pilot-Episode-Sarah and says, “London Calling” before headbutting her and wrapping a giant chain around her throat. She throws her to the ground and tells Sarah that she can’t kill her, because of their connection. The same reason Sarah couldn’t shoot Helena in the cage. Sarah decides to prove the crazy fallen angel wrong and SHOOTS HER RIGHT IN THE CHEST. Sarah seems a little surprised at her own clonicide attempt, but I’ll believe Helena’s dead when she’s officially six feet under.
Sarah, surrounded by the blood of her birth mother and her twin sister, calls BitchFace clone and says she will come take her offer, that she doesn’t want Kira to have to grow up in the kind of bloody chaos she’s been dealing with for the past few weeks.
Donnie comes home to Alison and tells her that he wants to forget about everything and start over. Alison feels fleeting guilt about what she’s done, but not enough to confess to her husband. He says he’s going on a run to symbolize their new life, but before he makes it around the cul-de-sac, he jumps into Leekie’s car, proving what we all suspected – he’s Alison’s monitor and Alison murdered a regular neighbor for no reason other than that she was kind of nosy.
In Felix’s loft, Cosima is in the bathroom, coughing up an alarming amount of blood. This is where people who aren’t the subject of a long-term medical experiment would go to the hospital, but Cosima simply washes up and goes to Felix, who has just announced that Delphine and her baggage (of the literal and emotional sort) are at the door.
Felix leaves the stunning scientists alone to geek out together. Cosima was hesitant at first, but that face and that accent – even smart girls get dumb around girls like Delphine. After adorable mirrored frustration and theorizing, they finally manage to decode the synthetic sequence in Cosima’s DNA, thanks to Delphine having memorized her ID number. They work together and discover a message encoded IN all of them (which is crazy, by the way). Cosima immediately calls Sarah to tell her what they found.
Sarah has arrived at the Big Fancy Building once again, and Paul is still hanging out in the elevator bank, because apparently he lives there now. He tells her she’s making the right choice. The Big Fancy Building is SO fancy, it has reception in the elevators, so Sarah answers the call from Cosima. She warns her that there’s a catch to the deal the Powers that Be want to make. The synthetic sequence had a message that said that the “organism” is patented intellectual property – their bodies are not their own.
When the elevator opens in the Big Fancy Office, there is no one inside it anymore. BitchFace Clone gets an email that just says “UP YOURS, PROCLONE” in gigantic letters. Unphased, BitchFace makes a call and says simply, “You know what to do.”
In the wake of their exciting yet disturbing discovery, Cosima looks at Delphine, her lip quivering in the most heartbreaking of ways. She says out loud what she has been keeping in all this time, hoping to be untrue – tears welling her in eyes, she says, “I’m sick, Delphine.” A thousand hearts shatter all over the floor and Delphine gives Cosima the hug we all wish we could.
When Sarah finally gets back to Mrs. S’s house, everything is in disarray. Panicked, she runs up to Kira’s room, where there is no sign of her little girl. She goes to the open window and channels Michael from lost, shouting her daughter’s name into the wind.
Did Mrs. S take Kira to safety? Was Mrs. S the one BitchFace called, and did she take her away as punishment? WILL COSIMA BE OKAY?!
We have to wait until Spring 2014 to find out. A devastatingly long hiatus, I know, but surely it will be worth the wait. We can spend the interim months re-watching for clues and doing our darndest to get Tatiana Maslany all the awards.
Thanks for rolling along with me in my snowballing obsession with this show, clonesbians! But don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be recapping Mistresses (which starts TONIGHT!) so play along with me with the hashtag #HomoWrecker and we’ll make it to Spring 2014 together!
Here are some of our favorite tweets from the finale:
Oh heyyyy Posh Spice Tatiana. #clonesbians #Orphanblack
– NicS (@njnic23) June 2, 2013
They really cannot trust anyone but each other. #OrphanBlack #clonesbians #ep10
– Allison Rose (@Arvan_12) June 2, 2013
I saw it coming but it still breaks my heart, I’ll miss you Helena, you crazy angel #clonesbians #OrphanBlack
– Kate(@WildThestral) June 2, 2013
Ahh the romance of numerical tags. NOW KISS #Clonesbians
– Ruth (@ruthbinns) June 2, 2013
That “1 down, 2 to go” sounded very ominously like Willow at the end of “Villains”. I don’t trust Rachel. #OrphanBlack #clonesbians #ep10
– Allison Rose (@Arvan_12) June 2, 2013
Mind utterly blown by the orphan black finale. The only thing I know is I know nothing & I love it. #clonesbians
– d. gould (@dylpickles) June 2, 2013
I could watch Cosima and Delphine’s simultaneous Eureka! Moment over and over. #clonesbians #Orphanblack
– NicS (@njnic23) June 2, 2013
They are totally making “crazy science together” later after THIS real crazy science conversation.#OrphanBlack #Clonesbians
– Tania (@Teeja_18595) June 2, 2013
Clone down! #orphanblack #clonesbians
– Linster (@thelinster) June 2, 2013
Delphine is an immunologist, and Cosima’s sick. I like where this is going.#OrphanBlack #Clonesbians
– Erica Barz (@chapstick_buff) June 2, 2013
