“It’s not a question of what I want. Your destiny is already unfolding before you.”
- The Oracle
We begin in a dark wooded area as a young woman is chased by a giant monster. She falls a couple times but manages to get up before the monster catches her and she screams. I don’t know why she’s not up and running again personally. We cut to Jason looking very tired and bored surrounded by crates. He hears a noise and ends up tackling Hercules (whose been drinking at the tavern). They have apparently been getting gigs a rent-a-cop types to look after rich merchant’s wares. Jason’s just bored out of his skull and takes off to visit the Oracle. He wants answers as to why he’s in Atlantis and what’s so special about him but she won’t give him the information he seeks. She says she’s trying to protect him and that with time, everything will make sense. I feel like she’s his mother and just isn’t telling him. I suppose we’ll find out eventually if that theory is correct.
The next morning, Hercules awakes from his drunken stupor (thanks to a goat) to find the cargo they were guarding is gone. No big surprise there. After a brief argument, someone starts pounding on the door. They think it’s the merchant come to see about his cargo so Py and Hercules hide while Jason answers it. It turns out to be an old man, hoping to employ their services to locate his missing daughter (aka the screaming chick from the start of the episode). Jason promises they’ll do all they can to find her.
Jason has somehow gotten a servant girl to sneak him into the kitchens. They get caught by Ariadne but she lets them go and wishes Jason luck on his quest to find the missing girl. He enlists one of the other kitchen staff to show him where the missing girl would have gone to gather herbs. He realizes something’s sketchy when she keeps taking him further from the city. She tries to kill him but he defends himself and she ultimately takes the Greek version of a cyanide pill. Py and Hercules have their own issues as the merchant has come to collect. They manage to lose him and get home in time to give Jason a rundown of who the dead kitchen lady really was. She’s a follower of Dionysus and they probably took the missing girl to initiate her into their cult. Oh and they’ve got man eating satyrs too. Groovy!
We get a glimpse of what the followers of Dionysus are like (aka creepy savage chicks who act kind of feral). A poor guy who got lost is sacrificed as the missing girl (now an initiate) watches. Jason provides the news that she’s likely been initiated to her father and he is understandably distraught at the news. Jason makes the decision to rescue the girl, even though no man has ever returned alive from a trek to the temple. Reluctantly, Hercules agrees to join Jason and Pythagoras on their trip ad he takes first watch that night and gets kind of spooked by the woods. And in what is not a surprise to anyone, he sees a woman through the threes and goes after her. The followers of Dionysus nearly catch him but the missing girl saves him and risks her own life to let him get away. She stabs herself and sucks some of her own blood to make it look like she drank his blood (because that’s not gross at all). The next morning Py and Jason wake up minus their big boned buddy only to have him fall from a tree. He tells the tale with only slight embellishment and it seems he’s really fallen for his savior. So they head off to the temple and Hercules is first to head off to try and break in. Kind of a surprise really. Of course they get caught and the girl he thinks is the one who saved him is not her. They get caught and the high priestess summons the girl who did save his life. She gets thrown into the pit and Jason dives in after her.
It turns out the satyrs are afraid of Jason for some reason. And the girl isn’t the one who he came to find but someone else named Medusa (yes probably that Medusa). They escape the pit and reconnect with Py and Hercules but they don’t have a very good escape plan. They do find the missing girl but she’s been initiated and refuses to leave with them. So Hercules knocks her out and they take off while the high priestess swears to kill them in the name of Dionysus. Things aren’t looking so good when the missing girl wakes up and takes off. Jason goes after her and he knocks out a bunch of the priestesses but it is the girl who finally stops her. It’s unclear if she dies or just refuses to return and see her father. Either way, she doesn’t make the trip back to Atlantis with them. Medusa goes in her place and consoles her father. It seems they both needed a little comfort and that maybe uniting them was really Jason’s purpose. He pays yet another visit to the Oracle (I have a feeling this is going to be the Merlin/Great Dragon relationship on the show) and she says that his and Medusa’s fates are linked and that he’s more than just a regular man. She’s very cryptic. I know that’s to be expected from an oracle but still. You would expect her to be a little more helpful than that.
Overall, I think this episode starts to show us how the series is going to unfold. It’s a bit more “baddie of the week” than I was expecting but I suppose that’s partly how Merlin started out. They’re still populating the world with various mythical creatures and people and that will take time. Honestly though, the satyrs were more monkey-like than goats. We will see how the show progresses, though it’s already been confirmed that season 2 is a go on both sides of the pond.
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