Summary
“Chapter Three — The Innocents” turns up the action as the dynamics begin to shift and the plot thickens even further.
This recap of La Revolution season 1, episode 3, “Chapter Three — The Innocents”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
La Revolution episode 3 begins with an old faithful: A flashback to the Louisiana of 1782. This, though, is welcome enough, since it helps to provide some backstory to Albert and the favor he owes the Fraternity, which is plenty relevant since the previous episode ended with him handing the so-called love of his life over to their masked leader, Marianne. Albert owes a debt to the Fraternity, has a relationship with Oka, and is fully on-board with the cause, which is why he’s perfectly willing to use Elise and his brother to facilitate breaking Oka out of prison before his execution.
That puts Joseph and Elise in alliance since both are stunned by seeing Albert and are in the same predicament, despite their earlier frostiness towards one another. In just one episode, many of the show’s essential dynamics have shifted, including the relationship between Joseph and Katell. Elise and Marianne have a particularly telling clash, with the latter scoffing at her sense of superiority in suggesting compassion from a position the rebel leader sees as simply privilege and good fortune. How could they possibly be the same? As proof of her point, Marianne removes her mask to reveal a badly scarred face, blame for which can be laid directly at the feet of Elise’s family.
Speaking of Elise’s family, between Charles receiving word of Elise’s disappearance, Madeleine being left more or less to her own devices, and Donatien now a super-powered blue-blood and quickly coming to realize it, the de Montargis household has undergone some… let’s say changes.
Speaking of family, this is hardly the touching reunion with his brother Joseph was probably hoping for. Albert, it turns out, as an explanation to the opening flashback, has been in America all this time. Now, he seems more concerned with saving Oka, to whom he owes a debt, than he is anything else – it’s a brotherhood, certainly, but of a different kind than Joseph was probably expecting.
Nevertheless, Joseph eventually agrees to the prison break plan, which involves causing an epidemic that he isn’t happy about. Elise isn’t happy either, but for different reasons. Keeping her present, let alone on-board, is a challenge for the Fraternity. She attempts an escape only to be rumbled, re-captured, and nailed inside a coffin. Not a good day for her.
Not a good one for Joseph either, really, who while retrieving his things from his lab is accosted by a guard, forcing Katell to save him. Katell, now a much more interesting character, by the way, poisons the prisoners with contaminated water to allow Joseph and the Fraternity disguised as plague doctors into the prison. They make it to Oka’s cell and he enjoys a happy reunion with Albert. Again, brotherhood of a kind.
In pursuit of Elise, meanwhile, is Ophelia, who goes to see Father Maxence and eventually persuades him to reveal what he knows, which she promptly shares with Lariboise. She also learns that Elise has been taken to the morgue.
The prison escape makes for the big action-drive set-piece of La Revolution season 1, episode 3, and it’s a good time. The Fraternity makes their way through the streets fending off the Gendarmerie, shooting, and fighting, and stabbing their way to freedom. Elise, meanwhile, frees herself from the smoldering morgue and runs into Albert once again, though the distraction gets him shanked. It’s Marianne who saves the day, slicing off the arm of the Gendarmerie goon whose name I still haven’t caught. In a flurry of screams and flashbacks, Albert reawakens from the dead once again, quite to Elise’s surprise.
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