Summary
“The Burning Bridge” continues to develop Pennyworth in several interesting ways, and right now it’s difficult to tell where any of it might be going.
This recap of Pennyworth season 2, episode 2, “The Burning Bridge”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
After the second season premiere established the new status quo – the descent of England into a fascist state, Alfie’s desire to save up and get out before the capital and thus the country fall, the development of a superweapon, and so on, and so forth – “The Burning Bridge” continues along similar lines, opening, in fact, with Martha Kane on the foremost of them, manning a barricade like Eponine in Les Miserables. She’s approached by Inspector Aziz, who informs her that he suspects Alfie as having betrayed the operation to kidnap Colonel Salt.
Elsewhere, Bet continues to be on the run with suspected subversive Katie Browning but is looking to get her “close personal friend” Lord Harwood to clear up all the mess. In the meantime, though, she has to stave off Raven Union forces, try and convince telephone operators of her supposedly tight relationship with Harwood, and gradually befriend Katie, who eventually helps her stove in the heads of two men who attack them. Progress!
There’s no wonder Alfie is ready to run, and as of “The Burning Bridge” he has accumulated enough money to do so, though he’s not planning on letting anyone, including his girlfriend Sandra, in on where he’s going. The problem is that someone has obviously spilled about his stash, which leads to his mother being kidnapped and held for ransom. Just when it looks like he might get away with both his mother and the dough, an unexpected raid by Inspector Aziz, who tailed Alfie assuming he was meeting with his contact in the Salt ambush, gives the incompetent kidnappers time to escape. Naturally, he’s fuming, and suddenly Alfred Penniless.
Two larger world-building plots are occurring in the margins of the episode. The first is a continuation of the Stormcloud weapon being developed by Colonel Salt for eventual use by Lord Harwood, but Frances Gaunt is dead against its use on moral grounds. The second is Thomas Wayne’s CIA-ordered mission to disgrace archbishop Potter, the English League’s leader, with the help of noted Satanist Aleister Crowley, a deal with the devil sealed with a loving kiss.
Naturally, there’s a lot going on here, and it isn’t immediately apparent where any or all of it is going. That’s probably the strongest element of Pennyworth’s second season thus far. A slightly fantastical Britain seized by civil war is a ripe setting, somewhat more fittingly comic book-y that the freshman outing, and with so many key players all with different objectives, there’s really no telling where any of this might go. These first two episodes have been strong enough to suggest it’ll at least be somewhere interesting.
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