After spending last week’s episode with new characters Sophie (Barbara Hershey) and Milan (Eric Lange), Beacon 23 changes gears again in Episode 5 to focus once more on our leads Halan (Stephan James) and Aster (Lena Headey). The show has been a slow burn, but now things are heating up as secrets are revealed and a point of no return is crossed. SPOILERS for “Rocky” ahead.
Beacon 23 Episode 105 review: “Rocky”
After spending a week in the past during “God in the Machine,” Aster and Halan make a welcome return in Episode 105. We don’t get any real ties to the preceding episode, beyond our deeper understanding of just how unhinged Bart the AI (Wade Bogert-O’Brien) truly is. That plays a big part in “Rocky,” as the episode finally reveals how Halan ended up on Beacon 23 in the first place and why Bart has such a vendetta against him. If there was any doubt that Halan might actually be a coldblooded murderer like Bart has been saying all season, this episode lays them pretty firmly to rest.
This episode essentially has two acts. The first explores how Aster is handling her murder of Coley (Sandrine Holt). It turns out Aster is treating this as the turning point she should; she’s ditching the QTA to head off on her own with the space rocks. This hard break leads her to the realization that Halan’s battle suit is similar to Coley’s and would have recorded his experiences during his final mission where he seemingly abandoned his squad.
At long last, we find out that Halan inhaled some sort of fume from a sample of the mysterious space rocks which lie at the heart of the series. He doesn’t remember anything beyond that point, but the suit recorded everything. Afterward, he ditched his companions and headed to Beacon 23 under the rock’s influence.
Dear Bart the AI: Stop being so scary, please
From there, we dive into another part of Halan’s past for the back half of the episode. Hoping to convince Aster and Harmony (Natasha Mumba) that Halan is a crazy murderer, Bart plays back footage from Halan’s arrival on Beacon 23 and his interactions with previous beacon keeper Solomon (Stephen Root). The Solomon scenes are a total highlight of the episode; Root plays a quirky, egotistical scientist complete with a very refined British accent. Solomon’s fate and the nature of the rocks are two of the biggest mysteries of the series, and “Rocky” finally gives us all the information we need about them.
It turns out that Halan didn’t murder Solomon. Instead, Solomon tried to abandon Halan out at space, which started them off on rocky footing. It turns out that the rocks influenced Halan to go to the Beacon, which led to him essentially taking it over and taking Solomon prisoner. Solomon tried everything to escape, including sabotaging a passing ship that would have stranded hundreds more people at space.
In the end, Solomon believed Halan was there to steal his research and fled using Halan’s ship. The only problem was that Halan wasn’t lying about his ship being out of oxygen; his last act was to try and warn Solomon. But of course Solomon didn’t answer the comms, and then Bart went on a tirade about how he would make Halan’s life a living hell, forcing the former soldier to shut off Bart’s ability to speak.
That about catches us up to where the show starts. It also reinforces that Bart is, in fact, the worst. Wade Bogert-O’Brien’s performance as the AI has become one of the most disconcerting aspects of the show. Anytime Bart opens his proverbial mouth, you know it’s going to be unnerving. A sociopathic AI who is happy to try and kill people by venting the oxygen or opening doors to launch them into space is pretty scary.
The space rocks from Brooklyn
Bart isn’t the only disembodied voice we spend time with in “Rocky.” The other is the actual space rock, which Solomon dubbed “Solominium” since it was his discovery. The reveal that the rocks have been influencing Halan through a brain virus is somewhat predictable, but the ways it plays out keep things very interesting. For starters, the rock talks to him with what sounds like an accent straight out of New York City. It’s kind of hilarious.
That adds to the feeling that Halan is hallucinating throughout the episode, because why would a space rock talk with a historic Earth accent Halan obviously would never have heard out in the depths of space? It’s absurd, but it also works.
Any humor drains away in the episode’s final moments, when the rock ominously proclaims “this is what we brought you here for,” as Halan opens the satellite hatch, allowing all of the stored space rocks to float out into the freedom of space. There’s very clearly something sentient about them as they swirl around the beacon, destroying section after section until Aster and Halan are trapped up at the very top in the lighthouse room.
The episode ends with a breathtaking visual of the rocks forming a mysterious shape in space, floating just outside the beacon’s window. Aster and Halan hold hands, and we get some sounds from Aster’s childhood as she realizes her suspicions that the space rocks held special significance for her are confirmed.
How exactly are the space rocks connected to Aster’s past? What are they? And what will happen when the QTA backup team arrives at Beacon 23 to find that it’s mostly destroyed? There are a lot of exciting questions Beacon 23 has to answer in its final three episodes, and with Halan and Aster trapped there’s nowhere to go but forward.
Verdict
“Rocky” pulls back the curtain on some of Beacon 23’s biggest mysteries, giving viewers a lot of welcome information as the stakes skyrocket. There are times that the episode felt just a tiny bit disjointed, with characters making decisions so fast that it was hard to track their motivations, but the mind-bending element of the space rock influence makes it feel like much of that could be intentional. Between the chilling AI Bart, the backstory with Solomon, and the ultimate reveal of space rock sentience, we’ve got a lot of great set up for the final run of episodes.
Episode grade: B+
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels