Summary
Alex Rider delivers an action-packed penultimate episode as it lays out the full extent of its ludicrous plot and suggests just a bit more to come.
This recap of Alex Rider season 1, episode 7 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Check out our spoiler-free season review.
You know how it is – you wait for ages for a truck to come along and then one smacks you right in the face. And I know that isn’t quite the saying, but it makes for a pithy enough opening as Alex Rider episode 7 finds the titular teen-spy hospitalized after the previous outing’s last-minute collision. Kyra remains in the basement of Point Blanc, and Greif’s soldiers get to watch as Alex is rushed to hospital, where Eva ventures to make sure that he’s dead and gone. A flatline on his ECG suggests so, but it isn’t that easy to get rid of a deep-cover agent, much less a British one, and the whole affair turns out to have been a ruse engineered by Mrs. Jones and co. to fake Alex’s death.
Since we now know all about Greif’s clone plot, the rest of the characters get to catch up as Smithers chats with Blunt about how Parker, currently in custody, has undergone multiple surgeries and isn’t really Parker – they might have known a social media prankster couldn’t have had that much of a personality reinvention. Luckily Alex is quickly on-hand to provide a thorough, remote explanation.
So, it turns out Greif clones himself and then had all the copies surgically tinkered with so that they resembled all the kids at Point Blanc – kids chosen, let’s not forget, because they were the scions of influential empires, fortunes, and companies. The kids are replaced by kid-shaped Greif puppets, the parents are bumped off, and before long the world economy is controlled by a singular entity. It’s a deeply ridiculous scheme that nonetheless fits just right in what is already kind of a ridiculous teen-spy framework anyway.
With Greif convinced of Alex’s demise, it’s time for our hero to break back into Point Blanc with the help of his SAS mate Wolf (Howard Charles), in the hope of recovering Kyra and the other kids and dealing with the hostile clones. It’s a cool sequence, this, one that quickly erupts into chaos, with the obligatory villain-deletes-evidence-of-villainy ticking clock and a squaring off between Alex and Eva. A fire breaks out, Greif is captured, the students are rescued and the clones are subdued – a good innings, I’m sure you’ll agree.
But for how long? Well, as neatly as Alex Rider episode 7 seems to tie things up, there’s still plenty more to worry about, including a shadowy organization overseeing the whole endeavor, and the last-minute appearance of an Alex clone, which we knew was coming but is fun to see anyway. I’m totally a-ok with the utter ridiculousness of the roundabout plastic surgery clone plot, which might shock those familiar with me, but whatever. Sometimes you have to take these dopey YA shows with a pinch of salt, and mostly I’m just happy that this one hasn’t descended into Alex losing his virginity or taking MDMA at a party or some other such rubbish.
