Previously on Orphan Black, Cosima didn’t know who to trust with the secret code Duncan left them, Delphine was suspicious of Shay, Delphine fired Cosima and Scott, Rachel translated one page of the book but then got taken by Neelan, who sent her off to get a new eyeball and kept poor innocent Krystal as a replacement face, and Mrs. S decided their best next move would be to go to Londontown.
Our ragtag bunch of leather-clad heroes end up in Siobhan’s old neighborhood. They haven’t even found a place to unpack their suitcases, but they have their first meeting set up with a man named Terry. He gives Mrs. S a gun, and when Sarah asks what precisely it’s for, S says the only thing they can do is kill the Castor original and end all the BS they’re up to their necks in.
Meanwhile, Mother gives Rudy the logic tests and Rudy glitches when he’s asked if all poisons are purple, which he knows is a bad sign. He asks how long he has left to live and Mother tells him not to worry his broken little head about that, she’ll find the cure before it comes to that.
In suburbia, Gemma is showing off her karate skills for Helena, who calls her a fierce warrior. Gemma’s worried because she’s so small, but Helena tells her small is good and teaches her some killer moves that end with eyeball-poking. It’s always about the eyeballs with these girls. Gracie comes down to the basement and scolds her, and Helena apologizes, remembering that she’s on a new path now, made of hugs and Bubbles instead of blood and death.
Gracie goes outside to bring Alison a box and tell her that she can’t work her shift today because she has a doctor’s appointment, and Alison is too worried about campaign trails and body butter to realize that Gracie had an entire duffle bag she was taking to said “doctor’s appointment.” Ali calls Donnie to have him mind the store and asks where he’s been; he lies, because he’s really hiding his bruised face from her, but assures her he has everything under control.
In London, Terry asks Sarah if she remembers him taking her from an orphanage when she was small, but she just remembers the safe house. Terry jokes about those safe houses and how Siobhan used to use them for more than just staying safe, to which her children are equal parts amused and scandalized.
Terry tells them that the number from Duncan’s riddle is a prisoner number from before the 80s, and he thinks he can get them a name.
At Shay’s apartment, Cosima is drinking tea while Shay is in the shower and she can’t stop thinking about the file she has in her bag on her new girlfriend that her ex-girlfriend gave her. She finally gives in and starts sifting through it. At first it’s normal stalker stuff; her driver’s license, photos of her and Cosima, her credit report. But the thing that gives Cosima pause is a photo of holistic-healer Shay in full army dress.
Shay comes out and asks if Cosima wants to celebrate her recent unemployment over a big breakfast, but Cosima makes up a lie about exit paperwork and scoots. She doesn’t even turn to face Shay for fear she’ll change her mind, but says she’ll call Shay later before darting out the door.
At Bubbles, Donnie hears a knock on on the door and sees the guy from his backyard that one time, who says Pouchy wants his stuff back. The only reason he was working with the suburbanites in the first place was because Jason vouched for them, but he has since rescinded said voucher. The guy can’t find the drugs, so he snatches Helena’s baby tank for collateral instead, since it looks important. Donnie is a little calmer since he doesn’t even know what the tank is anyway.
Cosima goes to Scott’s apartment to vent and is pissed he only has Schnapps. What kind of honorary lesbian doesn’t have whiskey on hand? Anyway, Scott suggests Shay might NOT be a spy, but Cosima lists off the reasons she could be: She saw the book, she never mentioned being in the army, and one time she asked about Sarah and said it because Cosima talks in her sleep but she SO doesn’t because that would be weird and something Delphine definitely would have mentioned.
Scott still feels like he could reason all of those clues away and tries again; Rudy knew Cosima was sick again? Cosima looks at Scott as if to ask how someone so smart can be so dumb and says, “Yes, I basically U-Hauled with her, she knows I cough a lot and, occasionally, bleed a lot.”
Cosima feels like an idiot for being tricked again.
In London, Sarah and Felix are chatting with mum when “the band” shows up, much to their old friend Siobhan’s embarrassment. They ask her to sing with them for a song and Sarah and Felix are sure the delights of being in S’s old neighborhood will never end.
Terry calls Mrs. S and leaves a message, then promptly gets beat up by Ferdinand and his muscle. In a beautifully tragic way, the camera jumps back and forth between Terry being beat to the ground and Mrs. S crooning words like “pushed around and torn asunder” and “are we gonna get up/are we gonna stay on the floor.”
Sarah and Felix love, love, love watching their mum sing, but once she’s done it’s back to business. Sarah asks if they really have to ruin such a fun holiday by murdering the Castor original but Mrs. S says they need to stop the involuntary sterilization of women and cut the weed at the root. Mrs. S sees she missed a phone call and calls Terry back, but he’s too busy being tortured to answer, so S tells her kids to grab their things because they’ll just head to his place.
In the Hendrix’s garage, Helena is making soap and listening to another candy-themed song because of course she is.
Gracie comes in and says she’s going to a doctor’s appointment, and hugs Helena goodbye, as if maybe her “doctor’s appointment” is far, far away. Donnie comes in and tries to explain away his bruises by saying he ran into a pole but Helena knows a fist bruise when she sees one, having given and received her fair share. She tells him she will help him if he gives her some truths she’s been looking for.
He agrees, so Helena mixes a concoction and puts it on Donnie’s face. He says he regrets getting into the drug dealing business, but felt like he had to, and now they’re after the drugs and they took a weird tank and–but Helena stops him there and tells him that that wasn’t just any tank, it was her babies. Donnie promises he’ll help her get her babies back, because we make a family, yes?
Cosima goes to DYAD and is escorted to Delphine’s office, who doesn’t turn around but uses Rachel’s window trick to read the situation and respond accordingly from behind a menacing chair back. Delphine says sure NOW Cosima believes her that Shay is a mole, and Cosima admits that suddenly certain things aren’t quite adding up.
Delphine spins around in her chair, vindicated.
Cosima says she messed up, but that they’re in this mess together, and it’s help each other swim or drag each other under. Cosima confesses that Sarah is in London now and it’s probably Castor is on her heels, so Delphine says she’ll take things over from here.
S goes to Terry’s to find him beaten and bloody, barely breathing. He mumbles some stuff for her while Sarah and Felix run around to find bandage. But by the time they come back with fabric and gauze, it’s too late; Terry is dead. Mrs. S says it’s time to go home, and orders her kids back to the pub to wait for her. She tells them not to move like either one of them have ever been particularly good at following direction.
And, true to form, Sarah swiped Terry’s phone on the way out, and instead of going back to the pub, she meets up with someone by pretending to be Siobhan on the phone. Felix hates this plan but can’t leave his sestra alone, so he follows her to the meeting place, where a man picks them up, seemingly not knowing any better that she’s not Siobhan Sadler.
All the while, Ferdinand is watching.
Donnie takes Helena to Pouchy’s place and tells her to wait in the car, apparently never having heard the story of that one time Sarah tried to tell her to wait in the car. Donnie gives Pouchy the pills and asks for the nitrogen tank back, and also for a reimbursement for the drugs. Pouchy and his crew laugh and laugh until the doorbell rings. The man at the door says it’s Donnie’s wife, which confuses Donnie, but when we peep through the peephole, we know who it really is.
Helena is even worse at cloneswapping than Cosima, but Donnie mumbles some nonsense about weird headcolds that give you Ukranian accents, takes the eggs, realizes he’s not getting any money, and starts to get Helena out of there. But on the way out, Pouchy’s niece reminds them that she knows where Gemma and Oscar go to school. And while she thought it was a clever, harmless threat to keep the oaf and his bossy wife in line, she had no idea who she was messing with.
Helena shoves Donnie out the door, where he can do nothing but assure the real Alison on the phone that everything is peachy, until Helena comes out again. No one in Pouchy’s gang will ever threaten her babies, or any of her sestras babies, ever again.
Oh, also, she got the refund.
On a rampage of her own, Delphine shows up at Shay’s apartment, a very unwelcome visitor, especially without Cosima in tow. Delphine shoves her way inside, and men in black file in behind her. Delphine tells Shay-nay, orders her-to sit down, and she does, because Delphine is acting like she sprayed on too much hairspray before using the Hair Straightner of Badassery and inhaled the fumes.
Delphine tells Shay to take off her shoes because they’re going to have a nice little chat.
The man in the cab knew Sarah wasn’t Siobhan, so once they’re in a deep dark place, he leads them both out of the car and threatens Felix. Realizing he knew Mrs. S, Sarah explains that they “belong” to Mrs. S, that they’re her foster kids. The man knows the name Sarah Manning because he was one of the man who helped move the little orphan into the black. Sarah asks what the name he gave Terry was, and the man says the prisoner’s name was Kendall Malone, in for aggravated homicide. The file the man has also includes a current address, so they hop back in the cab to head there.
Shay tells Delphine she’s not a corporate spy but Delphine points out that that’s EXACTLY what a corporate spy would say. She questions her ability to pay rent on a loft with her salary and Shay is like I could be doing a little supernatural bounty hunting/crime solving on the side YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE. She asks where Cosima is and understands now why Cos was being so strange this morning, because Delphine poisoned her with thoughts of treachery. Shay begs Delphine to explain what on earth she’s doing and why.
In response, Delphine runs the bathtub and holds up a razor, one conveniently located in the living room, the other she pulled FROM HER BOOT.
At the Hendrix House, Donnie tells Helena to shower before Alison comes home, and before she does, she thanks him for saving her babies. Alison comes home just after her bloody sestra disappears and asks what happened to Donnie’s face, but he just replies, “Look, money! Remember that one time we twerked in it? Let’s do that again and not talk about any violence that may or may not have occurred in the past 24 hours?”
In Shay’s apartment, Delphine is pulling out all the psychological torment stops. Threaten Helena’s babies, she’ll kill ya quick. Threaten the love of Delphine’s life, she’ll kill you niiiiice and slow. Delphine explains to Shay that she has the knowledge and surgical skill to kill Shay right there in her very bathtub, saying slitting the top of one’s feet along with the wrists is a more efficient way to ensure death. Shoeless Shay looks rightly nervous. Though decidedly more calm than i would be
Gracie is waiting for someone with her satchel and decides to kill some time by calling Cosima and thanking her for being so kind to her. She asks Cosima to tell everyone how sorry she is, and Cosima starts to look worried. Gracie explains that they promised her Mark back, safe and sound, and Cosima realizes that Gracie was the mole, the one person who knew everything that they never even considered to be a threat. I even made a joke in my last recap about Mrs. S not waiting for Gracie to even be on the first step before repeating all of their secrets, and I STILL didn’t see it coming. I was too busy trying to rationalize how Shay could be innocent.
Cosima looks at Scott and says she done fucked up again. Cosima calls Delphine all calm, cool and collected, and is like, “Hey you know what? Remember that time I accused Shay of plotting against me? Yeah, I take it back. No harm, no foul, right?”
Delphine looks back to Shay and quite frankly doesn’t look sorry that she had been wrongfully accusing and threatening the poor girl. No, she actually looks a little more sorry she can’t follow through with her plan…
Because she will never trust anyone not to hurt her love, and this potential threat gave her a reason to suss out what Shay is made of, to find out what she’s hiding. I have no doubt that if Shay had turned out to be the Castor mole, she would have been dead at Delphine’s hands. No mercy. Delphine made the decision to not be with Cosima so that she could better protect her, and you better believe she’s going to put her everything into doing just that so she didn’t end the relationship in vain.
Anyway, in London, the taxi man takes Sarah and Felix to the address from the police records and Felix is told to stand watch while Sarah goes inside.
The taxi man gets a passenger and turns to say he’s off duty but it’s Ferdinand in the backseat. From there, he calls Delphine at her DYAD office and tells her he’s mad Sarah’s running wild and free. Delphine slyly convinces him to come stateside for a meeting and Ferdinand says he would be delighted. He gets out of the taxi and we see its driver is hella dead.
In the prisoner’s house, Sarah sneaks around and finds mail to confirm it’s definitely Kendall Malone’s current address. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s home, so Sarah stupidly puts her gun away. Almost immediately after she does that, a woman comes out of the shadow waving a knife. Sarah whips her gun back out and says she’s looking for Kendall Malone, and the knife-wielding woman says thaaaat’s me! But before they come to blows, Mrs. S comes in and tells Sarah to stand down. Then using that classic line on someone new, Mrs. S says, “Hello, mother.”
Terry had told Mrs. S that the prisoner was her mum with his dying breath, but that was the first she heard of it. (Her mother having been imprisoned for killing Mr. Sadler, by the way.) S asks her mother why Duncan lead them to her, and she says, “I knew this would come up someday” like it’s an embarrassing story about a DUI and not her involvement in an illegal cloning experiment. She explains that the Duncans did some testing on prisoners, trying to find a good donor for their experiment. Sarah asks if she knows who the male donor was, and the woman laughs and says it was her. She absorbed a male twin in the womb, so she has the unique makeup to allow herself to be the Castor original. Mrs. S says it’s time to go and starts setting up the place to blow to pieces like a) she’s definitely done this before and b) she doesn’t care at all that it’s her MOTHER she’s about to torch. Sarah says that as impressively terrifying as Mrs. S is being right now, they need Kendall. Because you see, Sarah has realized something Mrs. S didn’t take the time to put together. Kendall Malone is the original Castor all right-but she’s also the original Leda. They need her.
What did you think of “Insolvent Phantom of Tomorrow”? What are your hopes/dreams/fears for the finale next week? (No spoilers! Just theories!)
Y’all had a lot of conflicted feelings about Torturer!Delphine. But we were pretty united on Helena. Here are some of our favorite #clonesbians tweets from this week:
Previously on @OrphanBlack: Delphine no! Delphine yes! Delphine NO! DELPHINE YES! #OrphanBlack #CloneClub #Clonesbians
– TheOtherNic (@CloneNic) June 14, 2015
Alison is gonna be SO PISSED about the blood on that parka. #OrphanBlack #CloneClub #clonesbians
– Colleen (@cmmcguire) June 14, 2015
Delphine seriously has zero fucks left. #OrphanBlack #CloneClub #Clonesbians
– Kim Dawson (@kdawson424) June 14, 2015
Ok #OrphanBlack I’ve suspended a LOT of disbelief..but to believe anyone would drink this much Schnapps? #Clonesbians #CloneClub
– Elizabeth D-V (@324_B21) June 14, 2015
Delphine you’ve gone from HAWT to holy hell you’re scary. And I still like it? It’s a complicated feeling. #OrphanBlack #clonesbians
– Jerzey (@jerzeyredhead) June 14, 2015
I fucking love Orphan Black. Just a reminder, don’t panic! #clonesbians #OrphanBlack
– Mejia (@Green02Mejia) June 14, 2015
You know, when all this is over I would love to see Helena get a gig on Romper Room #OrphanBlack #CloneClub #Clonesbians
– Tippi McCullers (@ali_steventon) June 15, 2015
Not to self: next time I get the shit beat outta me, smear cheesy potato salad all over my face #clonesbians #CloneClub
– Adrienne (@legacymermaid) June 15, 2015
Oi! Wankers! I hope they stay in London forever! #OrphanBlack #clonesbians
– Nic (@njnic23) June 14, 2015
I want Cosima and Delphine to keep ripping my heart from my chest and stitching it back in there, over and over, for all time. #Clonesbians
– Heather Hogan (@hhoagie) June 14, 2015
