WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Nevers, Episode 5, “Hanged,” which premiered Sunday on HBO.
On the previous episode of The Nevers, the Touched at the orphanage translated the song Mary sang to them and discovered it included a message for Amalia. An entity that Amalia calls a “Galanthie” was using Mary’s song to tell Amalia that it hadn’t abandoned her as she had assumed, but was damaged and therefore had gone inside the city to heal. The Galanthie asked Amalia and the Touched to come find it, and in the fifth episode, “Hanged,” Penance and Amalia have been working on a plan to do just that. Penance has devised a way to drill into the city to reach the Galanthie but, because of the noise, she determined the best time to carry out their plan would be during the public execution of Maladie, who Mundi caught in last week’s episode. At the last minute, however, Penance has a change of heart, and instead of helping Amalia find the Galanthie, she decides to rescue Maladie from hanging.
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Throughout “Hanged,” Penance and the other Touched are shocked and horrified by the decision to turn Maladie’s death into entertainment. Public executions were outlawed 30 years prior and, according to Harriet, the only exceptions are if there’s danger of abuse or a public execution will bring “greater solemnity to the act.” Given the spectacle Maladie’s execution is creating, it’s clear the government is publicly hanging Maladie because she’s Touched, turning her into a symbol of all the evil the Touched can do.
The circumstances make Penance question whether forgiveness and kindness still exist and, ultimately, the way she’s used her turn. As she points out to Amalia, almost everything she invents could hurt someone under the right circumstances, so maybe she isn’t doing the right thing by creating them. And when someone hangs nooses in the orphanage’s courtyard the night before the execution, it’s the last straw for Penance. The next morning she informs Amalia that instead of going with her to find the Galanthie she plans to rescue Maladie, a mission Amalia understandably believes is a terrible idea. After all, Maladie has killed a dozen people and even tried to kill Penance herself.
Nonetheless, Penance is committed to her cause. She believes if she has power, this is what she should use it for. Penance thinks Maladie’s execution will be just the tip of the iceberg, opening the floodgates for the government to murder all the Touched. And she may have a point; since Maladie was caught, the government has passed laws requiring the Touched to register and to wear blue bows in public that identify their Touched status.
Of course, Amalia points out that rescuing Maladie will make it appear as though the Touched are in league with her, presenting an even bigger risk to them, but Penance is unwilling to hear it. She doesn’t want any of the Touched, even Maladie, slaughtered for show, and is willing to put her life on the line to prevent it from happening. She reasons that if the future Amalia is protecting depends on the present, preventing Maladie’s execution will have important repercussions.
Ultimately, Penance and Amalia leave it to the orphans to decide which one of them they wish to follow, and while many side with Amalia, Penance still has a half dozen allies to help with her mission to pluck Maladie out of the public square before she can be hanged. Yet, when the group start their plan, they learn Maladie doesn’t want to be saved. As the serial killer sees her rescuers coming for her, she throws the lever to open the door in the platform’s floor and dives through, hanging herself. At the same time, a member of Maladie’s gang uses his turn to electrify the metal barriers around the gallows and murder many of the spectators. As the crowd panics and a riot begins, chants of “No More Touched” can be heard in the streets, making it clear this will only make public perception of the Touched worse.
So while Penance’s heart may have been in the right place, her attempt at a grand statement may have only made things worse for the Touched. Penance could never have imagined what Maladie was planning and, although Penance injures herself cutting off the electricity in an effort to prevent more deaths, just the presence of the Touched there and using their powers is probably enough to further inflame the public’s hatred for them.
The registration of the Touched and the requirement that they wear bows in public is already straight out of Nazi Germany. Now that Maladie has managed to pull off a mass execution of the spectators at her hanging, she’s likely created even more public support for the government to take action against them, the exact opposite of Penance’s intentions.
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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