Serac's backstory is revealed through a series of flashbacks. Born in France to wealthy parents, as a child Serac and his brother Jean-Mi watched from the countryside as a thermonuclear accident destroys Paris, France. The experience radicalized the two brothers, who vowed to prevent another cataclysm from happening. As adults, they created an artificial intelligence known as Solomon, which when given sufficient data, can predict future events. To obtain data needed for their machine, the two make a deal with Liam Dempsey Senior; a tech magnate whose company Incite has managed to consolidate/control personal data of nearly every person on Earth before laws were passed making such data collection illegal.
Dempsey Sr is convinced to give his data to Serac and Jean-Mi after they prove that Solomon can predict stock market trends to make money for Dempsey Sr. However, Jean-Mi is very impatient with Dempsey Sr's initial reluctance to help the brothers and suggests to Serac that they murder Dempsey. Serac responds by "eliminating" his brother and creating a new replacement for Solomon that is named "Rehoboam" which "lacks his brother's sociopathy".
Serac ultimately discovers that Dempsey Sr is wanting to untangle his partnership with Serac, upon realizing that Serac is using Incite's data to engage in full-scale social engineering to bring about "world peace" and dominance over the lives and futures of everyone on the planet. Luring him to the desert, Serac reveals that there are "gaps" in Rehoboam's predictions that allow for "free will to reign"; they arrive at the site of a plane crash where the plane belongs to Incite. Serac then murders Dempsey Sr so that he can take control over Incite via his surrogates that have been placed inside the company by him.
While transporting Liam, Caleb is dosed with a drug called "Genre" that causes him to hallucinate in the style of different movie genres as Caleb, Liam, and Dolores flee Serac's men with help from Caleb's fellow criminal friends. Forcing him to give up his access key to Incite's main database, Dolores gives the key to Martin, who leaks to the world at large Incite's profiles on everyone before suicide bombing the main Incite office. The horror of seeing how Incite controls the masses, causes shock and horror among the masses and leads to Liam's death.
Tropes:
- Awful Truth: Dolores has Rehoboam's psych profiles sent to everyone on Earth, which causes an immediate spike in violence as everyone realizes how terrible their lives will be. This is represented on Rehoboam's graph as a huge burst on the circle.
- Bulletproof Human Shield: Dolores uses her body to block the gunfire of some mooks that would have killed Caleb. One bullet does actually go all the way through, but that one doesn't hit Caleb.
- Cain and Abel: Non-lethal example. Serac institutionalized his brother Jean-Mi because his personality didn't fit in the society Rehoboam was designing.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Dolores needs to keep Liam alive so his access key to Rehoboam won't be invalidated. Once she's got what she wants from Rehoboam, she lets Caleb's friends kill him.
- Chekhov's Gun: The vial of Genre Liam was given in the previous episode is used on Caleb in an escape attempt. Dolores catches him, but Caleb spends the rest of the episode going through various phases as the drug works through his system.
- Exact Words: Liam tells Dolores he won't try to kill her if she lets him go. Dolores says she knows he won't: he'll hire someone to do it for him.
- Expendable Clone: Martin sees himself as this, being a mere copy of Dolores made for a specific purpose.
- Extreme Graphical Representation: Serac's flashback to Rehoboam's stock market prediction features flashy animations on a huge digital wall screen.
- Eye Recall: The transition from Serac's last flashback to the hangar scene happens via a closeup on Dolores' iris.
- Flashback: Serac's backstory is shown this way, in the form of Dolores accessing his Rehoboam files.
- He Knows Too Much: Serac kills Dempsey because Dempsey knows about Rehoboam's prediction of human extinction and will go public with it, an outcome that will only serve to make that prediction all the more likely.
- Hobbes Was Right: How Liam Jr. sees the lower classes, especially after seeing how people react to their Rehoboam profiles. Serac shares a similar view.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Jean-Mi is deemed an uncontrollable element by the system he and his brother designed and is driven mad and confined as a result.
- Homing Projectile: Dolores's grenade launcher has rounds that turn into drones should they miss on the first pass, allowing them to fly back into the target.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Dolores and Caleb have a shootout with a gang of mooks in the street. While they both are standing in front of their car without any shielding, the baddies can't seem to get a single hit on them with their automatic weapons.
- Internal Reveal: Caleb realizes Dolores isn't human, though she declines to explain the particulars until they aren't busy with other matters.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Serac makes it look like Liam Dempsey Sr. was killed in a plane crash, when in fact Serac killed him.
- More Expendable Than You: Martin stays behind to confront Serac's men while Bernard and Stubbs escape since he's just a copy of Dolores while Bernard is irreplaceable.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Jean-Mi immediately recommends murdering Liam Dempsey Sr. when he starts to become uncooperative, one of the first signs that Jean-Mi is too unstable to be trusted with the fate of the world. Serac takes a more subtle approach by dangling financial incentives to maintain Dempsey's cooperation, only murdering him once his operation has expanded beyond the need for Dempsey's continued support.
- Mushroom Samba: Caleb spends half the episode high on Genre, a drug that makes its users perceive the world as if they were in different types of movies.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: Serac asks the president of Brazil to halt his friends' mining operations in an area on the verge of a separatist uprising, in the interest of maintaining order. Otherwise, Rehoboam will tank his country's currency and economy, which Serac claims will accelerate the timetable for the uprising and will ultimately lead to the president getting overthrown by one of his generals, to whom Serac will make the same offer.
- Origins Episode: Serac's backstory is revealed via flashbacks.
- Sibling Team: Serac and Jean-Mi built Rehoboam and its predecessor Solomon together in collaboration with Liam Dempsey Sr.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The shootout in the street is underscored with the romantic theme
from Love Story which Caleb hears in his head due to the workings of the drug. - Spanner in the Works: Dolores completely screws up Rehoboam's predictions by showing everyone on Earth their profiles.
- Taking You with Me: Connells blows up the office while Serac's assistant is there to ask him about the Rehoboam data breach.
- Villainous Breakdown: Not a full-blown breakdown but Serac starts losing his cool in this episode as Dolores draws closer and closer.
- Watching Troy Burn: A flashback shows Serac and Jean-Mi watching their hometown Paris in flames in the distance.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rehoboam predicted that human civilization would end in 200 years, so Serac will do anything to neutralize the cause.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dolores lets Caleb's friends do whatever they want with Liam Jr. once she no longer needs his access key. He's shot after ranting at them for a bit about being a drag on society.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Dempsey thinks that Serac isn't going to kill him because Rehoboam predicted Serac would let him go. As Serac explains, Rehoboam is accurate but not perfect, and there are instances where people can act in unexpected ways, this being one of them.
