Afterlife 1x09 'The Cure'

by Jon Nyqvist

As Aurora's mysterious condition becomes rapidly worse, Jonathan sets out to find a mythical healer in search of a cure. What he finds turns out to be quite different...

Back to the Afterlife with you, then, for another slice of top notch fantasy action in what is rapidly becoming cementing its place as one of the best shows on MZP at the moment. Last week (he says, quickly checking back) we had Jon and his buddies trying to escape the clutches of the Lord of Murder, with a body-swapping villainess and two deaths making things more than tricky for our heroes. They managed to make it back to the town of Darkwood, but our closing shot was of Aurora gradually succumbing to the poisonous magic Murder infected her with, so let's hope things can only get better for Aurora as we head back in...
Everybody's bummed out in Darkwood Inn. Kate's mourning the loss of Marius, and her pain is washing over the whole pub in waves as we track upstairs to find Aurora, still afflicted by the terrible visions of pain that Murder left her with, as Jonathan looks on helplessly. With no other way to vent his anger, he sets up a rudimentary punching bag and lets rip, watched from afar by our two Big Bads themselves, Murder and Betrayal. Murder is patiently waiting for Aurora to finish her transformation into Pain, at which point she'll join them in a triumverate of terror, but Betrayal has other ideas (let's not forget that she's the reincarnated form of the younger Aurora's teenage nemesis Rachel), and sneaks off to finish the job!

Jonathan wakes from a fitful night's sleep to be greeted by the Queen of Cryptic herself, Diana. Diana tells Jonathan of a being that may be able to help Aurora, but getting a cure out of it won't be an easy task. Like that'd stop our Jon Boy! Pausing to administer an Unrequited Sexual Tension-creating gesture to the sleeping Aurora (because while technically he's slept withher, it was in fact Betrayal in disguise... keeping up? Good), he's off on his merry, getting his Action Hero Kit together as Kate peeks in on him. Kate doesn't want a warrior like Jon leaving the village now that Murder's forces are on the move, but she knows why he's going - to save Aurora. Kate can't understand why Jon would risk his life for her, but can't stand in his way as he leaves to do the hero thing. She manages to wish him good luck as he leaves - just as Lianna and her kids arrive (remember them? Rory saved them from her old bandit crew back around episode four). Lianna settles her family into the inn as we rejoin Jonathan, trekking LOTR-style across the wilderness. He pauses to grab a drink of water - but attracts the attention of a white tiger, who pounces towards Jon and forces him to fight back. He dodges it a few times but is saved by the... well... tentacle. Seriously. A big honkin' black tentacle snaps out from the lake and drags the tiger to its doom, and Jon takes the hint to leg it before whatever's lurking beneath the water comes back for dessert! We change scenes to catch up with a familiar face - Trias the bandit who usurped control of the Ravens from Aurora but was left with one less eye as a result. Trias has been interrogating local peasants to try and track Aurora down without success, but in so doing the Ravens' stranglehold on the local territories is slipping. Trias only cares about finding Aurora, however, but he's about to get some help as a red-haired woman slinks into his throne room - and it's Betrayal!

Kate is shaken out of her thoughts as Lianna appears for a chat later, sharing their tales of woe over a drink. You have to ask how long before Lianna finds out Aurora's upstairs, and what she's going to do about it when she does! We rejoin Jon, camping out in a chill wind at the foot of a mountain and trying to cook some dinner, Diana popping up again to offer some culinary advice, and point him towards the next waypoint - you guessed it, right up the mountain. Back with Trias, Betrayal tries to seduce him but he manages to resist - for now. She's led away to a room by herself for the night as Trias settles down to plan his raid on Aurora in the morning. A drunk Kate and Lianna are busy talking when Kate finally mentions Aurora, and that she's upstairs - and incapacitated. Lianna knows she's got a chance here to get some payback for the murder of her husband (although she doesn't know yet that Aurora and the leader of the Ravens are/were one and the same), as we rejoin Jon and Diana as he asks her if there's anybody else out there in the Afterlife willing to fight the Darkness - and she answers that if there is, then they may well be at the top of the mountain! Hmm. Back at Darkwood Inn, Lianna creeps in on the comatose Aurora, recognising her as the woman she nursed back to health, and then descending into fury as she puts the pieces together. Aurora killed her man. This can not end well. She digs the knife in and start to draw blood...

... but Nera stops her! Lianna tries to get her daughter out of the way, but Nera speaks for the first time since she was attacked by Raven thugs many years ago, managing to get Lianna to leave. However! It seems Nera isn't so ready to forgive Aurora either, telling her she 'doesn't deserve death' as she exits - and Aurora wakes up! Jon is still climbing that darn mountain as Trias and Betrayal ride towards Darkwood - and here's the Line Of The Week!

BETRAYAL
Well well, aren’t you perceptive?
For a one eyed man, anyway.

There's one last surprise in store, in one of those trademark cinematic shots that serve Afterlife so well, as we pull back to see Trias has brought a hundred bloodthirsty thugs along with him! Eep... Jon's approaching a cave up in the mountain as we return to Darkwood, just as Trias' army rides past a watchtower on the outskirts of the village (after a neat little moment with the guard on watch). The guard manages to light a smoke signal, alerting Kate back in Darkwood as we cut to the icy cave Jon has finally clambered into. He narrowly misses a falling icicle, sliding down a slope and into the depths of the cave. Back at Darkwood (the jump cuts from scene to scene really helping build the growing tension here - Buffy used a similar trick in the episode 'Touched'), Kate is now in charge as she orders the villagers to safety, packing Lianna in along with them. She races back to Aurora's room, knowing that she's the only one the Ravens want, but Aurora's gone. Kate runs off - missing Aurora, stood right behind the door. Aurora hears the approaching army and spies Trias at its head, so as she slips away we cut down to the main square just as the horde of Ravens dismount. Gosh, this is exciting, isn't it? The village is deserted, so as the Ravens start to tear the place apart we return to Jon in the ice cave. There's a chasm before him with a pathway of sorts composed of tall pillars of ice, Golden Child style, so Jon takes the plunge and leaps for the first one. Which, of course, breaks under his weight, forcing him to leap from pillar to pillar as they crumble beneath him. A John Woo moment closes the scene as Jon sails through dead air, managing to stick his sword into the wall opposite, hanging over the abyss as the pillars of ice crash beneath him.Classic. Back at Darkwood, Trias finds to his anger that the villagers have hijacked an old Raven stronghold for their own, ready to fight off any attempt to dislodge them. As Betrayal gets ten Ravens sent back to the village to keep looking for Aurora, Trias prepares to march on the fortress, ready to slaughter every last villager for their defiance. There's a quick shot of Jon stumbling across something impressive inside the cave, as the last words go to Kate and Lianna, knowing that Aurora isn't with them and getting ready to face almost a hundred murderous bandits...

Now, that in itself would be an excellent cliffhanger for the episode, but there's still another Act to go, as we catch Aurora doing her Metal Gear Solid routine, slitting one thug's throat and then downing another with a handy guitar. What a waste! Jonathan, meanwhile, has found a cathedral sculpted out of ice deep within the cave, glowing with unearthly light as he heads inside. Back at the Raven fortress, it's all gone a bit Return Of The King as the besieged villagers struggle against the Raven onslaught. Crossbow bolts rain down from all sides as a battering ram is wheeled out (and no, they didn't bring it with them - Nyqvist makes a point of describing it as a 'recently cut down tree'), but the smugly watching Trias hasn't noticed Aurora creeping up on him, garrotte-style guitar string in hand... At the Cathedral Of Ice, Jon converses with some mystical-looking beings of light, but they aren't exactly forthcoming with help. After telling him there's no hope for Aurora (but some cryptic mentions of 'Hope' which I picked up on), they beam him back to the foot of the mountain, and even without the fists-pounding-into-mountain moment, this is about as low as it gets for him. Back at Darkwood, however, we're about to get Trias vs. Aurora, Round Two. Oh yes. She fails in her attempt to guitar string him to death, the duo drawing swords and getting ready to Mortal Kombat each other. The fight is as breathtaking as ever, but despite taking a bad wound, Aurora finds her darkness has one advantage - it heals her up! She catches the surprised Trias off guard, slamming him into a tree and finally finishing him off. Job done. The fortress doors are about to fall under the Ravens' attack, but Aurora has the best way to end this one. She skewers Trias' head to the fortress walls, and as the Ravens leave in disarray, Aurora leaves the cheering villagers behind. I think that settles her debt to them quite nicely, don't you? Betrayal watches her go, melting back into the shadows (and the touch with her hair staying visible for a beat longer is just one of the little details that make this show so colourful) as we dissolve back to the Inn. Aurora is up in bed as Jonathan returns, glad to see her up and about but discouraged by her telling him that the visions are still there - she's just numb to them now. The ominous words of the beings in the cathedral echo in Jonathan's ears as we black out...

Fan-bloody-tastic. The longest episode yet, and the addition of a few extra pages adds that little extra that I've been looking for in this series. Okay, so the Jon/Aurora epilogue feels a little too brief, but when the rest of the episode is this magnificent I really can't nitpick like that. Absorbing, atmospheric location, a brilliantly-paced sense of amping the tension as we flick between Jon's mountain climb and the siege at Darkwood, some trademark spectacular action and the usual polish of witty dialogue, plus some more development into both the backstory of the Afterlife itself and the overall arc for this latter half of the season. Jonathan is like every 80's action hero you wanted to be, his journey through the ice cavern the stuff that great films are made of. Aurora, by contrast, is like one of those kick-ass martial arts chicks in the movies you were never allowed to rent from the video shop, the unashamedly old school sense of adventure and thrills here making a perfect companion to the fantasy setting, the two genres blending together seamlessly. Okay, so Aurora is sidelined for a lot of the episode again, but Kate's star turn keeps things on track, and the last-minute development in Aurora's final fight with Trias pumps up the intrigue a little more. This feels like a good closing chapter to this chunk of the story - Aurora's back and on her feet and the Ravens are banished - now we've got three episodes to take out the Big Bad. Wonderful stuff.