Recap / Dollhouse S 02 E 13

Season 2, Episode 13:

Epitaph 2: The Return

Set in the year 2020, Echo, her surviving Dollhouse crew, as well as three new acquaintances, attempt to restore order to a devastating future world before mankind is eliminated.

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Tropes present in this episode:

• Bittersweet Ending: The heroes are able to undo the effects of the mass mindwiping, but the world is still ruined and will take decades if not centuries to rebuild, and there's still the chance of someone using the Dollhouse tech again.
• Body Surf: Matthew Harding is doing this in 2020. He moves into a new body, eats constantly until it's 'stretched out' and then switches to a new one.
• Boom, Headshot!: Paul's death.
• Break the Cutie: Topher is thoroughly broken by this point. Besides being responsible for the apocalypse, the remaining Rossum executives executed someone in front of him every day that he didn't finish building what they wanted.
• The Bus Came Back: The first act follows the three survivors from "Epitaph One", who end up joining the Dollhouse crew after reaching Neuropolis.
• Deadpan Snarker: The apocalypse has not dulled Alpha in this respect.
• Death Seeker: Topher. It's implied he could rig the pulse to activate remotely, but he doesn't want to.
  • Possibly also Alpha. He leaves before the pulse goes off, knowing full well that he will be wiped.
• Feudal Future: Neuropolis is a city ruled by former Rossum executives with control over the imprinting technology.
• Future Slang: Freakshows, or tech heads, are people with Neural Implanting technology to augment themselves with new skills. They include Victor, Kilo, Romeo, Yankee and X-Ray.
• Heel–Face Turn: Alpha, though he's not above making jokes about his previous Ax-Crazy-ness.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Topher gives his life to activate the pulse that will restore people's minds to normal.
• Hypocritical Humor: Alpha, who once scarred Victor, upon seeing the Neural Implanting technology on his face:
  Alpha: Victor! Why would someone do something so horrible to your face?
  Anthony: Psycho.
  Alpha: Lapsed!
• Neural Implanting: Anthony and his band of soldiers have cybernetic implants that let them temporarily upgrade themselves with certain skillsets, like languages or combat ability. However, since they lack Echo's natural ability to handle multiple imprints, they have to remove things from their minds first... like mercy.
• Oh, Crap!: Harding when he sees that Paul is one of the supposedly wiped bodies he's inspecting.
  • Echo and Anthony descend into the Dollhouse, expecting packs of Butchers. Instead, they find wiped Dolls walking around.
    Doll: [passing] I try to be my best.
    Echo: Aw, hell.
• Sequel Episode: To Epitaph One.
• Shout-Out: Zone refers to Neuropolis as "the frickin' Death Star".
• Together in Death: Echo and Paul, sort of. Paul's mind is uploaded into Echo and joins her numerous collection of imprints, but it's implied he's still separately conscious inside her head.
• World-Healing Wave: The reversal pulse Topher builds will revert everyone on the planet to their original identities, prior to the introduction of any imprinting technology. However, since this means Echo, Ballard and any of the Actives with restored identities will lose any memories from after they first became Actives, they have to take shelter in the Dollhouse, where they will be protected from it until the reverberations die down.