WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Nevers, Episode 1, “Pilot,” which premiered Sunday on HBO.
On Aug. 3, 1896, in London, a strange event occurred that created people with unnatural powers, known at the Touched. The story of HBO’s The Nevers picks up three years later, at a time when the Touched have become a new underclass who are discriminated against for their strange abilities. That’s only compounded because a majority of the Touched are women, threatening the men who held political and financial power in Victorian England.
Amalia True runs an orphanage for the Touched, who she hopes to protect from those who threaten them. The one thing she doesn’t seem to be concerned with is how the Touched came to exist. In its premiere episode, however, The Nevers introduces clues about who — or what — might be responsible.
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What We Know So Far
The pilot’s biggest clue about the Touched’s origin occurs in a flashback to that day in August 1896. All of a sudden, a strange ship appears and soars across the sky. Seemingly powered by something magical or perhaps electric, it shoots something out of its fan-like tail. These multi-hued particles dust over the people of London and appear to enter some of them, causing them to pass out. Even more unusual is that, following this strange event, everyone returns to what they were doing as if they have forgotten what they witnessed moments before, with the exception of soon-to-be-serial-killer Maladie, who is being taken to an asylum.
Yet, while this event imbued many with unique abilities, not everyone’s powers manifest at the same time. That is made clear by Amalia’s continued quest to gather newly Touched individuals and bring them to the orphanage. In the pilot, Amalia and Penance Adair go to retrieve Myrtle, and based on what her parents say, her power only recently presented itself. That raises the question of whether the revelation of some of the Touched’s strange skills were delayed, or if new Touched somehow continue to be created.
One way or another, we know the wealthy Lavinia Bidlow, the benefactor of the orphanage, has taken on the Touched as a charitable cause, while Lord Gilbert Massen, a powerful government official, is threatened by their very existence. In an early scene, Lord Massen posits that the Touched were created as an act of war, given no men of status were granted powers. Lord Massen believes the Touched are an existential threat to the British Empire and that, eventually, they will interrupt the balance of power, enabling women and others to take for themselves the advantages enjoyed by Massen and wealthy white men like him. Although it’s worth mentioning that many of the Touched powers that have been introduced so far, including Dr. Horatio Cousens’ healing abilities and Penance Adair’s skills as an inventor, appear to be extensions of skills or interests the individual already possessed. So perhaps many of the Touched are simply enhanced instead of superpowered.
What This Could Indicate About the Origins of the Touched
The ship that appeared above the skies in London, and seems to have created the Touched, must have been built by someone, suggesting a purposeful act. But who would have the kind of knowledge and power that would enable them to not only imbue people with unique abilities but then make the masses forget seeing the ship that created them. That could point to someone with alien or supernatural powers, but what would be their motivation for creating the Touched?
In this, Lord Massen may not be so far off. While he is looking at the Touched as a threat to the privileges he enjoys, the individual responsible for creating the them may have done so as a way to uplift the oppressed, given those who have experienced a turn seem to have been at a societal disadvantage, whether they’re women or, like Dr. Cousens, people of color. On the other hand, because Lavinia Bidlow’s brother, Augustus, was able to understand Mary Brighton’s song during Maladie’s attack on the opera, he may be Touched too, debunking Massen’s assertion that no men of status have powers. However, while Augie is a white man of privilege, he is also Lavinia’s awkward younger brother whose days are mostly filled with doing her bidding, perhaps meaning that anyone in an inferior position has the potential to become Touched. That could point to a possible flaw in the design of whatever created the Touched, indicating whoever made it is fallible.
Of all the characters introduced so far in The Nevers, Lavinia Bidlow is the most likely person behind the creation of the Touched. She not only has the wealth to commission the manufacture of a device to give them powers, she likely has the connections to find someone capable of doing so. Not to mention, as a woman, even one of status, she may be especially interested in leveling society’s playing field to enable women to assume more power. Creating the Touched may have been one way she hoped to accomplish this, and perhaps when she realized society rejected the Touched as afflicted, dangerous outcasts, she made a cause of them in order to correct her error. With Lavinia’s help, the Touched may eventually be able to overcome the persecution they’ve experienced and gain power in Victorian London.
Of course, this is only one theory; the Touched could be biological anomalies randomly created by electrical currents as one of Lord Massen’s colleagues claims. Still, given what we know so far about how they came to be, it seems there is a design behind the Touched’s existence that even they have yet to understand.
Created by Joss Whedon, The Nevers stars Laura Donnelly, Olivia Williams, James Norton, Tom Riley, Ann Skelly, Ben Chaplin, Pip Torrens, Zackary Momoh, Amy Manson, Nick Frost, Rochelle Neil, Eleanor Tomlinson and Denis O’Hare. New episodes air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.
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