Neville and Monroe forge an alliance that lasts a whole day... which is pretty good for Tom Neville. While holding Connor by the throat with a knife, Neville lays out the mayhem he hopes to cause. Neville admits what Monroe already knew, that the Patriots would never have freed Julia, and he's sympathetic, especially when Neville spits out all the revenge he wants to get. Neville plans on a blood-soaked march to Washington D.C., ending by shooting President Davis in the head, personally. Monroe sounds like he's trying not to masturbate right then and there when he accepts Neville's help. The only catch is that Miles has pussied out. Neville is unfazed.
Joe the blacksmith, wearing a spiffy US Flag armband, strolls outside the fence of the railroad station Willoughby magically has now, saying it's for water. He really meets up with Miles, Charlie and Scanlon. At first, it's all an imitation of bad spy movies, as they voice their mutual distrust with each other. Until Miles declares that Marion has already said everyone's okay. So, that decides it. I guess Marion is in charge of the resistance now. Joe helps Team Miles by bringing everyone to a spot where they get a perfect view of the train station without being seen. Do the Patriots ever conduct security sweeps? Or, do they just stand around with guns, looking at each other?
Joe points out the red tanker truck of mustard gas, which horrifies Miles. He decides that they'll have to steal it. Scanlon bitches that Monroe isn't around to help. Miles tells him that now, maybe, Scanlon can step up instead.
While Joe is helping Team Miles, Marion is using her delivery of Ed Truman's lunch to spy on him. Up until now, or maybe the last episode, Ed's been presented as this semi-bumbling nice guy, who wants Willoughby as a foothold on re-taking the United States by managing things better than they were previously. He seemed committed to the town and to effectively running it. Marion finds out that it's all a cover. She finds an old photo of President Carver of Texas, along with papers covered in yellow crosses. She manages to not get caught, cooing at Ed before she leaves him to enjoy his lunch.
After nightfall, she sneaks over to the Team Miles hideout, where Miles pieces together that Ed plans on killing President Carver, and a whole lot of other Texans, with the mustard gas. Rachel has another problem for Miles to solve: Aaron and Priscilla are missing. Miles gives this problem all the attention it deserves: almost none, telling Rachel to go look for them while he takes the train.
Scanlon sneaks over to Monroe's hideout, which is really the old hideout by the chemical factory. He lets Monroe in on Miles' plan to steal the train of mustard gas to render it useless with lye and water. Monroe starts off his war with the Patriots by basically hijacking Miles' plan. He and Neville decide to take the mustard gas for themselves, to use on Washington D.C.
Marion's brought more than info, she's also brought two locals who want to help Miles take the train: Joe the blacksmith, and his pretty daughter. Miles is unimpressed; neither have ever fought or killed. Joe has more than battle smarts, though. He's pissed that the Patriots got his kid killed. Turns out, he's the dad of the kid Miles shot in Austin. The one posing as a new Texas Ranger to kill President Carver. Miles decides to let them in on the plan. He wanders back into the hideout, which they've all been standing in front of openly, together, for a few minutes. Charlie follows him, to find out whether Miles will tell Joe how his kid died. Miles agrees to, after they're done fighting. He and Charlie gripe together about how being good sucks, and goes against all of Miles' instincts. Miles may have realized that anybody can fight a war, if they're ruthless enough. It takes a real leader to fight only enough that there will be something left to win.
As Miles and Charlie discuss the overall suckiness of good guy-ness, Gene basically has to talk Marion into returning to Ed. She's frightened, and starting to realize that Ed is a lot more dangerous than she could have imagined. With Scanlon watching, Gene and Marion have a hug before she goes back to the trenches.
The next day, Rachel is scouring the countryside, looking for Aaron and Priscilla. She's confused at first, but after a few seconds, the sound she's hearing is definitely music. And. not just any music. Starship's We Built This City. In the woods. Or rather, from the creepy house in the woods. Rachel slowly approaches the door, and is about to circle the house looking for a way in, when Aaron yanks open the door and tells her to leave. Now. Since Aaron can't actually hurt anyone, ever, Rachel simply storms past him into the house. Where she sees the lights. And the TV. And the Patriots, still frozen in their gas masks. The worst, is a middle-aged woman, sitting in front of a mirror, endlessly running a wire brush down her scalp, which long since lost its hair and started bleeding. Rachel is horrified, but Nano-Priscilla walks in and welcomes her as if a backyard BBQ is about to begin.
Aaron fumbles as he explains to Rachel just what's happened to Priscilla. As he explains the situation to an increasingly disgusted Rachel, he basically has to admit that he's just allowed the whole thing to continue with no resistance. As Nano-Priscilla shows Rachel her most recent work, with rats on the floor of a closed-off room, Rachel realizes why she saw an entire road of dead rats in the early part of the season. Nano-Priscilla waxes on about working on living things like rats and fireflies. She thinks she's ready to experiment on humans, and lists all the awful things humans do to each other that she's going to end. Rachel screams that the Nano is just a fucking science project with delusions of grandeur, and slaps her, and Priscilla looks put out for a moment. But that creepy smile returns, and Priscilla tells them both that she looks up to them as parents, and will never turn "from them". Does Nano-Priscilla think she's doing Aaron and Rachel a favor? When they've already told her to stop?
Yep, I'm mastering rats
Joe's daughter sneaks Team Miles into the railroad station, by smuggling them in a hidden compartment in her wagon of food. They immediately get to work on stealing the train. Joe lures the train engineer into the train engine, where Miles forces him, at gunpoint, to start the boiler. Charlie sneaks up to the guard in the tower, and knifes him, leaving him to bleed.
Amazing Stretch and Slim Powers
Let's give the Patriots an extra minute. Just to be fair.
The whole thing goes great, until the poor dead guy's blood starts seeping through the bottom of the tower, to drip on soldiers below. Who, really, can't ignore this. After all, it happens in a spot they're actually guarding. The alarm is sounded, and Miles and Charlie have a brief snit-fit over whether she took care of the guard, but they unite with Gene to ruthlessly shoot down advancing Patriots while Joe must take over the now-dead-engineer's job and get the train going. He fumbles a bit, before he decides to just open every valve, which does the trick. The train starts slowly, but the Little Train That Could really gets going. Only four Patriots make it on to the train, and Charlie and Miles almost enjoy themselves in the shootout. They all enjoy themselves once the train is theirs, with Gene blowing the whistle to celebrate their stunning victory over the worst soldiers ever.
When Nano-Priscilla leaves to find another human test subject for her human-controlling campaign, Rachel immediately decides that she and Aaron will need to stop Nano-Priscilla. Aaron cowardly tries to talk her out of even talking about resisting Nano-Priscilla. Rachel baits Nano-Priscilla to come back, and smugly enjoys it when there's no reaction from Nano-Priscilla. Rachel points out that the whole point of her slap was to see if Nano-Priscilla can be caught off-guard. Which she can.
Oooh, there's something fancy going on and Marion is getting all gussied up as Ed comes in wearing his own dress uniform. Ed's all happy while he opens the drawer containing his gas mask and war crime orders, but he only digs deep enough to uncover a jewelry box. He presents Marion with a lovely necklace, while she tries to play his loving fiancee. Come on, Marion, put something into the role.
So I Married a War Criminal
Scanlon meets Monroe at some unspecified, unguarded point along the train tracks, with the lye and water he's not going to use on the mustard gas. Monroe sends Connor and Neville away for a private meeting with Scanlon. Connor, a little pissed at being treated like a kid, bitches to Neville about Monroe and Miles' bromance. Neville doesn't have any explanation for it, just empathy. He hates their love/hate-ship even more than Connor does, because he's had to put up with it for longer.
Nano-Priscilla returns with a young woman she's coaxed into coming to the house. When she opens the door, Rachel is standing there, with a shotgun pointed at the woman, who runs off. Nano-Priscilla is pissed, and starts stalking into the house. In bare feet, for some reason. With the power turned back on. With her bare feet in a very convenient puddle, Rachel throws an appliance in the puddle and Aaron plugs it in. Nano-Priscilla is electrocuted, and collapses. Aaron, completely uselessly, begs the real Priscilla to come back. Which she doesn't. Totally furious, she turns the lights right back on. She means business now.
I'm sure MacGyver would have done the same
Team Miles shows up, and Monroe pops out to hold a gun to Miles and steal the mustard gas. Miles bitches and moans, mostly about how Scanlon totally sucks, and Monroe tells Miles that he's turned into a pussy. They all look pissed. At each other. But it gets interesting when Neville sees Charlie again, and decides that he'll kill her this time. Miles steps between them, reminding Neville that it was the Patriots who turned their kid into a killing machine that went after Charlie, but he is unmoved. Until Monroe pulls a gun on Neville. Words are said, shots are fired, and a couple hit the tanker.
My first great plan is to ruin yours
Which should release mustard gas from the bullet holes, but doesn't. The team panics at first, but then realizes nothing's coming out. Miles bangs on the tanker, probably the first time he's made sure if anything is even in there. The tank is empty. Where's the gas?
Ed and Marion, with front row seats, watch some schoolkids sing "America the Beautiful", with the rest of the town watching behind them. Marion asks Ed why there are Texas Rangers present, and Ed is excited when he gets up and introduces both Presidents Carver and Davis. So the United States and Texas can announce a great new alliance to take on those dirty terrorists, California. The camera pans up, and we see the top floor is covered in mustard gas cans.
Miles figures out Ed Truman's real plan: gas Carver. But here, in Willoughby. Starting a war with Texas and the Patriots wiping out California. Texas might win, but would be seriously depleted, just in time for the Patriots to topple them. And it will start with the slaughter of Willoughby's residents. Miles convinces Monroe to come with him to stop it, and Charlie and Gene hop on to travel. Connor is stunned that his dad will sign on to a suicide mission just because Miles has asked him. He takes the bratty kid routine up a notch by refusing. Monroe calls him on it, telling him he's grounded.
As President Davis glad-hands President Carver, Ed stands next to them on stage, and gives a totally obvious signal to some soldier in the back. Marion, already horrified that Carver is here in Willoughby to be killed, totally announces her intention to spy on Ed by leaving the assembly. She promptly gets into the top floor, and can barely take seeing all that poison gas, set up to kill her and her neighbors. She turns around to see Ed, still with that Nice Guy smile, telling her that he really does love her. Before he stabs her. So Marion was right. Going back to Ed was a big mistake. He leaves her body there, probably to be blamed as a patsy for the attack, and heads downstairs and outside, where the Chief Mustard Gas Soldier is waiting with his gas mask, and we hear the kids singing again.
Did Ed ever have any intention of actually running Willoughby? Did he always view the people of Willoughby as convenient collateral damage? Probably. He yelled at President Davis to let him run the Texas operation his way, and one presumes this is his way. Ed always seemed like a guy whose morals were decided by convenience. If being decent was the easiest way to get what he wanted, he'd be that. Same for being violent. He's ridden by so many people during the season: Dr. Horn, Doyle, Neville, that it was hard to find out what his actual leadership style was. Instead of just a guy willing to go along with others' crazy schemes, turns out Ed has some of his own.
Next week: Revolution is not being renewed, so we'll have to be content to see what stories are closed next week. And we'll have to endlessly speculate about the stories that aren't.
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