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Tear Jerker / Utopia

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The TV Series

Season one

  • Becky flees the Group at the end of Season 1, as her symptoms from her disease worsen, since she doesn't want the group to watch her die.
  • The Network framing poor Grant by organising a school shooting, an action so horrific that even the ones behind it have some trouble with it.
  • Wilson's reaction when he finds out that the Network has killed his father, and that his friends actively kept him ignorant of what happened.
  • "I wanted you to know that you were loved... 'Cause I wasn't."
  • Wilson's betrayal is pretty saddening as he was one of the foundations of the team. The one hurt most by the Network, having both losing his Father and his eye, yet he turned against them because he can see that the Network may be right.

Season two

  • The first episode of the season is a flashback to 1979 and tells the story of Philip Carvel's downfall.
    • The way Carvel's family suffers because of his egoism and work. Pietre goes from being a happy baby to a tiny sociopath after Carvel experiments on him. On the night his father took Jessica home, Pietre raised his arms up for a hug or as if to ask if he can hold his new sister. As Philip took Jessica and left, he still stood there in his crib, waiting to give an embrace to either.
    • Pietre shows up again as a little boy on the night Philip went on the run with Kristoff. As soon as he sees his father, he raises up his arms again, either for a hug or as if to ask he be taken with him and Jessica. The look on Philip's face is heartbreaking.
    • Philip Carvel himself, as he slowly realizes the implications of what Janus will do to humanity. He tries to leak the information to the public twice and gets caught. Even as he's tortured, he just begs Milner to not use Janus. In the end, he's committed to a home under a pseudonym, creates the Utopia comic, and then hangs himself.
    • Surprisingly, Milner herself. It's clear that she has feelings for Carvel, and the only reason he's alive after his attempts to leak Janus to the public is that he — and his intellect — are so dear to her.
      • Flash-forward to the present day, and Milner is still very much in love with Carvel. The only reason Jessica hasn't been dissected in five months, as Milner finally wails out loud, is because she's all she has left of Philip.
  • Jessica after five months of being tortured and experimented on by the Network. While some of her insanity might be a show for whatever plan she's got, it's still clear that some part of her has been broken, especially with the revelation that her father sterilized her when she was four.
  • The first shot we see of Becky is her on the roof of a building, about to jump to her death. It's only the promise of medication that will ease her Deel's syndrome that talks her off the ledge.
  • Poor Ian and Becky can't catch a break. Just as they're finally about to pick up where they left off, a bitter Donaldson gleefully tells Ian that Becky had been working for him to get the manuscript in the first season.
  • Wilson completes his transition from a reluctant associate of the network to a full member willing to do what must be done, by shooting Ian's brother through the head. While he begs for mercy. Initially, he can't bring himself to do it, distracting himself and feeling physically ill, before ultimately working the courage to pull the trigger.
  • For anyone who was wondering where Dugdale's wife and Alice were... they've been held in an undisclosed location by the Network to ensure Dugdale's cooperation.
  • Pietre's goodbye to his girlfriend and her daughter. He looks like he wants to cry when he shuts off the CCTV feed.
  • Grant's Sanity Slippage throughout season two, culminating in him shooting Milner on impulse for revenge and breaking down in tears when he realizes what he's done. Despite his repeated desire to become a remorseless killer like Pietre, he can't handle having taken another person's life for the first time, and unfortunately, he still makes it his goal when sent to live with Dugdale.
    • The death of Milner. For decades, she'd been planning to, in her eyes, "save humanity" from itself with the conspiracy and under the impression that the man she loved and worshiped like a god would be the key to doing it. She's confronted with the fact that the disease will actually only save one race of humanity, and tries to make the call to work things out before it's too late, all while grappling with Wilson about what they should do next. And before they can agree on the next plans ahead, Grant shoots her in revenge for what the Network had done to him, dying in the arms of Philip Carvel. Though she's one of the most monstrous and powerful figures of the show, she ends her life in the most tragic way it could've.
  • Ian's reaction to his brother's murder. Made worse by the fact that the Network fabricated evidence linking him to it, and that his own mother believes he did it.
  • Everything to do with Pietre in episode five. First is his realization that Anton is his father, Philip Carvel, and made worse when he mistakes Grant for Pietre and can't seem to recognize his real son. When he asks Carvel why he abandoned him, Philip says it was because he was horrific and believed him to be evil. Despite it being his experimentation that most likely made him this way. As he's shown to be much more remorseful when talking to "Pietre", he's come to possibly regret what he'd done to the boy. Compare that with Carvel's own emotional, genuine, happy reunion with Jessica.
    • The family reunion ends with Carvel being compelled by Milner to shoot Pietre in the chest, making Jessica rush off to save him! He even hesitated to shoot Grant, who he still thinks is Pietre, showing that he's likely to come to regret having rejected Pietre all this time...
  • Wilson's transformation worsens and furthers at this point, going from a confident member of the Network to assuming command as the new Mr. Rabbit.
  • Dugdale's efforts to get his family out of the country to somewhere safe are all for naught as Wilson explains to him that from now on, he will be monitored and tagged and have cameras all around him — even in his own home — and that if he steps out of line again, Alice, Grant and his wife Jen will be executed. The poor man's been through so much, and he barely holds back sobs.
  • Ian shooting Terrence, all the while crying and begging Terrence to not make him kill him. Despite his insistence that they weren't killers to Wilson, Ian is forced to take the agent's life.
  • Becky making the decision to kill herself. And as she does the deed, Ian finds out from Philip Carvel that she never had Deel's Syndrome in the first place, and the so-called treatments Donaldson had been giving her were opiates.
    • Luckily, Ian saves her, but just as he does, the Network captures the group.
    • It's at this point Carvel decides to walk out of the facility with a smile on his face, but before he can, Network agents stop him and drag the senile professor with them as part of their plans.

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