Orphan Black S1 Ep9 – Unconscious Selection

I am cutting this one close.

Alright gals and guys. The season finale of Orphan Black is upon us and that means the clone conspiracy comes to a close. Or does it. Let’s back pedal to last episode.

So the episode before this ended with Sarah’s daughter, Kira, getting hit by a car as she was let go by kidnapping clone, Helena. This episode picks up from that heart-wrenching cliffhanger as Kira is rushed to the emergency room, where being a daughter of a clone has its medical benefits. Kira makes a near miraculous full recovery, something Cosima theorizes must be akin to lizards regrowing limbs. Whether or not this is something the Neolutionists intended in their self-guided evolution is yet to be revealed.

Speaking of Cosima, she has a confrontation with Delphine about her role with Dr. Leekie and the Neolutionists. Delphine admits that she was told to befriend and betray Cosima, but she fell in love and couldn’t bring herself to reveal that Sarah has a biological daughter.

Dr. Leekie also does some confrontation of his own with Paul. He lets on that he knows about Sarah and would like to meet her. Especially if she can help bring in Helena. Paul arranges the meet and greet on Sarah’s terms at an abandoned construction site. He doesn’t reveal much about the cloning conspiracy, but does help Sarah fill in the gaps about Maggie Chen and Helena. Turns out Helena’s handlers are a religious opposition group called Prolethians. It was this group that Maggie came from to sabotage the experiment; when that failed Helena was set to the task of killing the clones.

While Felix waits for a normal life to return, he is busied by helping Allison in suburbia gather up some belongings while her drama blows over. But no, drama not over, because her family and friends are waiting for her with an intervention all at the behest of Aynsley. At first Allison can’t handle the confrontation and tucks tail and runs to the bathroom, until Felix convinces her to be the bigger and better bitch and call Aynsley on her crap. Needless to say, Allison wins this round.

Sarah has a hard choice before her: she can either bring Helena in or she can kill her. Helena also has a choice before her: she can either bring Sarah in to Tomas or die. Her initial refusal to do so ends with her thrown into a dog kennel, but some MacGyver-grappling-hook-making allows her access to her cell phone, where she calls Sarah for help. Sarah sees this as her moment of truth: rescue or kill. It should be noted that everyone thinks Sarah should bring Helena in for help, regardless of the jeopardy she put Kira in.

Sarah can’t bring herself to kill Helena, so she sets her free. While Helena is determined to hug out any negative feelings, Tomas shows back up with orders that she kill Sarah, with lies that Helena is the original and that Kira belongs with them. Sarah, on the other hand, convinces Helena that Tomas will only do to Kira what he did to her. Helena viciously attacks Tomas, and Sarah  prevents her from clawing out his eyes by knocking her out.

With Helena in the trunk of her car, she returns to Mrs. S’s before meeting up with Dr. Leekie. But Mrs. S urges her to release Helena by dropping the bomb shell that Sarah’s surrogate mother is in town. But prepare yourself for another twist. As Sarah’s mother explains, she was a poor South African woman hired by a rich scientist couple to have their child, but she ran away when she got suspicious about the pregnancy and delivered twins. Yeah. Sarah and Helena aren’t just clones, they are twins. Upon birth her mother gave one child to the state, Sarah, and the other to the church, Helena.

During all this Cosima’s lab partner comes back with information about the blind genetic test he did, and it reveals that the clones aren’t totally identical. They all seem to have some kind of variance in their genes that acts like a barcode, so whoever is running the tests on the clones knows from which clone it’s from.

Also, Art and Angie aren’t exactly sitting on their butts all day. Though initially confused on how Beth and Sarah and Katya have the same prints, Art digs deeper into the suicide by train victim “Sarah.” He decides to actually check the security feed of the incident, and sees the brief meeting between Beth and Sarah right before Beth walks in front of the train. He also sees Sarah walk away with Beth’s purse, thus realizing what we’ve all known from the start: Beth is dead and Sarah has been pretending to be her all along. This is all the information he needs to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sarah Manning.

Cue dramatic and suspenseful music.

After the final episode hopefully all of our questions will be answered. I cannot wait to see how this plays out. But if you think this is the end, remember: they’ve renewed this show for a second season, so expect some modicum of non-explanation.

You can catch up on “Unconscious Selection” with Amazon Instant Video.