The First Blow
Episode 3 of Snowpiercer Season 3 starts with Wilford blasting through debris left behind on the tracks. It’s obviously designed to slow down Big Alice but for Wilford, nothing is going to stop them.
So what’s Layton’s plan? Well, Wilford believes they’re going to “peck them” from the side. So naturally, he brings in Zarah to take a look as his dastardly plan is unveiled.
Josie intends to jump over and breach Big Alice. They’ve only got one chance at this and those deep in the heart of Big Alice know that too. They intend to bring Ruth back and that includes hitting out against the soldiers that show up and tell them to work.
Unfortunately, the whole plan goes awry when Wilford launches his ace up his sleeve. A harpoon launcher. After striking Snowpiercer’s final carriage, Layton has no choice but to disconnect the last 4 carriages and leave them to their icy fate. Even worse, Wilford’s train has gone dark and he’s shut off all comms. So naturally, Layton does the same.
While the resistance fighters are reprimanded and held in the Night Car, Pike shows up at the prison after talking his way past Whiggins, the lowly soldier standing at the door. They need to signal Layton, so naturally they set off fireworks to alert Snowpiercer where they are.
With the location sorted, Layton decides to use Josie as bait to catch Wilford off-guard. They intend to bring Zarah back to them and to do that, it comes down to a game of chicken.
Snowpiercer and Big Alice are at a stand-still, on the same track facing one another, and for Wilford, he decides to stop the entire train. This gives Javi the opportunity to press a button and open one of the doors, letting Layton slip inside.
Josie serves as the distraction by the windows and as she cracks the windscreen, Wilford staggers backwards, out the front of the train and straight into Layton.
Layton forces Wilford to stand down. With the trains reconnected, the two trains are one again and the attention finally turns to the Horn of Africa. Layton is going to make a good go of it and informs Ruth of his plan soon after. In order to make it fair, he’s going to bring it to a vote for everyone up and down the train.
Meanwhile, Wilford is kept in lock-up while Audrey learns she’s confined to third class and forced out the Nightcar.
Just before the big vote, Layton ends up twisting the truth, bringing in Asha during the broadcast to talk about green grass, trees and New Eden. It’s a way to rig the vote and it works well, with the “yes” winning almost two to one.
Only, Asha is still an enigma, and as Ruth talks to the train about their endeavour, we cut back to Asha one more time as she sits with a helmet on, breathing heavily and very clearly not quite right.
The Episode Review
Snowpiercer returns this week with another solid episode, one that sees both trains joined together and the fate of Snowpiercer hanging by the hope that there’s life in Africa. Rigging thee vote like that is nothing new, but it’s been a recurring theme throughout the three seasons, with lies the norm and the truth twisted.
This does brings up the interesting idea of democracy and how here, everything has been distorted and blurred so you can’t tell right from wrong.
With Layton now in charge and Wilford back in lock-up, it’s only a matter of time before Wilford takes back control. I’d imagine they’ll make it to Africa, realize there’s nothing but ice and broken promises, and that will allow Wilford to rise up again and split the trains.
That’s just a working theory at this point but it does seem like the way Layton took back the train with the rebels was a little too easy to see our main antagonist skulk away into the recesses of the train for long.
Snowpiercer is just starting to get interesting now and it’ll be intriguing to see exactly what’s in store for our characters next.
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Episode Rating
(4)
Layton used some Republican technique, the reliance on deceit.
Oh I forget to say that whenever it comes to stocking a train for a post-apocalyptic world, one of the essentials must always be fireworks (being explosives they cannot be a danger to the train during storage surely) because you never know when you are going to need to have a fireworks display which can be started at the touch of a button. Fireworks — more important than backup food supplies like chickens, goats, pigs, rabbits, turkeys when you only have a single car of cattle.
I guess they must all be using non-dairy creamer in their coffee and tea since there would not be a supply of milk.
“A harpoon launcher?”
“How convenient,” one might say.
Because every train during an apocalypse has one on board as standard, just in case, it might need to snag a whale, along with all the materials needed to build an electro-magnetic pulse weapon because you just might need one even though all the other electronic equipment has become irrelevant.
What is even more incredible (ias in its original meaning, lack of credibility) is the food situation. Nobody looks as if they have lost any weight during the last six months.
Since the source of beef was lost with all the cattle dying and the source of fish was lost when the aquarium car was destroyed, are they all just living on vegetables (fed with nutrients from the compost car) unless there are a few chickens somewhere?
There was never any indication of them having any goats, pigs, rabbits, sheep, or turkeys on board the train, and the number of vacuum packed food ration packs must surely be getting a bit low after 7 years since the train pulled out of Chicago. But they always have plenty of bottles of alcoholic beverages still to go around.
Hey, you’re absolutely right I do apologize! That’s all been corrected now though. Thanks again for the heads up!
-Greg W
I think you mean Zarah not Sara