by Jon Nyqvist
After learning of the terrible things to come, Aurora, Jonathan and the others must find a way to escape the clutches of Murder himself!
Back in with Afterlife, the show that has had two fantastic episodes on the trot and is rightly earning its reputation as one of the best shows going on MZP at the moment. When we last saw our team, Jonathan was unwittingly leading a spy back into camp disguised as Aurora, who was still a captive of the sinister Lord of Murder, busy plotting inside his nightmarish castle with an army of formless creatures of darkness swarming round outside. And my god, it feels good to be able to write a sentence that cool about something. So! Onwards and upwards.
We're back at the crash site for the stolen Reaver air ship, with Marius and Kate desperately trying to keep their meagre fire going as the beasties roaming the dead forest around them get ready to move in for the kill. The whispers are suddenly gone - and there's Jon and Aurora. Or Rachel, as I'll have to call her to stop getting muddled. There's some lovely interplay between the team - Kate's cutting remarks are a moment of brevity despite the current circumstances - before Murder makes an appearance to disrupt the party. And then he leaps in to the attack, heading straight for Kate - but Marius gets in the way, taking the dagger meant for Kate and earning a salute from the crowd for managing to wrangle a vaguely heroic death out of it all. Shocker number one! We're a man down already and we haven't even finished the Teaser yet! Murder advances on Kate, who runs for cover as Jon tackles the villain to the ground, but as he calls for backup from Aurora, he gets an unpleasant surprise as Rachel reveals herself at last, sinking a sword into Jon and leaving him for dead! Shocker number two! Rachel takes off in pursuit of Kate, and as Murder slinks off and Jon blacks out, we end the bloodiest Teaser in MZP history...
A horrifying vision of a child being murdered is enough to snap the captive Aurora out of her magically-induced stupor, but despite finding a handily-sized piece of rat bone to start picking through the chains round her wrists, she doesn't have long before the visions are back, and we leave Aurora to her nightmare once again. Aurora knocks herself out as we exceute a neat match cut to see Kate doing the same, stumbling blindly through the dead forest as Rachel closes in for the kill. Snapping back to the crash site, Jon shows why he's the hero as he bravely cauterises his wound with an ember from the fire, tearing up his shirt to form a makeshift bandage before finding a barrel full of oil within the remains of the Reaver. Diana materialises but Jon's not exactly in the mood for another Cryptic Hint-a-thon at the moment. Luckily for him (and us), Diana's got her Exposition Hat on, and divulges some good details on the mechanics of the Afterlife. Seems a person's soul transmits to the Afterlife pretty much the way it left, only negative emotions are given an actrual physical form - hence the dark beasties. The world we live in is overrun with pain and suffering, and that's reflected in the sheer size of the darkness plaguing the Afterlife. Murder and Betrayal (or Rachel as we know her) are two of the figureheads, drawing dark souls to them like bugs to those neon strip light things, but there's a third on its way - Pain. And that's Aurora. She's struggling to fight the darkness spreading over her, and if she loses she's going to become the show's third Big Bad! Yikes.
Act II gives us Jon putting his plan into action, making some homemade molotov cocktails before setting off in pursuit of Kate and Rachel, following the trail of stray daggers before he hears Kate scream for help. We find her stuck at the edge of a cliff, a sheer drop on one side and Rachel emerging from the forest on the other. Rachel runs through a little moustache-twiddling Evil Speak before Jon hits her with a molotov, cutting her off from Kate and giving him a chance to finish the job. Oh, and deliver another contender for Line Of The Week:
RACHEL
You... You're supposed to be--
JONATHAN
Dead? Technically, I am.
That's our boy. He requests Rachel to morph into some guy he never liked from high school (I love this guy...), but Rachel has other ideas, trying on the face of Jon's sister Jenny instead! If she thinks that's going to slow him down, she'd better think again, as Jon clips her with a dagger and launches into one of Afterlife's trademark action sequences but soon has an unpleasant surprise. Easily the better fighter, he sinks a dagger into Rachel's chest but she's unfazed by the killer blow, knocking Jon back and preparing to finish the job. Jon has a surprise of his own to spring, however, and people paying attention earlier will grin as Jon uses Rachel's sword to ignite his own, dipped in very flammable oil and now giving him a hundred percent bad ass flaming sword o'doom! It's the attention to detail that shines in moments like these, showcasing the sharp eye for clever twists to action that has made Nyqvist's scripts so damn entertaining. Jon slashes Rachel with the flame sword, and sure enough the wound doesn't heal, continuing the weakness all creatures of darkness seem to have for fire. Rachel bugs out, and as the exhausted Jon finally runs out of adrenaline he crashes to the ground, with Kate quick to run to his side. Kate wants to head back to Darkwood, but Jon's not going anywhere without Aurora, so Kate has to let him go.
Back with Aurora and another vision of suffering, Aurora is literally beating herself silly to try and stay focused, with Murder looking in on her and urging her to give up again. Aurora's not going to go down that easily, defiantly telling Murder she's never going to become a monster like him, but Murder doesn't seem too bothered as he leaves her to a fresh round of visions. As Kate nears Darkwood, we catch up with Jon again, getting a severe bout of deja vu as he prepares to break into Killer's Sanctuary again to rescue Aurora - again. He's making his way through a canyon when he hears a rumbling sound, and before he knows it, something new attacks hi - a huge Shadow T-Rex! It's an action fan's dream as Jonathan evades the huge creature, fooling it into charging headfirst into a rockface and bury itself under a ton of rubble - complete with comedy sneeze as the dust settles. Magic. Murder and Rachel know Jon's on his way and are preparing a welcome for him, as Aurora recovers long enough to set about picking her chains again. Jon shows up at the castle, leaving a trail of oil behind him as he sneaks inside. Things are suspiciously quiet, but both the audience and Jon know it's never going to stay that easy for long. He heads for the door Rachel stopped him from entering before, but is surprised as the now free and half-crazed Aurora bursts out, nearly throttling him before he can make her see who he is. Aurora demands to be knocked out so she can be spared the visions, and Jon duly does so, slinging her over his shoulder and making for the castle walls. But of course, things are never that easy. There's an entire army of dark beasties waiting for him. Bugger.
However! Despite Murder showing up to gloat again, Jon has, as we know, a Plan. He jumps over the wall, igniting his sword and setting off the trail of oil he poured out earlier, the line of fire scything a path through the waiting creatures and giving Jon the chance he needs to escape. It's an impossibly cool shot that lights up the scene (no pun intended), but as Jon makes it into the forest his troubles aren't over yet - he's got an entire army on his back! He cuts through a few that get too close before unleashing his final surprise, throwing his sword into the barrel of oil and setting off a handy firebomb, buying him enough time to make good on his getaway. Glorious. Jon reaches the edge of the dark lands, leaping into the river below and letting the waters wash him and Aurora to safety, as Murder can only watch helplessly. Jon and Aurora get washed up on a riverbank just outside Darkwood, with Jon administering some CPR to shake Aurora back to life. The two trade some snide comments (and couldn't hide their attraction if they tried) before Aurora's hit by a fresh vision, and this time it leaves her out for the count. A quick dissolve jumps us forward two days, with a sombre Jon and Kate paying their respects to Vergil and Marius (though not their actual bodies, I'd imagine, given that they're still in the middle of Beastie Central), before the duo speculate on Murder's plans given his blase speeches about 'overrunning the world with darkness' and all that. As Jon asks about Aurora, there's another contender for Line of the Week:
JONATHAN
(smiles)
It’s good karma.
KATE
What?
JONATHAN
It’s a thing... with cows.
There's a last shocker in store, however, as Kate shows Jon the darkness literally eating away at Aurora's body, and from this we finally bring down the curtain on another show.
Wow. Another action-packed thrill ride from start to finish, with Nyqvist's amazing action sequences always staying within the bounds of heroic realism - people do pull off incredible feats and stunts, yes, but there's such care and forethought given to the mechanics of them all that you can't find any fault with them. You don't groan when the tiny hero takes down a beastie the size of a dinosaur, you cheer because it all makes so much sense. Marvellous stuff. If I had to pick faults with this episode, it's that it sidelines Aurora again, something that's happened far too often this series, and it's also too short for my liking once again. That said, those can't really detract from how much fun this was from page one through to the end, so bravo for another solid episode of this cracking show.
ZPM RATING:
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