Summary
Cross Season 2 goes a little bit off the rails in “Climb”, devoting a lot of time to a strange love story that doesn’t quite work, and leaving some pretty big revelations only lightly addressed.
I’m not sure about this one. Cross has been pretty good so far in Season 2 and had just nicely reached a pretty interesting fork in the road. But things get a bit weird in Episode 4. “Climb” devotes a lot of its runtime to a very sudden and slightly off-kilter love story between Lincoln and Rebecca, which I don’t think entirely works, and various other subplots are crammed in elsewhere with little development. In some cases, like Sampson looking into his mother’s murder case, this is part of a season-long slow-burn, but Bobby Trey’s discoveries about Kayla seem to fundamentally redefine her as a character, and could have used more focus.
It’s still working, more or less. The performances are still solid, there’s still palpable chemistry between Aldis Hodge and Alona Tal, and it’ll no doubt be satisfying to see smug billionaires like Lance Durand get his overdue comeuppance. Given what happens to Lincoln here, we’ll at least be moving away from that angle in the next episode, so hopefully this outing is a bit of an anomaly rather than a sign of things to come.
Billionaires Gonna Billionaire
Cross and Kayla can tell that Lincoln killed Larsen in self-defence, meaning that he was clearly on the take, which is basically proved by the fact that he was trying to abscond with a suspect in the first place, but also because the Department of Homeland Security immediately begins stonewalling when they’re pressed on the issue.
The gist of things is that Crestbrook has been trafficking in illegal immigrants to use as cheap labour — including children. We know this because we see the Department of Labour shut down one of Crestbrook’s manufacturing plants in Toledo, which is full of kids and other undocumented workers, including a young girl awaiting the arrival of her brother, Chucho. We also see Nat share this news with Durand, proving that he was well aware of it. So, there’s no real ambiguity here.
So, we now know what the billionaires have been doing, where they acquired the people to do it, and why Rebecca is out for revenge, so at least in the main plot, most of the mysteries have been solved. Now it’s just a case of whether Rebecca can get to Durand before the police get to her.
An Unlikely Love Story
With Lincoln having turned up on Rebecca’s aunt’s doorstep, he briefly explains how he tracked her down. He basically followed the same process that Cross used with the cold cases, connecting her to a killing. Of course, in the meantime, he also reinvented her as a minor deity, depicting her in murals and, it later transpires, tattoos on his own flesh. Far from finding this weird, Rebecca is oddly seduced by it, and takes an immediate shine to Lincoln that borders on implausible based on her established characterisation.
Lincoln’s part in all this is basically over, since he couldn’t get the information he acquired through the courts, but Rebecca can use it to make sure that everyone involved is taken care of. Now he needs to disappear, and this, at least, Rebecca can help with. She can get him papers he can use to disappear to a non-extradition country, and in the meantime, put him up in a swanky hotel.
That hotel turns out to be the casino where we’ve seen her operate already, where Cross and Kayla are checking in after being led there by the cold case connection. In their luxury suite, Rebecca and Lincoln start up a sexual relationship, even though Rebecca has to break off now and again to try and get the measure of Cross, whose presence she’s aware of since Donnie watched him enter.
Lincoln’s Sacrifice
Because she has fallen in love with him in five minutes, Rebecca is reluctant to follow her aunt and Donnie’s advice to cut Lincoln loose, since his mere presence is attracting the Feds (who, at this point, have no idea about Rebecca and think Lincoln is the sole vigilante serial killer). This causes her to linger a bit too long, and Cross and Kayla are able to identify her on the casino CCTV, with Cross recalling that she introduced herself to him — complete with a terrible fake accent — during a blackjack game.
Thus begins a chase, since Rebecca is still on the casino floor. She’s able to give them the slip and make it back to the suite, but time has run out for her and Lincoln. She debates shooting him, but Lincoln, ever the devotee, volunteers to take his own life so that she’s able to get away. And he does. Cross and Kayla find him dead on the room floor when they eventually arive, their best lead having died with him.
At least now they know who Luz is.
Other Matters
Cross Season 2, Episode 4 sneaks in some minor developments in other ongoing subplots. In short:
- Bobby turns up some of the classified files that Kayla is looking for, including a particularly damning video of an experiment that Kayla is revealed to be presiding over. A soldier is given one of those “fit the right shape in the right hole” children’s toys, gets visibly annoyed when he’s unable to do it, and then smashes his own head into the wooden block until it pierces his eye socket and kills him. Kayla smiles on all the while. Whatever Operation: Bad Religion was, it was bad, and Kayla has been deliberately dishonest about her role in it.
- Sampson is steadily looking into his mother’s case, but when he turns up a name, TK, it becomes obvious that she’s lying about what she knows. However, whether that’s because she’s afraid or covering for someone remains up in the air.
- Berto goes to live with Cross and his kids. Despite not being able to speak any English, it’s quickly determined that he’s very intelligent, and that his friends call him “Chucho”. Yes, that means he’s the brother of the girl who was working in the Toledo factory.
