Previously on Penny Dreadful: Everyone set off to look for Vanessa, who’s now fully committed to Dracula, which is not good for the world.
It’s the last episode ever, and we get some new credits. For those interested, the shots of Vanessa are pretty much all of her doing something religious.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Dorian got bored and handed Lily off to Victor to be cured, and Vanessa hooked up with Sweet and brought about the End of Days.
London’s now overrun by a thick fog and rats and frogs and things, which are coming out of the sewers in actual waves. I never really thought of frogs as night creatures—the ones we had in our pond when I was growing up were fairly active during the day.
Seward finds Renfield (looking pretty cadaverous now) listening to Vanessa’s sessions and demands he get lost. He informs her he’s been freelancing for Dracula, rips the guts right out of a frog and eats them, and attacks her. Seward manages to incapacitate him and somehow, despite all the chaos, gets him committed to Bedlam.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Vanessa got back together with Sweet and slept with him, which I think we can all agree isn’t going to end well. Malcolm killed Ethan’s father; Cal revealed himself to his son, which also didn’t go well; and Victor’s attempted kidnap of Lily went predictably wrong and almost got him killed by Justine, who’s getting a little crazy.
Cold open: Lily watches from a little distance as a woman buries her child. After the burial, she approaches the woman and expresses her condolences, adding that the day a good woman will have to watch her child starve and freeze will be over soon. The woman looks a little creeped out.
Lily goes on to lay some flowers on a nearby grave—that of another little girl named Sarah, who died within a year of her birth and was apparently Brona’s daughter, in her pre-Lily days.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Vanessa realised she was being stalked by Dracula and needed to outwit him, not realising that she was actually dating him; Ethan got to take a horrifying walk through family history; and Dorian and Lily began gathering an army of angry prostitutes.
We pick up just where we left off, with Talbot cocking his gun at Ethan. Ethan still refuses to repent for what he did. Before his dad can shoot, however, one of the men comes in and tells him someone’s there to see Talbot. Timing!
Talbot, Hecate, Malcolm and Ethan all gather in the foyer, where Rusk and the Marshal are waiting to place them all under arrest. Continue reading “Penny Dreadful: No Beast So Fierce”
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Victor and Jekyll began experimenting on Bedlam patients while Ethan and Hecate made their way across the desert, pursued by Rusk and the Marshal and Malcolm and Kaetenay.
After last week’s Vanessa and Cal fest, it’s time to catch up with everyone else.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Vanessa found out that Dracula’s met up with her before—when she was a patient at the Banning Clinic—so she demanded Seward hypnotize her so she could remember. At the start of the hypnosis, she discovered that the orderly at the clinic was none other than Cal.
Seward asks Vanessa to describe the orderly, which takes us back to Vanessa in the Clinic, literally clawing the walls. Cal brings her food, but she refuses to eat, and after a few (or several) days of this, he gently urges her to eat, warning her that starving herself will have consequences. Those consequences are forced feeding, which Cal has to administer. Well, this relationship’s gotten off to a great start. Cal clearly hates doing this.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Lily and Dorian adopted a young woman so they could start building an army to get revenge on horrible men. Victor began working with Jekyll to find a cure for Lily, Ethan was freed by his inner werewolf and Hecate, and Vanessa started seeing a psychiatrist and dating Dracula (though she doesn’t know about that last bit).
Ethan dreams of seeing Kaetenay again, and this time the man’s face is covered in blood. Ethan wakes in a barn with Hecate sitting nearby, watching him. She offers him water, face glowing like a true fangirl, and he takes it, hesitantly. He realises he has to get away, because the authorities will be after him soon for the latest massacre. Hecate insists on going with him, and when he tries to shake her, she points out that she not only followed him across an ocean and a continent, she also kind of just saved his ass, so he doesn’t get to order her to get lost.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Vanessa started seeing a psychiatrist, Dr Seward, whose secretary has been recruited by Dracula. She also met a nice zoologist named Dr Sweet. An American Indian named Kaetenay collected Malcolm so they can go to America and rescue Ethan, who’s already been liberated from the federal marshals by men working for his father.
The producers are clearly really hoping to get their money’s worth out of this Chinatown set, because now Dorian and Lily are there, heading into a club where the man in charge confirms they know exactly what they’re in for. Oh, they do. They soooo do. They’re taken into a room where they sit in a circle with a lot of other well-dressed men. Lily is the only woman present. The men are practically licking their lips. There’s also a large man there dressed up like an executioner, standing in front of a rack of very wicked looking instruments.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Witches! And they wanted Vanessa, because apparently Vanessa is the Devil’s chosen one, or something along those lines. But Vanessa was not to be had, so Lucifer came out very much the loser on that one. And so did Kali, the head witch. Her daughter, Hecate, escaped the slaughter, though. To the surprise of exactly no one, Ethan turned out to be a werewolf, and unfortunately he wound up locked in a room with Sembene when he transformed. Fare thee well, Sembene! Afterwards, Malcolm decided to head back to Africa to give Sembene a proper send-off. Ethan promptly handed himself in to Inspector Rusk, the man investigating the massacre at that pub back in season 1. Rusk immediately produced an extradition order and put Ethan on a ship for America. Cal thought he’d found a great job but then nearly got turned into a sideshow attraction by his horrible employers. They are no longer with us. Pity. He then jumped onto a ship too, heading for the arctic, because why not? Victor fell in love with Lily, his own creation, and she played along for a while, but then revealed she remembers her whole history and HATES pretty much everyone, except for Dorian. The two of them are now a really terrifying power couple.
Judging from the level of dust, cobwebs and piled-up mail at the Murray Manse, it seems it’s been a while since we left everyone. Vanessa, apparently, has been spending the time smoking, comfort eating, and not bathing. She drags herself out of bed and goes down to the kitchen, which is absolutely disgusting now. She fetches the daily grocery delivery and starts tearing into the bread and drinking the milk straight from the jug like a fratboy with the munchies.
Previously on Penny Dreadful: Kali lured Malcolm to Coven Castle, and Vanessa, being suddenly a bit stupid, decided to go after him on her own, at night, during a full moon. Naturally, the rest of the Scooby crew went after her, and while Victor got caught in the Guilt Room with Malcolm, Ethan wolfed out and attacked Sembene. Meanwhile, Lily apparently remembers everything about her previous life and is now out for some revenge. She finds her perfect partner in Dorian. And Cal’s been trapped by the Putneys so he can be the centerpiece of their new freak exhibition.
‘We were born innocent. You made us into monsters.’
‘Beloved, know your master.’
Ethan finishes killing Sembene and hurls himself against the door trapping him in the stairwell. Hecate listens for a moment, then goes downstairs to secretly watch Vanessa talk to a creepy marionette doll that looks just like her and speaks with her voice. This thing is actually the devil, it seems, and he’s ready to start tempting her, because what’s more tempting than a nightmare fuel doll of yourself that calls you a murderer in your own voice?
