Recap pages are Spoilers Off per policy and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned
In the wake of the group finding out about Cate's betrayal, she collapses and takes Marie, Jordan, and Andre (and Dusty) on a trip through their past. After regaining her memories, Emma goes to Sam and the two take their relationship to the next level. Meanwhile, Dr. Cardosa's work in the Woods hits a major breakthrough when he tests the virus on one of the Woods' inmates.
Tropes in this episode:
- Artistic License – Medicine: Dr. Cardosa says that he only gave Betsy 5 extra millimeters of the virus. Millimeters measure length; milliliters measure volume.
- Because You Were Nice to Me:
- Cate's loyalty to Shetty is because, after years of being mostly confined to her room and deprived of physical affection from her parents, Shetty offered her physical affection, as well as medication to suppress her telepathy.
- Jordan was willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that Luke had attacked Brink in the past because Brink had been nice to them and supportive of them in a way that their parents haven't.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Emma and Sam have one that quickly escalates to sex.
- Country Matters: Cate returns Emma's memories to her. Emma thanks Cate sarcastically for making her relieve humiliating events and calls her a cunt before going off to find Sam.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Justified; Marie's blood control powers allow her to essentially administer CPR to Cate without actually touching her.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Cate gets most of the focus in this episode, with the first half of the episode focusing on her childhood, how she became acquainted with Shetty and Luke, and her relationships with Luke, Sam, and Andre.
- Jordan's male form gets more screentime in this episode than they've had in prior episodes, since they, Andre, and Marie spend the episode in Cate's mindscape and are cut off from their powers. Their female form only appears in a flashback revealing how they got the job of Brink's teaching assistant, and at the end when they shift to prove that indeed, they're back in the real world.
- Did You Just Have Sex?: Jordan immediately comments on Emma's "sex hair" when she returns to the frat house with Sam in tow.
- Dream Reality Check: After Cate wakes up and the others are returned to the real world, Jordan proves that they're back in reality by shifting to their female form.
- Extranormal Prison: Cate's parents convert her bedroom into one after she accidentally kills her brother Caleb. She has a blast door fitted to her room and is confined there until she's 18.
- Foreshadowing: After Jordan saves Brink from Luke (who was in the midst of confronting him about what he was doing with Sam), Brink claims that "Luke needs cutting-edge treatments, put him over the edge. That boy could be Homelander strong. But sometimes... sometimes he has a bad reaction." As is revealed in the next memory of Cate's, the "cutting edge treatments" are the blood transfusions that Luke is receiving from Sam to augment his powers, and the "bad reaction" is what happens when the memory wipes Shetty is having Cate perform on Luke after these operations begin to wear off.
- Gilded Cage: If it wasn't for the blast door, Cate's bedroom would look like your average teenage girl's, with posters of the Seven and Payback, and cheerful decorations.
- Imaginary Friend: As her parents confined her to her room, Cate had Soldier Boy for an imaginary boyfriend.
- Just Following Orders: Dr. Cardosa to Shetty, just before showing her Betsy's body. He makes clear that he was following her instructions to make Betsy as sick as possible, and that killing her was not what he intended to do.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Cate, Andre and Jordan have to reckon with the fact that they were all doing/did things to hurt Luke behind his back, and in Cate's and Jordan's cases, their actions eventually contributed to his death.
- Dr. Cardosa has had no qualms up until now about experimenting on students. However, he is visibly distressed after an overdose of the virus he had administered on Shetty's orders actually manages to kill Betsy, his test subject. Shetty on the other hand is nothing but pleased with the results.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Marie, while trying to persuade Cate to wake up:Marie: We've been through this. You're fucked up. I'm fucked up. The one thing that is really apparent now is that we are all fucked up.
- Pensieve Flashback: Andre, Jordan, and Marie find themselves pulled into Cate's memories, and begin experiencing them as observers. However, beginning in the memory of her first meeting with Luke, they find they can also interact with people in the flashback (flashback Luke kills Dusty and attempts to kill the others in the group after revealing how Cate cheated on him with Andre, past Jordan calls out present Jordan for falling for Brink's manipulations, Marie interacts with her sister). After this, they find that their memories and Cate's are bleeding into each others, as occurs when they find themselves in one of Jordan's memories of how they were manipulated by Brink into keeping silent about what was going on with Luke, and then (after going through a memory of Cate's from the Woods) find themselves in Marie's memory of her parents' deaths.
- Poor Man's Porn: Poor girl's, anyway. If her mental image of Soldier Boy is to be believed, Cate learned to masturbate with a Soldier Boy pillow, and still does.
- Relationship Upgrade: After their first time together and a subsequent chat, Emma and Sam become a couple.
- The Reveal:
- Cate is actually a powerful telepath, and the drugs she takes were prescribed to her by Shetty to suppress her ability to hear other peoples' thoughts.
- Jordan knew about Luke attacking Brink in the past, and Brink manipulated them in the same way that Shetty manipulated Cate.
- Luke was getting blood transfusions from Sam to augment his superpowers.
- Andre and Cate were sleeping together prior to Luke's death.
- Sexual Karma: Sam and Emma’s first time together, which is also Sam’s first time ever, is depicted as incredibly satisfying for both parties. As for Emma, this is in contrast to the encounter in the first episode, which involved a guy who did not care about her.
- Shout-Out:
- Upon having her memories restored, Emma's reaction is a very flat, "Whoa."
- When Emma climaxes while having sex with Sam, we see her hand (in puppet form) hitting the glass of the claw machine, emulating a certain shot from Titanic (1997).
- Possibly as a nod to Soldier Boy being an expy of Captain America, the arrival of Cate's imaginary "Soldier Boyfriend" is heralded by a horn melody very similar to that of Steve Rogers' theme from Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
- Tears of Blood: Cate's use of her powers to bring the others into her memories is such that her left eye begins weeping blood. When she wakes up, her eyes are noticeably more bloodshot than usual.
- Their First Time: Emma takes Sam's virginity on the floor of the movie theater.
- Too Much Information: Cate's imaginary version of Soldier Boy grosses out the main characters with a graphic description of how she used to masturbate to him."I taught her how to jerk off. Diddle that Skittle. Flick the bean. How to find that man in the canoe. She came like a faucet. She'd crank up the Jonas Brothers and she'd hump a Soldier Boy pillow. She'd raw-dog that pillow till she saw God."
- Two-Timing with the Bestie: Cate was cheating on Luke with Andre well before Luke died.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Dusty's mental self is blown up by the memory of Golden Boy, but we never see if he's actually dead in reality.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The teens (save for Emma, who is with Sam) spend most of the episode unconscious and being exposed to Cate's memories, as well as some of Jordan's and Marie's.
- Your Magic's No Good Here: When the Golden Boy in Cate's memories attacks and vaporizes Dusty, the other kids try to use their powers to fight back, only to find that they've been cut off from their powers. They end up having to run for it.
