Summary: Charges of treason are leveled against an unlikely suspect, meaning Wilkins must fulfill his duties as the new executioner.
The episode opens with Wilkin getting lessons from Annora how how to properly practice his new trade. She starts dropping hints about his past and how she can help him discover more about his mother. There’s a flashback showcasing Wilkin’s mom as a warrior nun, training under Annora’s husband, but the significance of this isn’t answered in the episode.
Wilkin and his team are all getting restless about wanting to take revenge, but are sidelined when they realize Ash the goat herder has vanished. Upon investigation, they find a dead man with his arms and legs cut off and left with an arrow ritualistically drawn in the dirt around him. More on that later.
Back in the village, a young rebel girl is held captive for breaking the dead Baron’s statue. The Baroness tries a gentler approach by questioning her and realizes where she must live. The group heads back to the girl’s fishing village and learn about a rebel leader simply known as The wolf. They get ambushed by more rebels and Wilkin protects the Baroness and they share a moment. It looks like they are starting to move closer.
Annora does some magic over the dead guy they found earlier and is able to pull a snake from out of his mouth and kill it. Later, its revealed she has a collection of these snakes hanging in her cave but their purpose has yet to be touched upon.
As things wrap up, the rebel girl loses her nose in punishment for damaging the statue, Wilkin is told by Corbett not to defy him and by that he means not to make any moves on the Baroness, and its revealed that one of the guards helped with the raid on the village. Revenge is coming, but it would be nice if it got here a bit quicker.
Is Wilkin’s new wife stalker obsessed with him or just playing along because she doesn’t want to go back to her crappy husband, when he shows himself again? It’s hard to tell at this point.
The team already wants vengeance and are sharpening their weapons to make sure every single person responsible for the raid on their village pays the price. It’s probably would be best if they either achieve it or have another obstacle get in their way pretty quick. If not the characters will just be angry and bitter the entire season. Something creator Kurt Sutter has pulled off before in the past with Sons of Anarchy but usually with one character, not an entire team. Their needs to be more character development here other than simply revenge.
Also, Ash comes back. Was anyone really worried about if he’d survive or not?
There is a bit too much mystery and not enough actual story development in this episode. If they are going to keep Annora such a plot-centric aspect of the show they are going to have to do something to make her moments feel more interesting. Yes, mystery surrounding her is interesting, but at this feels a bit too slow with its execution.
