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Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
The truth is like a bacteria eating away at our psyches. Raised by Wolves‘s fifth episode is titled “Infected Memory,” written by co-executive producer Heather Bellson (The Walking Dead, The Exorcist, American Gods) and directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan (Battlestar Galactica, The Pillars of the Earth).
Some minor spoilers ahead for those who have not yet seen this episode or the previous episodes of the series. If you have not done so, get to that now, then return to this article!
This episode of Raised by Wolves develops its characters to paths they never knew they should explore. In this plot, they continue to search for that which they need to survive on the extrasolar planet Kepler-22b, all while discovering some hidden darkness along the way.
Marcus Drusus (Travis Fimmel) becomes the new Eminence in charge of the Mithraic human survivors, leading them to new parts of the planet that would help them find the missing children. They meet a human prisoner and his “mobile prison system” android named Limiting Emergency Automated Server Habit, or LEASH (Fadzai Simongo), the former individual of whom is the sexual assaulter of several women from the Ark of Heaven — who were violated in the shared simulation as their physical bodies slept — and most possibly the father of Tempest (Jordan Loughran)’s child. The prisoner has a helmet on, concealing his face: his countenance is a representation of evil. Convinced he may have the god Sol speaking, Marcus begins to hear voices in his head and also hallucinates harming his partner Sue (Niamh Algar), seeing a reflection of himself as the masked rapist during sex. The survivors discover the children’s trackers and later discover their whereabouts with the androids, but not before walking into some life-threatening traps from another mysterious character.
The children are eating the meat from the creature that Tempest killed, which she realized was pregnant with a child itself. Mother (Amanda Collin) tells Father (Abubakar Salim) the reason why the girl survived her brush with death against the animal because of chance, to which he says she was only strong because she is newly pregnant. He mentions having come across a figure that may have been Tally (Grace Li) but failing to catch up to it. He tells Mother he puts in his efforts to make her and the family happy despite having limitations as an android, to which she says, “We [androids] are not happy. True happiness is not an achievable goal.” Father disagrees with this and continues to teach the children how to hunt for food while Mother sets off to search for more creatures to kill, only to find Tally’s figure herself.
Campion (Winta McGrath) and Paul (Felix Jamieson) bond as friends by a crater, where they discover fungus that would be worth having as food. They decide to keep the hows of this event a secret as the children are never to venture into these pits, which prompts the android parents later to have a heated discussion about the children’s safety in the hands of Father, who says that the children need to learn self-sufficiency without the androids’ being present.
Mother speaks with Tempest about having killed the creature, telling her that death is an essential element to living. The girl, still traumatized about being impregnated by her sexual assaulter, says she does not want to be a part of the cycle of life. She attempts to take her own life, but Mother saves her from death. The android returns to the simulation, where she is revealed to be a brutal killer back on the planet Earth. An atheist born within a Mithraic upbringing, a man named Campion Sturges (Cosmo Jarvis) fixes her processing with Sol technology and briefly falls in love with her before sending her to Kepler-22b with Father.
“Infected Memory” is what happens to the most troubled characters: Marcus, Tempest, and Mother. The riskiest choices this episode has made were sparing the life of a rapist, snapping the neck of an infant on-screen, and showcasing the teen suicide of a pregnant young woman. In the past exhibited via the simulation, Mother is depicted again as a murderer, but not before Sturges makes improvements and tells her she is the future of humanity. In the end, we learn that everything will be alright. Father teaches the children about choosing proper tools for combat; he says: “Even if you had guns, eventually you’d run out of bullets, but you’ll never run out of rocks.”
What do you think of the series? Have you seen the show yet? Let us know! For more science-fiction, drama, HBO Max, and Raised by Wolves-related news and reviews follow The Cinema Spot on Twitter (@TheCinemaSpot) and Instagram (@thecinemaspot_).
Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
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