Snowpiercer

Bark the cat

Season 4

Episode 6

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: CJ Entertainment

The time has finally come. The Lord of the Engine is here and that means utter chaos. This week’s narrator and the focus of the episode is none other than Joseph Wilford. The episode begins with a flashback to when he was banished from Snowpiercer and used his magical engineering skills as medical skills to stay alive long enough to be found by the Admiral’s men and begin planning to take over his two trains.

That’s the theme of the episode: Wilford’s relentless pursuit of control over his babies – more on that later – and how he’s somehow managed to influence and mess up every single character we know in some way. We see this in how Layton’s life was turned upside down by Wilford stealing his child, in Sykes’ aggressiveness, and even in how Wilford might slowly be winning the Admiral’s men over to his side. It starts with Wolf, one of the scarred soldiers, who shows his fascination with his scars and lures him with the promise of treatment from good old Dr. Headwood. The Admiral’s stranglehold on his troops is stronger than Sean Bean’s charisma, though. When Wilford tries to win over the troops with stories of organizing literal gladiator fights against Big Alice and trying to fight Big Bob the ice mutant, they go from laughing to nearly wetting themselves the moment Admiral Milius walks into the room. To assert his authority and undermine Wilford, he takes the train driver’s lit cigar and snuffs it out on a soldier’s hand. Wilford may have been a man of luxury and power aboard the two trains, but here even he is afraid of the Admiral.

As a finishing move, the Admiral “rewards” Wilford by sending him on a run with the other soldiers to let off steam and promotes Alex to take over engineering duties on Snowpiercer. This scares Wilford, because he says he knows what happens during these “incursions.” Layton, meanwhile, is still on the bottom floor of the silo, a nightmarish floor full of Snowpiercer Equivalent of the Morlocks from X-MenPeople with chemical scars like the Admiral’s soldiers. It turns out that years ago there was a leak of the compound used to create New Eden, and they sealed off the lowest floors of the silo, trapping everyone inside and using them as test subjects for the new compound. Wilford arrives there with some soldiers. The “incursion” is actually the Admiral’s gladiatorial combat itself, an extremely dangerous game for the soldiers where they enjoy hunting the people on the lowest floors for blood samples. This is a sadistic game disguised as bringing food to the Morlocks. When the game is over, Wolf points his gun at Wilford and leaves him behind.

The game isn’t over yet, however, as Wilford is now trapped on the bottom floor with Layton out for blood. “You should have taken the bullet,” he tells Wilford before beating up the engineer. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten rid of the cockroach yet, as it slashes Layton with a blade and runs off, getting stuck in a room full of equipment. Unsurprisingly, Wilford tries to convince Layton that he did it all out of the goodness of his heart and kidnapped Liana just to save New Eden from the Admiral’s invasion. He also manages to repair the equipment and communicates with the Admiral, taunting him by saying that he managed to turn his troops against him, including Wolf, who spared Wilford’s life instead of shooting him. The Admiral is visibly distraught and tries to save face by saying that he planned this all along. He wanted to leave Wilton alive in the basement so Layton could kill him (he had promised Layton last week that he could shoot Wilford) and in a fit of rage, he sent Wolf back to the basement with a hit squad to wipe out everyone in the basement.

Only, to the surprise of absolutely no one who was paying attention, we find out that this was Wilford’s plan all along. He knows the elevator is the only way out of the basement, and he will flee when the soldiers arrive and are surrounded by the Morlocks. Only by working together can Layton see Liana, and so in about five seconds, Wilford manages to both save his life and find a way out of his predicament. That’s easier said than done, though, because the brilliant plan of this engineer and master manipulator is… to get into the elevator shaft, climb up one floor, then push for the elevator to go down to the basement, and jump on it to go up. Before the soldiers arrive, however, they come face to face with Alex, who has sneaked into the basement to see the experiments being conducted on the Morlocks – since she herself is now part of the experiments to test the new compound.

Back in New Eden, Oz finds Whiggins missing a hand, meaning he is the rat they were looking for. After severe torture by Sykes and light erotic torture by Oz, Whiggins speaks and poignantly confesses to the soldiers about Doctor Headwood and Zarah, but he swears he did not know Zarah would be killed. He also says he saw soldiers digging graves, but when Oz investigates, he discovers that the Admiral’s men were not digging graves, they were just digging enough to plant bombs – bombs that were placed just right to bury the entire city.

• Wilford gives a speech to Layton about how the two of them used to be driven by their common good, only to throw that away when they became parents. Only Wilford refers to his traits as his children. Never let anyone tell you that. Snowpiercer can’t be funny.

• Wait, so Melanie is really just out investigating? That was the big secret? Imagine how she’s going to freak out when she finally shows up and realizes the huge mess that happened while she was away.

• Ruth has quickly become one of the best and most complex characters in the series. After Ben’s death, she finds it difficult to encourage the remaining passengers because she doesn’t believe that everything can be OK now that they have no engineers left. Instead of pretending that everything is fine and will get better, she decides to have everyone on board help make an inscription in Big Alice’s engine room so that the sacrifice Ben made will never be forgotten. The engineer will be tied to the machine forever.

• What is the point of burying New Eden? So far, the Admiral has been ruthless but pragmatic. That doesn’t make sense, and if this is just a simple act of senseless violence on the part of the Admiral to suppress any opposition to his final decision, that would be a pretty disappointing development for a previously compelling villain.