See season 2, episode 6 recap – “The Truth About Unicorns”

This recap of See season 2, episode 6, “The Truth About Unicorns”, contains spoilers.

There are many benefits of keeping a mystic around, and one of them is that they can warn you of impending betrayal. That’s how “The Truth About Unicorns” opens, with Paris having a dream that Baba Voss and Maghra are going to be betrayed during the peace summit with the Trivantians. Call me cynical, but I’m not sure you actually needed a mystic for that particular prognostication, and I’m likewise doubtful that Haniwa, who sets out after the Pennsa delegation, couldn’t have waited five minutes for Charlotte to find a horse. But, these things happen in TV land, so let’s not dwell on it too much.

See season 2, episode 6 recap

To be fair, peace isn’t exactly out of the question for the Trivantians, at least not Wren. Edo, on the other hand, who promotes her to the rank of captain and sends her to speak for him, is adamant about vengeance. If the council won’t go to war with the Payans on their own power, then the peace talks must fail so they have no other choice, and it’s Wren’s job to ensure they do.

Lord Harlan, meanwhile, has turned to drink in his grief, which isn’t exactly good news when he’s at the head of a peace delegation. The convoy is making slow, rough progress, and so is Kofun, who is training (badly) under Toad. But “The Truth About Unicorns” isn’t interested in lingering on the journey, so in the very next scene, both the Payans and the Trivantians have reached their destination. The nations have an obvious history, and the delegation has strict protocol. Soldiers are camped away from the delegates, and the delegates are stripped of their weapons, frisked by the opposing nation’s soldiers (Wren, though, sneaks through Edo’s gift to her, a dagger wrapped in a white cloth.) Haniwa arrives and warns Baba Voss and Maghra of Paris’s vision, but Maghra insists the talks must go ahead.

The scheming on all sides can be felt in the air, and nowhere more than in the vicinity of Queen Kane, but some of her confessions to Kofun, whom she insists takes her on a horse ride, seem surprisingly genuine. She warns him not to confuse power for freedom and laments how her role binds her to her people but closes her off from genuine interest, warmth, and love. Her people fear her, respect her, but they have no interest in how she really feels. The freedom of a horse ride isn’t what she’s talking about; Kofun gives her the freedom of being valued as a person, not a queen. Though he presents other advantages, obviously.

Elsewhere, the delegation gets underway and reaches various impasses more or less immediately. The Trivantian delegates claim not to have destroyed Kanzua, which is true, and not to have occupied Payan territory without good reason, which is debatable, but as soon as the issue of Kerrigan comes up, Lord Harlan loses the plot and assaults one of the delegates who gloats about beheading his brother. Later, though, he plays this off as gaining valuable intelligence, revealing to Maghra that he has made arrangements for a secret meeting to occur that night, where the real peace will be negotiated. Maghra is fuming but sees the value. They’ll both attend, but so will Baba Voss for safety’s sake, and if Harlan speaks a word out of place, Baba will “render him speechless with a method of his choice,” which at this point I think we’d all like to see.

That night, Wren and Haniwa sneak off to a decrepit radio control tower — the delegation is happening at an old airport — for their mutually-awaited reunion, though it’s admittedly complicated by the fact that Haniwa has been revealed as royalty and that their opposing nations are about to go to war. Both promise they’ll never fight one another, and kiss, but it doesn’t seem quite as genuine as it did the last time.

Speaking of things that don’t seem genuine — everyone at the peace summit, with the possible exception of Maghra. In the secret meeting with the Trivantian ambassador, she confesses the queen isn’t in her right mind and that she won’t keep the throne for long; if the Trivantians apologize for the destruction of Kanzua, Maghra will take the throne, and then disavow the apology, revealing the truth to the Payan people. This is, admittedly, a tough sell for the Trivantians, who would still have to admit to an act they didn’t commit, but the reality is that they’re being besieged by the Ganites, and pulling their forces to another front would leave them vulnerable on two sides. However large and powerful their army is, it can’t be in two places at once.

While all this is happening, Kofun and Queen Kane suck drugs off one another’s fingers, which predictably leads to the Queen’s bed, though it must be noted that Archie Madekwe, who plays Kofun, has a fantastically funny “Oh no, I’m a teenager, what do I do?” face. He’s an annoyingly stupid character, so it’s hard to say anything nice about him, but that’s worth pointing out. I’m not sure about how contraceptives work in this universe, though, so far from getting his end away, Kofun might have just made a rather grave error that’ll be a worrying new beginning. 

Things aren’t much better at the summit, in terms of sleeping arrangements, since Harlan has to spend the night with Maghra so as not to cast any doubt over the claims that she’ll be his future queen — even though, the last I checked, everyone is blind. But whatever. At least the peace talks the next morning go relatively well, except for a stern warning from the Trivantians that, if the sighted are allowed to prosper within the Payan empire, no amount of concessions will save them from destruction. A matter for another day.

Paris spends “The Truth About Unicorns” floating between Kofun and Toad, trying to interfere in what she has clearly recognized to be the Queen’s seduction of her own nephew. But it’s too little, too late. Kane already has Kofun ensnared, and that’s without any baby mama drama that might follow in the future. She presents herself, simply, as someone who understands him, which he’s craving given how much he clearly sucks at being a fighter and a protector. Haniwa is clearly the more capable sibling, a fact he’s acutely aware of, but Haniwa is also smitten with Wren, so they’re cuddled up in the air traffic control tower when masked assassins begin sneaking through the sleeping summit, slicing the throats of guards and delegates alike. Since Baba Voss is not cuddled up, though, he hears the commotion, and begins to silently stalk the killers through the snow. It’s a tense scene, this, letting the quiet speak for itself, at least until Baba Voss makes his move. His efforts to wake the camp, though, are futile, and the Trivantian delegates are killed. Wren, who sees Baba Voss crouched over the ambassador’s lifeless body, assumes he is the killer, and that Wren intentionally kept her out of the way so she couldn’t intervene.

When Maghra examines the assassin that Baba killed, she discovers Payan markings. The queen dispatched the assassins to ensure that peace could never be reached. At the same time, Kane is telling Kofun that he’s the only one she trusts, crawling into his bed, acting vulnerable. She clearly has the upper hand in more ways than one, and now that war is inevitable, she’ll need all the advantages she can get.

So, too, will Edo Voss, and as “The Truth About Unicorns” ends, he realizes he has one in Wren. He’s adamant to know how she is the only survivor of the Trivantian delegation, and she answers by completing his jigsaw (of a unicorn) for him.

You can stream See season 2, episode 6, “The Truth About Unicorns”, exclusively on Apple TV+.