Summary
“Many Goodly Creatures” makes matters a lot more complicated, as the islanders begin to remember who they are — and they might not like what they see.
With Chase (Natalie Martinez) now back on the island, she’s eager to reveal all she has learned about the simulation to her fellow prisoners. Predictably, none of them believe her. This is the direction I expected The I-Land Episode 4 to go in, but I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the mistrust was abandoned. It soon becomes apparent that Chase is telling the truth, as the surprise arrival of two new “survivors” and the reversing of everyone’s amnesia threatens to make that truth all too clear.
Hayden (Michelle Veintimill) is the first to recall her past life in “Many Goodly Creatures” remembering stabbing an unsuspecting Englishman in the neck several times and then crossing his name off some kind of nutcase hit list. The new arrivals identify themselves as Bonnie and Clyde — “Wasn’t that a TV show or something?” — and initially pose as fellow survivors from the other side of the island, where they have apparently been living long enough to build a village. But the ruse is rumbled, and Bonnie and Clyde instead reveal their true nature: To act as enforcers for the will of the simulation, to ensure its rules are enforced. If you kill on the island, you have to die; if you return to your old patterns of behaviour, you have to die. To prove this, Clyde stabs Hayden — she was the one who killed Brody (Alex Pettyfer) in retaliation for what he did to KC (Kate Bosworth).
Bonnie and Clyde are also quick to insist that Chase is keeping lots of vital information secret, convincing her to flee from the rest of the group. She stops on the way to pick up the revolver from her hidden stash, which the rest of the group are also informed about. Before departing, Bonnie and Clyde explain that things come at a cost now. As the survivors begin to remember who they are, they have to remember the consequences of what they do here and make an effort to go out and explore. First on the agenda: Finding Bonnie and Clyde’s village, which is apparently real.
During Hayden’s funeral, “Many Goodly Creatures” divides the cast up. KC, Moses (Kyle Schmid) and Cooper (Ronald Peet) venture out in search of the village; Blair (Sibylla Deen) decides to stay behind and tend to the recovering Donovan (Anthony Lee Medina), along with Taylor (Kota Eberhardt) and Mason (Gilles Geary). While Donovan clearly attempts to get Blair on his own, both Blair and Mason experience flashbacks of their own. Blair remembers herself in a hospital full of seriously ill patients, increasingly frustrated with the inability to put them out of their misery despite their many requests for her to do so. Did she euthanise the place? And Mason recalls what looks very much like him carrying out a mass shooting — a fitting crime for the awkward white dude. I suppose it was either that or credit card fraud or something.
As KC, Cooper and Moses find and spend a night in the village, Bonnie and Clyde watch them from afar: “Let the games begin,” they say ominously, though elsewhere in The I-Land Episode 4, it looks like the games have already begun. Chase revisits the abandoned hotel, where she finds a recreation of her flashback, with the same older woman sitting on the same red chair. The woman is revealed to be her mother: “An unnatural thing, to kill your own mother.” She begins to choke Chase, but it’s revealed to all be in her imagination. Or is it? Certainly, elements of the experience are real, since the red chair is really there, as is the key to room 39 of the hotel that rests on it.
As for what’s in that room, “Many Goodly Creatures” doesn’t reveal it. As Chase opens the door, we see her stunned expression as she peers inside. I guess we’ll find out in the next episode.
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