Summary
The Knights recruit an ill-advised ally to loot the Order’s vault in “Fear Itself, Part 1”, with predictably disastrous consequences.
This recap of The Order season 2, episode 3, “Fear Itself, Part 1”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Check out our spoiler-free season review.
With the resident serial killer dispatched, it’s business as usual for the Knights of Saint Christopher — namely, figuring out how to take down the Order from within. And that includes throwing their monitors off the scent. Jack pretends he’s having one-to-one cheerleading sessions to throw Gabby off, while Hamish and Randall share a smooch to buy themselves some alone time. It’s funny, but it’s also a reminder that the Knights are still pretending to have lost their memories, which is easy to forget when they’ve spent so much time around each other and Alyssa.
But it isn’t that easy for Lilith and Nicole, who have genuine feelings for one another. The lies are starting to weigh on her. Everything’s fake. They’re a month in and have no good ideas, but Jack comes up with one here in The Order season 2, episode 3 — to steal their stuff back, and to steal a good helping of the Order’s stuff too, in what Randall enthusiastically calls a “magic heist”.
There’s one entrance to the vault: a secret door behind one of the bookcases in the reliquary. Apparently the corridor is a cakewalk. It’s all going to be easy, according to Jack, which means it most definitely isn’t; he explains this as we see Vera repeat some Latin incantation in the vault they plan on robbing. Using an apartment Hamish owns as a staging ground, they realize their first problem: Nobody has access to the reliquary. They need to steal an access sigil from one of the Magistratus.
Alyssa is still struggling with having killed Ellie in “Fear Itself, Part 1”, and with the fact her magic’s on the fritz. Jack tries to reassure her but she’s having none of it. The Order is her everything; what will she be without it?
Using Alyssa’s sigil — no wonder his advice seemed insincere — Jack leads the Knights through the secret door and into the “cakewalk” corridor. Of course, it’s a trap, and they’re all transported to a hazy woodland dreamscape. There, they meet a Slappy-style talking doll, hooded and masked acolytes, and other manifestations of their subconscious fears. The title of The Order season 2, episode 3 begins to make an awful lot of sense here.
The Knights reconvene after their ordeal, and they’re understandably annoyed about Jack’s lack of specificity regarding the “fear corridor”, a title he’s only just shared with them. He recounts heading down the corridor with Alyssa, and they figure out that her amulet allows her to bypass the incantation. Vera wears one too, so it’s time to go straight to the source. Hamish delivers Vera and Kepler cocktails, allowing him to get a good look at the amulet. The imprint is photographed from his eyes using a weird skull camera that can project it back outwards so it can be 3D-printed — this is something called optography and allows the Knights to make a fake amulet that should hopefully get them through the corridor.
Back in the fear corridor, they all hold hands as they pass under the inscription. It doesn’t work. Back at the bar, with everyone shook up once again, it’s time for Plan C — nobody has one.
In ethics class, Professor Foley shows a video of a Latin incantation that makes the speaker levitate. Naturally, Gabby insists it’s fake, which prompts a discussion about the truth and fakery — Foley, who thinks college should be the “most dangerous place on Earth”, intellectually speaking, is impressed with Jack’s independent thought. Gabby lets slip that she’s on demon containment duty for the Order, which gives Jack an idea to summon Zecchia, a baron demon that steals whatever the summoner desires. This sounds like a terrible idea, and Randall thinks so too, but Jack is pretty confident that it’ll be a straightforward process as long as protocols are followed.
Randall speaks with Alyssa, and they bond over their current predicaments. The conversation turns to demons, though, and Alyssa lets on that the Order has to go through demon containment because someone broke the number one rule that you cannot break when it comes to demons: You don’t summon one. Like, ever. But Randall arrives too late to stop the Knights from bringing forth Zecchia, who it turns out is a foul-mouthed and short-tempered heavy drinker. She can’t go back to her realm until the request is fulfilled, but she’d very much like to, so time is of the essence, which is a problem for Lilith since she isn’t quite ready to abandon her feelings for Nicole just like that.
This prompts a scene of welcome frankness between Lilith and Nicole in “Fear Itself, Part 1”, which suddenly positions their relationship as the most earnest in the show; their feelings for each other are situating them both outside of their respective societies, which never bodes well in such tales. On the subject of romantic connections, there seems to be one burgeoning between Vera and Hamish as well.
Zecchia, it turns out, is pretty good at what she does. She’s able to pilfer everything from the Order’s vault and deposit it in the Knight’s hideout, which they’re excited about — even Randall, who after an initial, “It can’t be this easy,” nonetheless starts to enjoy himself. They’re especially smug when they get summoned to the temple, which is in complete disarray. Vera informs them that in less than 46 hours, a demon will break through the realms since the weapons forged for the sole purpose of fighting them back have vanished. The demon who’s due is, according to Alyssa, who figures out the Knights pulled off the heist, an emperor demon by the name of Rogwan, who controls fear and caused World War II the last time he was free. They need to return the sickles to prevent whatever calamities are pending, but when the Knights return to their lair at the end of “Fear Itself, Part 1”, all the items are gone. Uh-oh.
