Review: Into The Badlands Episode 3 ‘White Stork Spreads Wings’

War has come to the Badlands.  Escaping the Widow’s trap in the previous episode, Quinn, Sunny, and the Clippers march into enemy territory. Coming face to face with the Widow in another stellar fight scene, Quinn is a stroke away when that tumor discovered in the previous episode decides to give him a crippling migraine.  The Widow makes her escape with Tilda and a small group of bodyguards while Quinn’s Clippers dispatch the remaining opposition. Quinn now holds the Widow’s oil fields along with his territory and holding that territory will stretch his forces thin.

Ryder, Quinn’s son, lays in a coma after being nearly strangled to death while his mother Lydia (Orla Brady) watches over him.  She also has to contend with Quinn’s new bride-to-be, Jade (Sarah Bolger).  As a Baron can take as many wives as he pleases, Lydia sees Jade as a threat to her position in the household, even though she’d never show it.  Veil (Sunny’s pregnant lover) seems to have inherited her fathers medical duties for Quinn and suggests a trepanning (drilling a small hole to relieve pressure), which Lydia refuses to do until convinced that it will give him a chance to recover.

Elsewhere, Sunny struggles to train M.K., powerful but still a teenager, he refuses to train the way Sunny wants him to train.  To teach him a lesson, Sunny brings M.K. to Waldo.  Waldo (Stephen Lang) was formerly Regent and Quinn’s foremost Clipper before ending up in a wheelchair.  Sunny tells M.K. that if the boy can land one blow, he will train the way M.K. wants to train.  A solid fight sequence between the teenager and the wheelchair bound former Clipper is much lighter in tone than the other fights seen in this series so far, but is still well executed and engaging.

Sunny is dispatched to track down the “doll” who set Ryder up, and is it turns out she is working for The Widow.  Failing to capture her alive, Sunny is left with a corpse, no answers, and trying to figure out how to cover both his barons’ poppy fields and the oil fields of The Widow.

A solid episode, not as action packed as the previous two but a lot of narrative movement.  We learn that Quinn’s medical condition is worse than he expected.  Sunny is torn between his love for Vail and desire to leave the Badlands, his allegiance to his baron, and his promise to train M.K., and The Widow is alive, in hiding, and planning revenge.

Into The Badlands airs Sunday nights on AMC at 9pm ET