With the fate of the whole planet on the line, Kovacs, Quell and team race to find Konrad Harlan and stop a catastrophic blast of Angelfire.
Tropes in this episode:
- All Love Is Unrequited: Quell leaves the planet to start a revolution elsewhere rather than stay with the other Kovacs. She finds herself haunted by a hallucination of the Kovacs she lost, just like Kovacs was haunted by his hallucinations of Quell and Reileen.
- Ambiguous Situation: Was the human DHF stored in Poe a backup of Kovacs? Poe seems to think so, but the series was Cut Short so we'll never know.
- Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: Kovacs, Quell, Trepp and Poe are all set to fight against the unit of Praetorians surrounding them. When gunfire breaks out however, no bullets come through the walls. Kovacs cautiously opens the door to find his other self has killed every Praetorian single-handed.Kovacs Prime: (lowering his gun) I Come in Peace.
- Big "NO!": Quell when Kovacs has his Dying Moment of Awesome.
- Bittersweet Ending: The heroes prevent the rampaging Elder from wiping out the Harlan's World colony from orbit and take out the Elder in the process. The ultra-corrupt governor and Carrera/Jaeger are RD'd, but so is the primary Takeshi via Heroic Sacrifice. It's softened by the ambiguity of the whole situation, though, plus a backup of Tak from before he became a Quellist is still around and has joined the good guys. All the other protagonists survived, too.
- Combination Attack: The Final Battle has Kovacs and Quell tag-team Carrera. Later Kovacs Prime joins them as well.
- Cliffhanger: Poe and Dig/Annabel discover there's a human DHF stored on Poe's program. The series ends with them spinning it up to find out who it belongs to.
- Creepy Souvenir: Danica keeps her father's destroyed stack in a box, for when she's feeling sentimental.
- Dramatic Thunder: The sound of the Angelfire grid powering up is played like this trope.
- Easily Forgiven: Though Kovacs Prime killed Trepp's father and hurt Ms. Dig, Trepp and Poe don't take vengeance on him after Kovacs is killed. The Protectorate is also weighing up whether to have him executed for double-sleeving, but as he takes credit for killing the Last Envoy it's implied they'll let him live if he shows his support for the interim government.
- Enemy Mine: Our heroes approach Governor Harlan directly to get her to help them stop the Elder. Quell promises her control of Angelfire, but has no intention of delivering. It's no surprise when Harlan doesn't keep her word either.
- Fanservice: A walking nude Lela Loren after her backup resleeves in another body after Trepp shot her in the previous episode.
- Forced Friendly Fire: Kovacs executes Carrera by forcing the latter's finger onto the trigger of his own gun.
- Get Out!: Trepp leaves the party and evicts everyone from her father's store after learning about his death.
- Headbutt of Love: Followed by a Last Kiss between Kovacs and Quell.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Rather than let Quell give her life to stop the Elder, Kovacs takes it into himself then calls down Angelfire to immolate them both, turning his stack into slag. He may have backed up his personality with some help from Poe beforehand.
- Hope Spot: Danica Harlan appears to talk down the Elder, offering her father's dead stack as proof that the last Founder is dead. She then draws a pistol she hid inside the container and shoots Carrera, saying it was naive to think that would ever be enough to placate it.
- Identity Amnesia: Poe, in the epilogue, but it's suggested he'll recover.
- If My Calculations Are Correct: Line said by Poe right before revealing to the group that the orbitals are about to converge at the Needlecast Station.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Kovacs tries to get through to Carrera while the latter is taken over by the Elder spirit. It works, making Carrera sloppy enough for Kovacs to wrangle him into a Forced Friendly Fire situation.
- In the Hood: Quell and Kovacs wear hoods in the street so they won't get identified by security.
- Ironic Echo: Danica uses Quellisms like "make it personal" and "take what is offered".
- It's All About Me: Danica's first act on being resleeved is to slap her aide for running out on her, never mind that he was in agony from an impaled eyeball.
- Loophole Abuse: The Restraining Bolt on Kovacs's Wedge sleeve prevents it from firing on Carrera no matter how much Kovacs wants to. Kovacs gets around this by twisting Carrera's gun toward his own stack and then making Carrera pull the trigger.
- Near-Villain Victory: Kovacs and Quell interrupt Carrera just as the latter is about to start the sequence that would cause the destruction of all human life on the planet.
- Never Found the Body: Kovacs Prime tells the investigating board that Quellcrist Falconer was incinerated by the Kill Sat. Inevitably there are rumors that she survived, which he dismisses. He also takes credit for killing the Last Envoy as well.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Danica Harlan regards herself as being no different from Quell, taking extreme measures to stand up to the Protectorate who were intent on looting the planet with the help of her father.
- Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Kovacs Prime reveals to Trepp that he was responsible for her father's death and that he won't fight back if she decided to kill him for it.
- Redemption Equals Death: Quell blames herself for inventing stack technology in the first place, which is what caused the Planet Looters to come to Harlan's World in the first place. She's therefore willing to kill herself to stop the Elder destroying the planet.
- Rivals Team Up: Kovacs Prime officially joins the heroes in their fight against orbital destruction.
- Rousing Speech: Kovacs Prime delivers a pep talk to Trepp when the latter refuses to help track the orbitals with her coils. He reminds her of how her father believed in her. It works.
- Self-Made Orphan: Konrad Harlan has been Dead All Along. His own daughter launched a secret coup and shot him in the stack, then destroyed all his backups.
- Star-Crossed Lovers:
- Quell tells Kovacs that their getting close back at Stronghold was the cause of all the misery. And that they should better go their separate ways.
- Ms. Dig mourned the 'death' of Poe after he shut down, and when Poe is brought back on line months later he seems to have no memory of her, or who he once was. She takes the name of "Annabel Lee" from Edgar Allan Poe's poem about a love that transcends death, and gets to work on helping Poe reconstruct himself.
- Tempting Fate: During her Evil Gloating, Danica boasts that this world is hers, right before getting Real Deathed by Carrera.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Quell threatened to Harlan that she could take over from the deceased Kemp and launch a genuine Uprising using his followers. Yet she leaves the planet at the end of the episode because she says the Uprising has died there, so she goes to start one on another planet.
- Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: An interesting inversion of motives as part of Kovacs Prime's Rousing Speech to Trepp when he points out how her father praised her in his final moments.
