WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Nevers, Episode 6, “True,” which premiered Sunday on HBO.
If you were confused by the introduction of the Galanthi in last week’s episode of The Nevers, hold on because things get even more confusing in this week’s midseason finale, “True.” The outing is divided into four chapters all centering on Amalia True, although that may not initially be clear from the first chapter, “Stripe,” which not only features characters we’ve never seen before, but is also set in the far future, causing this part of the episode to look and feel like a totally different show.
“Chapter 1: Stripe”
The episode opens at night as a group of soldiers from the Planetary Defense Coalition parachute from a plane into a war zone. The PDC squad is attempting to infiltrate a building, but there’s another group from the opposing army, the Free Life Party, who want to gain access, too. They exchange gunfire and plenty are killed. One PDC soldier loses her mask and vomits up several glowing blue pellets. The PDC capture the general of the Free Life Party and bring him into the building with them.
As the PDC squad set to work on their mission, the Free Life Party captive won’t shut up. He asks for the names of his captors but is informed names are sacred. Apparently this is a belief exclusive to the PDC, though, because he offers his name freely. After he’s gagged, the next order of business is to figure out what to do about the soldier who regurgitated the blue pellets, coolant pods she used to hide herself from the Free Life army’s body heat detection system. While she is PDC, she’s not part of their squad and they’re unsure why she’s there alone.
She is referred to as a Stripe and identifies herself as part of the 31st Grand Pride. Everyone in her squad died but her. She’s taken to the building’s medical bay, where she touches her fingers to her thumb one by one as she’s treated. It’s a move Amalia has frequently made throughout The Nevers, and it’s our first official indication that this is Amalia, albeit in a different body and with an American accent. The squad’s medical officer, who’s referred to as Knitter, asks her about temporal issues, and future-Amalia admits that she gets flashbacks. She then uses a future technology to help Knitter, who was shot in the leg, as they discuss the squad’s mission. Stripe already knows they’re looking for a Galanthi.
She knows there was a spatial anomaly over the area, which is an indication of a portal that Galanthi come through. She also gleans that Knitter is a “spore” — or as Knitter prefers “empathically enhanced” — meaning she swallowed spores from the Galanthi that make her capable of understanding Galanthi language and technology. As Stripe pokes around the med bay, she’s perplexed to discover artifacts from the late Victorian period. She observes that this seems small for a Galanthi project as others have included water purifying systems and stabilizing tectonic plates. However, Knitter informs her that Free Life has bombed the sites of all the projects and killed all but one or two of the Galanthi.
They find a vegetable garden, an incredibly unusual sight in their time, with a door at the end of the corridor. They open the door to find a cylindrical room with an open shaft going down and a group of dead bodies strung up near the ceiling. They venture downstairs and find the Galanthi curled up in a glass dome in the ceiling. The Free Life general, somehow ungagged, admits the previous Free Life squad didn’t have the fire power to kill this Galanthi when they arrived so instead they tortured it — by murdering the people it cared for.
He also tells the PDC soldiers that he called in an incursion the moment his team landed. If the group wants to survive, they’ll have to kill the Galanthi and close the portal it created, which Free Life fears will enable even more Galanthi to reach Earth. The PDC group splits up to take on separate tasks, and the Free Life captive attempts to convince his guard to come around to his way of thinking.
From the medical bay, Stripe and Knitter hear shooting. They find the Free Life captive has been set free and shot several of the soldiers. The Free Life soldier wants them to kill the Galanthi, but one of the PDC soldiers explains they don’t have to: the portal isn’t there so the Galanthi can bring more of its kind to Earth, but so it can leave. Future-Amalia shoots the Free Life captive. But the PDC soldier who guarded him appears and shoots Knitter. Stripe kills him and then goes to the medical bay where she drinks two bottles of something lethal. Just as she’s about to die, the Galanthi’s glowing blue arms reach around her, and as the Galanthi recedes into the portal, Stripe’s body goes lifeless.
“Chapter 2: Molly”
In the next chapter, we’re back in Victorian London. Amalia, who goes by Molly, works at a bakery and flirts with a man named Varnum. Unfortunately Varnum doesn’t have the money to get married, but Molly’s had another proposal, which the shop’s owner encourages her to take. Molly decides to take her advice when she’s let go from her job.
That’s how she ends up married to a rough man named Thomas True. She moves in with him and his ailing mother and makes deliveries for the bakery. She has multiple miscarriages. Then Thomas gets sick and dies, and Molly learns she’s inherited his many debts — debts she won’t be able to pay off based on the small amount of money she earns making deliveries. So on August 3, 1896, instead of making her deliveries, she jumps into the River Thames and drowns herself.
“Chapter 3: The Madwoman in the Thames”
When Amalia comes out of the River, she’s committed to an asylum. But this isn’t the woman who went into the water. This woman is confused, has an American accent and is seeing snippets of the future. She also curses a lot and is a capable fighter, so when she strikes the asylum matron, she’s knocked out and shackled to a bed. When she comes to, Sarah introduces herself. Amalia is immediately suspicious of her, especially because Sarah shares her name so easily. Amalia then panics when she realizes she should be dead and she’s not in her body. Sarah comforts her.
Later, she overhears Sarah telling another patient about seeing the Galanthi in the sky. Sarah thinks what she saw was God. The other patient doesn’t believe Sarah saw anything, but Amalia knows exactly what happened. Amalia meets Horatio Cousens, who’s a doctor at the asylum. When she realizes he’s Touched, she tells him everything about herself and they start an affair. Through Cousens she learns that the spores the Galanthi dropped imbued people with different supernatural powers. This flummoxes her as, in her time, the people affected by the spores just become more attuned to the Galanthi and know how to help it. However in Victorian London, no one’s come forward with that ability. Cousens points out that Amalia could be talking about herself, but she passionately rejects the idea.
Later, Dr. Hague comes to visit Amalia and Sarah. He’s looking for Touched people to do a study with and asks to talk to each of them separately. When he talks to Amalia, she lies. She acts like her belief in her ability to see the future is actually just part of her madness and says that she only told Sarah she saw the lights in the sky to make Sarah happy. Sarah tells Dr. Hague the truth, however, and Dr. Hague takes Sarah away.
Amalia spends her days attempting to embrace her new English identity. She enlists the help of a fellow patient to learn Victorian-era manners, posture and a proper English accent. As time goes on, Amalia virtually starts to run the asylum. So when her case comes up for review, she assumes they won’t discharge her. To ensure she can secure her freedom on her own, she amasses a cache of weapons that she keeps under her bed, but they find them during her hearing.
She ends up in a padded cell where Lavinia Bidlow comes to see her. Lavinia gets Amalia out and makes her head of her newly created orphanage for the Touched.
“Chapter 4: True”
The episode then flashes forward to 1899 on the day of Maladie’s hanging. Amalia and her team have drilled into the earth to find the Galanthi, only to encounter soldiers who they didn’t think would be on guard. Everyone’s fighting when Amalia falls into the drill site and is sucked into the hole it creates. She’s finally deep enough to find the Galanthi at the site where Dr. Hague has been excavating it. Amalia’s disappointed to find the Galanthi is still in the ceiling just like it was in the future.
Amalia looks to the Galanthi for hope and instruction but gets none. As she laments the situation, she puts her hand on it. It gives her a vision that knocks her off the platform. She sees images that appear to be from both her life and the life of the real Amalia True. Her vision stops on a flashback in which she told Penance about who she really is. Penance is confident that they can change the future.
The vision then moves on to images of people from her life. A female voice asks if she thought she was the only one there from the future. Then Dr. Hague’s grotesque guards run into the room, followed by a dolled up Myrtle telling her in English that she will need to forget some part of the vision. Amalia hits the ground and sits up as the guards run into the room. Realizing this part of her vision is already happening, Amalia fights them. She makes it to the excavation site’s elevator, but can’t get it to work. However, Elisabeta, the Touched girl who could make things float and fell victim to Dr. Hague, appears and uses her powers to lift Amalia to street level.
Amalia and Penance reunite back at the orphanage and she offers Penance her biggest secret: her name — Zephyr Alexis Levine.
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. The first half of Season 1 is streaming on HBO Max.
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