Raised by Wolves review: “The Tree” has devastating payoffs

It’s time for another episode review of Raised by Wolves, the only science fiction show on the air that makes us wonder what’s going to happen with the snake baby. Will the tree of knowledge take root? And will the Atheist Collective keep its lack of faith even with the supposed Mithraic prophet Marcus coming into their midst?

As always, this review will have SPOILERS for this week’s episode of Raised by Wolves, so watch it first then come back and nerd out with us. There’s a lot to talk about this week, and we’re going to get right into it.

Raised by Wolves review: “The Tree”

Much of last week’s episode focused on Sue’s (Niamh Algar) struggle to heal her kind-of-son Paul (Felix Jamieson), and while she did prove successful after returning to Sol’s light, things ended on a rather ominous note. In return for helping her heal Paul from becoming a cocoon snake (no, I did not make that up), she promises to do anything that Sol asks of her.

“The Tree” makes good on that promise in some pretty heavy ways. Once again Sue is a huge focus, which is only fitting since it is seemingly her swan song. After Marcus (Travis Fimmel) is captured and brought into custody at the Atheist Collective, Sue commits to the way of Sol and ends up rescuing him so that they can go out into the wild with their son and plant the seed for the Tree of Knowledge, which she lifted from the Tarantula spaceship’s artifact repository. At first she seems none too happy to see him…but after everything she’s gone through to heal Paul, it turns out that Sue has finally kicked her Atheist worldview and is ready to do Sol’s bidding, even knowing full well that it’s not a god, but an alien signal manipulating events. The moment where she comes into the torture room and punches Marcus only for the two to reconcile was great, and it led to the episode’s climax.

Of course, things don’t end well. After singing a Mithraic lullaby and inadvertently opening the container with the tree’s seed, the seed melts into Sue’s hand. She loses it and begins digging. The following morning, there stands the Tree of Knowledge…and Sue is no more. The reveal that Sue became the tree was done so well. The information was conveyed entirely through Travis Fimmel’s facial expressions and a handful of special effects, and man did they nail it.

The fact that the Tree of Knowledge now exists is a big game changer for the final two episodes of the season. Hopefully we’ll get an idea of how snake-baby Number Seven is tied to the tree as well, considering how agitated it got when Sue and Paul were trying to cut through the box containing its seed earlier in the episode. Mysteries, mysteries.

Father, Mother, and the newcomer

There was a lot more to this episode than just Sue, Paul and Marcus. Mother (or Lamia, as she’s now commonly being called) discovers the ancient android that Father (Abubakar Salim) had regrown. This android is constructed in a similar way to Mother, speaks ancient Mithraic, and is likely tied to whatever original civilization existed on Kepler-22b. Raised by Wolves continues to remind me of Lost in the way that it constantly introduces new questions for every one that it answers.

As we all might have guessed, Mother (Amanda Collin) does not react well to the new android. After a brief but very cool showdown between them, the new golden android is hooked up to a bunch of diagnostic machines that allow for a deeper look at her anatomy. The effects are extremely cool, with Father tossing bits of data to different parts of the room where they expand to become wall-size displays. Salim is always ridiculously enjoyable to watch on this show, and Collin continues to toe the line between sympathetic and terrifying really well.

We’re left still wondering about this mystery android, because after discovering that she’s awoken in a time where there’s only a few hundred people on Kepler-22b, she short circuits and shuts off.

Baby in the acid ocean

That brings us to the last major plotline for this episode: Tempest’s baby. This is one of the longest running plot threads on Raised by Wolves. We first learned that Tempest (Jordan Loughran) was pregnant during one of her very first appearances in season 1, and that it was the result of a rape that took place while she was in stasis. That whole plotline was pretty disturbing, but it is to the show’s credit that it has taken a lot of time to examine the psychological aspects of Tempest’s situation.

Thanks to Mother’s takeover of the Collective, Tempest is desperate. Hours before her baby is due, she slips out a window and makes her way out across the rocky beachfront of the Tropical Zone. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire birth scene, which was really beautifully shot and acted. Though I will say, the animatronic baby did jar me out of the scene a little bit. Perhaps it’s because the rest of the effects on Raised by Wolves are always so exceptionally good, but that baby weirded me out.

The fact that you don’t quite know how Tempest is going to react to seeing her baby until the moment that it actually happens speaks volumes about how well everything was executed; I half expected her to toss it into the sea, which just made it even more compelling when she finally breaks down in tears and hugs it to her shoulder.

Of course, it all just makes what actually happens even more horrible. Drawn by the baby’s cries, one of the humanoid sea creatures that lives in the acid ocean sneaks up on Tempest, takes the baby while she screams that it’s hers, and then puts it into a cavity in its chest and jumps back in the ocean. From the preview for next week’s episode we know that the baby is still alive, but man was it horrible, with Loughran’s acting really selling the terror.

Raised by Bullet Points

• Sad to see that this is potentially Sue’s last episode. Niamh Algar has done a great job with the character, and I’ll miss her on the show. Although, on Raised by Wolves anything is possible. If Paul can come back from being a human cocoon, who’s to say Sue can’t un-tree herself? But I’m not betting on it. This had the air of a send-off for the character as we know her.
• Speaking of the tree, am I the only one who was really creeped out by how fleshy its fruit looks? Knowing that the tree was made from a person made it just plain uncomfortable.
• Lucius (Matias Varela) also developed in some very cool ways this week. Seeing him toe the line between working with Mother and Father while still holding true to his values as the “last true Mithraic” gave him a lot more depth. He’s not a character I ever thought I’d like as much as I do, which is a credit to the long-game development he’s had.
• Campion is now aware that the “Sol” that saved him in the woods was actually the android Father revived, which he dubs Grandmother. He seems to have some kind of connection to the android. Very curious to see where that leads.
• Marcus and Lamia’s scene was a highlight of the episode. Even though Marcus is loathsome, I still felt a twist in my gut when Lamia demanded he renounce his faith. It’s that kind of inflexible worldview that continues to make Lamia a borderline villain depending on the situation. Plus, any time Travis Fimmel and Amanda Collin come face-to-face you know it’s going to be a gripping scene.

The verdict

“The Tree” was another very solid episode of Raised by Wolves. With the exception of the animatronic baby, the effects were as good as ever and the acting was top notch. We finally got some answers to several long-standing mysteries, but of course far more questions were added on to the pile. While some of the quieter scenes this week feel like they could be forgettable compared with the events of the past few episodes, Tempest’s birth scene and Sue’s fate mark this as a really important turning point. The board has been rearranged for the season’s final two episodes.

Episode Grade: B+

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