Summary
“Snow in the Desert” continues running its themes of immortality and capitalism, but this time with mushy, mixed results.
This recap of Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots season 2, episode 4, “Snow in the Desert,” contains spoilers.
Read the recap of the previous chapter.
Episode 4 of Love, Death & Robots season 2, “Snow in the Desert” is a post-apocalyptic world. If you have ever seen the first chapter of any Star Wars trilogy, The Book of Eli, or one of the awful Vin Diesel Pitch Black sequels, you’ll know what I am talking about. First, the camera pans to a man walking through the hot desert, clothed, not for a hot summer day, but to block the sun. Then, he strolls into a nearby city where water thieves are placed standing upright in glass pods, baking in the sun leading to a torturous death.
His name is Snow (Peter Franzen), a man pursued by bounty hunters who Baris has hired to take his balls. One of them challenges Whitey, and makes him stand up to a duel. So a gun battle begins, like an old-fashioned one in a saloon. He manages to take out two of them, but the third blows off his right hand. He is about to eat it when a French woman named Hirald (Zita Hanrot) shoots the bounty hunter in the back, saving one of Snow’s nine lives. Frenchy follows him home and shows what an incredibly fast healer he is. His right hand grows back.
It’s too late for her to go back. Snow offers her a spot in his daytime tent so she won’t take a sick beating from the sun. But, of course, Frenchy doesn’t have an altruistic heart. She works for the Earth Central Intelligence (ECI) agency. She wants him to go back with her, willingly, because his cells regenerate, and she wants everyone to achieve immortality. He asks her why she doesn’t just kill him. She says the EIC does not suppress knowledge. He responds, “Mortality is just a construct….”
She follows him to a little bungalow he has kept on top of a mountain for decades. He tells her to make herself comfortable, and she finds a dress in a closet. Inquiring minds want to know who it belongs to, and he tells her that it belongs to his deceased wife. She killed herself because she got old; he didn’t and is now a 123-year-old widower.
Of course, they make love (I guess she thinks if he reaches a climax that she will find the fountain of his youth). She wakes up later. Snow is gone, but she sees an alarm going off in the bedroom and that a ship has landed near their hideaway on the security monitor.
“Snow in the Desert” cuts to the ship, and Baris and his goons come walking out. But, have no fear, Snow takes out a bad guy name Beck as they make their way up to the mountain top. Later, he tussles with a bad girl names Jharilla. He is about to put her down when one of her associates comes up with a gun. Snow put her between him and the giant weapon. Jharilla pleads with him to help her, but he chooses to shoot the giant cannon right through her.
No worries, though, Snow escapes. He then takes out what looks like a giant, steroid-filled ninja turtle. But not before the now-widowed bad guy shoots him a couple of times, blowing off his leg. He even then blames Snow for killing his wife (abusers always blame others). Again though, no worries, because Frenchy comes by and blows his head off. Then again, you may have to worry because Baris steps out of the shadows and blows her head off; talk about the last man standing.
Baris loads his gun, wonders why Snow lives on this god-forsaken planet and is about to end his life when a giant synthetic robot arm busts through his chest. It’s Herald, now with half her face revealing she is artificial intelligence. Later, she tells Snow she is a hybrid, was once human, and has also been alone for a very long time.
