The First Strike
Directed by George Gipson
Written by Maasai Singleton
Written by Maasai Singleton
The story of the preemptive strike on the Union is told, revealing more about Yaz's connections as well as the origins of Nemesis.
Tropes:
- Apocalypse Cult: The Union is partially this. They believe that the only way to ascend to the afterlife is through the Nanotech.
- Broken Pedestal: Driana loses all respect for her mother upon learning that she's a member of the Union.
- Corrupt Church: The Union takes advantage of the fatally ill and dying and takes their money. Yaz's father is horribly ill and will not listen to her when she tries to warn him of their lies.
- Empty Piles of Clothing: Union members who've 'ascended' leave behind their robes.
- Face–Heel Turn: Roberta Chase is revealed to be a member of the Union and knew about the New York attack in advance. She isn't cruel enough to brainwash Driana or Chase into becoming members of the Union, she simply believes that the Union is the better option after her faith in the Polity is broken.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Brother Tate serves a collection of people who are represented by one woman that speaks with him about how to handle non-believers.
- La Résistance: Yaz was a member of one who attacked the organization's holy site, due to the crimes the Union had been committing.
- Last-Name Basis: Bizarrely, Driana refers to her brother as "Chase" when recognizing his plane. Brother Tate does the same when addressing Chase's mother. After these two odd moments, Tate switches to using Julian's first name.
- Religion of Evil: The Union.
- Retcon:
- In Season 1, Holcroft claims that Yaz accidentally outed her parents as intellectuals, causing the Union to make them disappear and leading to Yaz's defection. This episode reveals very different circumstances: that her parents were in fact honored by the Union for their intellectualism, and that Yaz was already expressing anti-Union sentiment, for which her parents turned themselves in. This is especially notable as Holcroft's implication of the Union's anti-intellectualism was the closest thing to a detail about the Union's nature that was given in the entire first season; potentially, Holcroft's version of the story, and the entire notion of the Union being anti-science, is Polity propaganda.
- That Yaz seemingly never liked the Union also contradicts some of her behavior in Season 1, which made it seem like she's only recently become disillusioned by them and is having trouble adjusting to not being a Union citizen anymore.
- Uncertain Doom: No one knows if the victims of Union nanotech are dead or brainwashed.
- Villain Episode: The episode focuses on not only Nemesis's creation but also the life of the Union's people.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The episode takes place entirely in the show's past, covering the events of the first episode to reveal what became of Roberta and Driana, before shifting back and forth between twenty days before that, when Yaz first turned against the Union and witnessed the Polity's titular first strike against them, and the middle of the first episode's Time Skip, showing the events that led to the original Julian Chase becoming Nemesis as well as the final fate of his mother.
