Summary
Liv carries out a complicated plan in “Chapter 3”, while Kiano is forced to rapidly adjust to very new surroundings.
This recap of Tribes of Europa season 1, episode 3, “Chapter 3”, contains spoilers. You can check out our spoiler-free season review by clicking these words.
As we’ve heard mention a few times by now, Black December is when the world ended. But nobody seems keen to offer up any actual concrete information about precisely what happened, and you have to wonder if it’s because nobody really knows. Elja is fascinated by the date all the same and pushes Moses about it. The collected stuff that he kept in that bunker was, apparently, his mother’s, who also had an obsession with it. Moses’s working theory is that the Atlantians were responsible since their technology survived and nobody knows where to find their coveted last Ark. This is where Elja is supposed to take the cube, by the way, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
We get a bit more backstory on Elja’s mother when Liv tells David that she founded the Origines. They also solidify their deal for getting into Brahtok using Grieta as a hostage. But they’ll have to be quick. Kiano is currently working the wolk factory, wolk being the drug of choice for the Crows, but apparently also popular all over the continent. (Is trading this stuff what has allowed the Crows to develop so much infrastructure? Worth thinking about.) Since he’s working in packaging, he has a bit more time than those in production, whose brains are usually rotted by the wolk within three months, but the slaves aren’t exactly treated well by the Crows, and the only way out is either death or winning a gladiatorial fighting tournament known as the Boj. The overseer, Lord Varvara, chooses who participates, which means Kia will need an angle to get himself involved.
Liv’s plan hits its first snag in Tribes of Europa season 1, episode 3, since the fact that the pilot has been found but the cube hasn’t forces her to rush and be too obvious in her questioning. Grieta figures out pretty much immediately that she’s fishing and refuses to play along anymore, which is a problem, obviously, but not one that can’t be solved with some finesse.
Elsewhere, Moses takes Elja to Amena, a bit of a loner who dispenses some more worldbuilding about the sheer number of probable tribes that have sprung up in the wake of Black December. She’s not too into the idea, though, which is fair enough. She’s also able to open the cube, but she can’t activate it without Elja, who you’ll recall was scanned by the device earlier — it’s clearly coded to only work with his input. When he gets it going it displays a flash of red video footage which is rather hard to decipher, but it’s certainly a start.
Liv, meanwhile, moves onto Plan B, which involves accepting David’s offer of joining the Crimsons on the condition that she gets to speak to Grieta one more time. When she does, David escorts her there, and she attacks him and breaks Grieta out. Waiting for her brother and father to die isn’t on her agenda. And it seems to be true what they say about the Crows. On their way out, Grieta has a chance to kill Liv and doesn’t take it. They keep their word after all.
It’s just as well, really, since things aren’t going well for Kia in Tribes of Europa season 1, episode 3. His attempts to expose a smuggling operation to Varvara result in him being sentenced to death by wire, a particularly unpleasant way to go. But Liv has it all figured out. As she and Grieta make their way through the woods, the Crow finally gives up a more secretive entrance into Brahtok, at which point Liv fires a flare to summon the Crimsons who have been following all the way. It was a plan! And what better way to celebrate than with a smooch and a bit of hanky-panky? Things are certainly heating up.
