Summary
The stakes are elevated in a very good episode that brings multiple characters and subplots together.
This recap of Warrior Nun season 2, episode 3, “Luke 8:17”, contains spoilers.
The first two episodes of Warrior Nun Season 2 were about separation. The OCS was fractured, the main characters were all split up, and our attention was divided between multiple competing subplots and perspectives. “Luke 8:17” goes some way towards addressing that by finally bringing multiple aspects together, with the action centering on Madrid, where multiple characters find themselves.
Warrior Nun season 2, episode 3 recap
Ava and Beatrice have arrived in Madrid after being summoned by the OCS call, but they’re slightly waylaid by Vincent, who is also there and gets the jump on them in an alleyway. He tranquilizes Beatrice and tries to take Ava to Adriel, but she’s able to temporarily fight him off (although the fight is much more closely-contested than she’s used to, keeping the unassuming Vincent as a threatening force.)
When Ava and Beatrice are finally able to hook up with Mother Superior, Camila, and Yasmine in a movie theatre, what remains of the OCS is mostly reunited, and as we know, Yasmine has some news for the Halo-Bearer that might be crucial in the fight against Adriel.
So, here’s the news. Yasmine’s sect has long been entrusted with the safekeeping of various magically vital artifacts, among them the Crown of Thorns which turns out not just to have been an instrument of Roman torture but a crucial gizmo for dampening the powers of magical beings. It’s what Areala, the first warrior nun, used to defeat and imprison Adriel in the first place, and if the OCS can get their hands on it again, they can repeat the process. However, the crown has been missing for centuries after being plundered from Yasmine’s sect, but many artifacts from their care recently turned up in the private collection of a corrupt British officer, which was donated to a museum. Ava and the audience smilingly realize in unison that we’re building up to a museum heist.
The heist is a great idea to structure the episode around, so we get a sequence of reconnaissance, with Ava, Beatrice, Camila, and Yasmine poking around in the museum during the day in their unassuming nun getup, and then the proper heist at night, with the nuns in their tactical gear and the stakes somewhat elevated. Both sequences are littered with character-building — Camila is upset that Beatrice still considers her a novice, for instance — and lore development, especially the nighttime sequence. The crown is supposed to “activate” when Ava touches it, but it doesn’t, so Yasmine has to go inside despite being terrified and try to find where the real thing is hidden.
This whole sequence is really effectively tense thanks to a literal ticking-clock device, some horror tropes as Camila, left behind on backup duty, begins to hear and see whispers and shadows, and a moment when Ava tries to phase through security lasers while the Halo keeps turning on and off. It builds to a surprising conclusion, too, when it’s revealed that the whole thing is a trap. Vincent appears, triggering the security system and trapping Ava with him, then uses the crown to debilitate and kidnap her, paying off the first round of their fight earlier.
Elsewhere, there are some other subplots burbling away that we should be paying attention to. In the Vatican, Duretti arrests one of his Cardinals, Rossi, for conspiring with Adriel and threatens to put him in an Iron Maiden if he doesn’t reveal how Adriel is causing and ending the plagues. It takes some thoroughly un-Christian persuasion, but Rossi eventually reveals that Arq-Tech is manufacturing the plagues. And at the same time, Jillian sends Lilith through the Ark, believing she can survive the process because of her scaly healing. She does and returns having spent several hours in the realm beyond, despite having only disappeared for a few seconds. She brings back some footage of her time, but she’s uninterested in being Jillian’s lab rat, so teleports away, leaving the evidence she accumulated behind.
At the very end of the episode, we see Lilith present herself to Adriel, who doesn’t seem all that surprised to see her.
