Summary
“Feeding” provides some clues and insights in a typically horrifying way, while also — of course — raising even more mysteries and questions.
And the deeply horrifying weirdness continues!
Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 7 recap
There’s all sorts going on in the aptly-titled “Feeding”, but we might as well begin with the most literal thing, which is Paul delivering crates full of the fruit from the Tree of Life to the colonists and watching on as they tuck into the brain-looking flesh inside. It’s hard to say if he’s excited to see what happens or a bit put-off by the sneakiness of it all, especially since neither he nor Marcus actually knows what the consequences of eating the fruit are. Either way, Campion is just about the only person who doesn’t eat one.
No. 7 is driven to distraction by the fruit. When Mother returns after lamenting the fact that Sue has turned into a tree – “Burn me,” she later says to Marcus in a disembodied voice – she finds the serpent going berserk, and it promptly breaks out of the cave and flies off. It heads straight to Sue’s tree (this is when Sue instructs Marcus to burn her, so it’s unclear whether she was telling him to do so to prevent what happens next, or whether she just wanted out of the fate she had created for herself.) No. 7 flies vertically down onto the tree and swallows it whole, which seems to evolve it, giving it some nasty-looking tentacles and the same killer scream that Mother’s Necromancer form has. She takes to the skies to try and fight it, but her caregiving protocols kick in, so she’s unable to harm it. The creature has no such qualms though and blasts her to the ground.
Marcus and Paul, suddenly Team Android, decide to save Mother and return her to the colony, where she goes to Grandmother for help in disabling her caregiving programming. From this conversation, we can piece a few things together. The voice of “Sol” seems to belong to some kind of malevolent entity that has finessed many of the events we have witnessed, tricking Mother into giving birth to No. 7 and Sue into planting the seed for the Tree of Life. The serpent seems to be the harbinger of some kind of culling event; perhaps the entity is a synthetic harvesting organic life? Either way, though, Mother points out that it seems to have developed emotions. The entity made a mistake by choosing her as the host for the creature, and some of her programming has imprinted on No. 7, making it jealous of Campion and his relationship with Mother. This is perhaps why No. 7 seems to be fervently pursuing Campion specifically, though thanks to Vrille he’s able to avoid its attacks. Grandmother offers her veil to Mother, which is a kind of sensory dampener that should prevent her caregiving protocols from overriding her attempts to fight No. 7.
The other big subplot of “Feeding” is Father, Hunter, Holly, Campion, and Tempest trying to track down Tempest’s child, first by using a drone covered in mer-monster skin to try and scan the acidic depths. It proves fruitless, though. Luckily, Vrille, now wearing a terrifying mask, tries to steal the drone, and she alerts the group to some crying she heard in a cave further down the shore. The group heads there and finds a mangled mer-baby, which might be a motivation for the kidnap of Tempest’s child. One of the creatures lost a child of its own and sought to replace it with hers. When the group eventually finds the child, it’s being breastfed by the creature, and Tempest, already seeing the baby as a reminder of sexual assault, determines she’d be better off leaving it there. Hunter, though, who is increasingly starting to annoy me, shoots the creature in the head and takes the baby, trying to give it to Tempest, who turns her back to the child.
You can stream Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 7, “Feeding”, exclusively on HBO Max.
“Hunter, though, who is increasingly starting to annoy me, shoots the creature in the head and takes the baby…”
It’s funny because this action is what solidified Hunter as likable in my book. Tempest leaving her newborn with the monster was an absolutely insane idea.
To be fair he was annoying me before that moment — I think he’s just written as being kind of needlessly difficult.
I agree with Owen on this and thank you, Jonathon, for the recap. Very well done and appreciate the time you took to write it out. This is a thrilling series. And I’m sad it will end with just one more episode. Any clue if they’ll be filming more seasons?
There hasn’t been official confirmation yet, but it’s very likely.