Summary
Big Alice and Snowpiercer combine for a dramatic episode that delivers the first big character death of the final season.
Things are starting to heat up in Snowpiercer Season 4, though perhaps that isn’t exactly the right word given at the end of Episode 5 a major character freezes to death. But that’s a good thing! Not for poor old Ben the engineer, obviously, but certainly for the audience, who need those kinds of sakes to remind them that they’re watching the final season.
And what about that Wilford return? More smug Sean Bean is never a bad thing.
“The Engineer” — a morbid title with the full context of the episode — brings most of the major players together and then separates them again in a slightly different configuration, so it’s an interesting chapter. Let’s break it all down.
End to End Stuff
This episode picks up from the end of the previous one, where Milius pitched a straight swap of Liana in exchange for Big Alice. Layton has been determined to put rescuing his daughter ahead of the entirety of New Eden. After Milius provides him with proof of life — Liana’s with Dr. Headwood — that remains his position, so the goal becomes convincing everyone else.
Luckily, this proves to be easy, since everyone on Big Alice already made that decision when they decided to accompany him, including, disappointingly, Ruth. I think there was a lot more to be done here dramatically, with Ruth in the unenviable position of trying to maintain a community’s best interests even when confronted by a friend’s impossible dilemma. Instead, she rolls over immediately, with no pushback from anyone.
Just like that, Big Alice and Snowpiercer are connected front-to-back, New Eden apparently forgotten about. Layton, Ben, Alex, Till, Ruth, and Josie are all taken into the silo where Mel apparently is, with a vague three-hour time limit hovering over them.
Mr. Wilford Is Back
Episode 5 of Snowpiercer Season 4 promptly reveals that not only is Mr. Wilford still alive, but he actually orchestrated the plan to lure Big Alice to Snowpiercer by kidnapping Liana. The IPF need both locomotives to enact their ostensibly world-saving science experiment.
Layton predictably goes ballistic and is taken elsewhere to cool down. That leaves the others to try and swallow Milius’s tokenistically noble greater-good routine, but it’s obvious that there’s no love lost between him and Wilford.
I like the idea of Wilford being back. He’s a nice clear villain and has an interesting relationship with Alex, which he does indeed work on in this episode, showing her the things that he and Melanie — the latter reluctantly, he says — have been working on. There’s no doubt in my mind he’ll fatally betray Milius at some point and take contril of something, probably a train. Something to look forward to.
Ben meets a chilling end in “The Engineer”
R.I.P. Ben, We Brrrrly Knew You
“The Engineer” is building towards the season’s first dramatic loss of a significant character, which happens to be Ben. He takes the heroic self-sacrifice route, as all good supporting characters in apocalypic dramas necessarily must.
Just to give you the lay of the land here, Ben is able to escape from confinement with Till and Ruth and eventually make it back to Back Alice, which they plan to decouple from Snowpiercer. Ruth attempts to rescue Layton, which Josie languishes on the operating table of Dr. Headwood, splitting up the group.
When Big Alice can’t break away from Snowpiercer very easily, Ben posits the idea of tripping the manual override from the Snowpiercer side. Till thinks this is a good idea and awaits his return until Ruth arrives and informs her that the override switch is on the outside of the train. Till looks out of the window just in time to see Ben decouple the trains and promptly freeze to death.
So, by the end of Snowpiercer Season 4, Episode 5, Big Alice is heading back to New Eden — maybe that place will be okay after all — with Ruth and Till aboard, while Josie, Layton, and Alex remain behind at the silo. “The Engineer” ends with Layton finally being shown Liana, who is being smugly held by Mr. Wilford.
RELATED:
