Summary
Some solid character work and intriguing narrative turns make “Mother” one of the stronger episodes of Hanna in a while.
Erik (Joel Kinnaman) is being tortured in custody, while Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) roams the woodland pretending to shoot deer, and its difficult to tell who’s having a worse morning. Of course, Hanna committed the ultimate sin of teenage friendship; she slept with her best friend’s crush. When I say “best” friend I mean “only”, and when I say “crush” I mean “borderline obsession”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t miss being a teenager.
Sophie (Rhianne Barreto) begins “Mother” pleasantly oblivious to the shenanigans of the night before, but not for long. No matter how hard Sophie tries to make her feelings for Anton (Gamba Cole) clear, he only has eyes for Hanna. Which is unlucky for him, because when he tries to schedule another date with her she puts him in a wristlock. It’s all a bit embarrassing, really. Sophie and Hannah have a major dust-up over it all, and unpleasant things are said; Hanna also realizes that the document explaining one half of her true parentage is missing, having been sneakily pilfered by Dan (Leo Flanagan) in the previous episode.
It’s that document that sets alarm bells off for Sophie when Marissa (Mireille Enos) turns up at Sophie’s home posing as Hanna’s mother, having spent earlier scenes seemingly becoming more and more detached from reality. It was nice to see Sophie still fight Hanna’s corner even after the big betrayal and a convincing meltdown during an argument with her parents (Rhianne Barreto is very good here.) But it doesn’t amount to much. Hanna agrees to go with Marissa, who contacts Sawyer (Khalid Abdalla) and demands that she be put back in control of the case and that her mental state ceases to be evaluated.
Erik escapes, meanwhile, and uses the handprint of one of his captor’s to unlock a laptop that contains a folder titled: Utrax Regenesis. Oh, dear. The folder is full of images of girls roughly Hanna’s age, with the camera lingering on one in particular named Mahan. More on this later.
Later, in a hotel where Marissa and Hanna are awaiting a rendezvous with Sawyer, Erik arrives out of the blue in an excruciating elevator scene; he and Hanna escape together in a great sequence and manage to flee in a helicopter. What’s most noteworthy here, though, is that during their escape Hanna has an opportunity to kill Marissa and doesn’t take it. It isn’t because she’s developing too much of a conscience; she offed two other agents without any fuss, but she was beginning to bond with the older woman, who was beginning to feel sympathetic towards her. Hanna is clearly working on a redemption arc for Marissa, but is she too far gone?
“Mother” concludes with Mahan, one of the girls from the Utrax Regenesis program, battering a poor sparring partner. Everything is fine!
