Plot
Still seeking the meaning of the three dots she's been dreaming and which are written in blood on her basement wall, Sarah travels over the desert to attend a UFO convention. She meets a woman named Eileen, who promises to take her to an online whistleblower named Abraham, who claims to be working on a mysterious project using technology beyond current human developments.
Riley helps John redecorate his bedroom. Cameron tries to intervene, but John asks her to leave. We get to see Riley's past (future) as a refugee in a human encampment, and Jesse's discovery of her and travel with her to 2007.
After some reticence, Ellison begins to teach John Henry about ethics, and why human life is sacred.
After Eileen, who turns out to actually be "Abraham", and her therapist are murdered, Sarah follows Abraham's hint to a warehouse in the desert, where she is injured in a gunfight with a security guard. She begins to have visions of her past selves and levitating drones.
Tropes
- Break the Cutie: Riley is cracking around the edges, to the point where she slits her wrists.
- Bury Your Gays: Eileen is murdered by somebody trying to cover up whatever is happening at the factory.
- Cliffhanger: A double one, as Sarah passes out after being shot at the factory, while John and Cameron discover that Riley has cut her wrists.
- Domestic Abuse: Jesse's relationship with Riley, which as it progresses over the next few episodes, becomes very dark indeed.
- Flashback with the Other Darrin: Sarah has a vision of herself at the time of T2, which of course is still played by Lena Headey.
- "Friends" Rent Control: It's never explained nor even hinted at how Jesse is paying for her posh hotel room.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: The "alien" (future) metal disappears from the storage where Aileen left it, causing Sarah to briefly assume that she is just a flake, until somebody tries to shoot both of them.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sarah's obsession with the three dots leads directly to Alan getting murdered.
- Old Friend, New Gender: Eileen turns out to be the former Abraham/Alan, who came out to herself as a trans woman in the stress of her life being threatened by her former employers. The general portrayal is sympathetic, although it is implied at a couple of points that Sarah has some anti-trans feminist tendencies.
- Red Shirt: The psychiatrist Eileen sees.
- Riddle for the Ages: Whether the drone Sarah saw hovering over her as she passed out outside the factory was a hallucination or the real thing.
- Series Continuity Error: In the flashback to Riley's first meeting with John, John still has his first-season longer hair, whereas he had actually already cut it at that point.
- Shout-Out:
- To T2. While Eileen is in the washroom, Sarah has a vision of her past self. She's wearing a tank top like she was in the film and carved "NO FATE" on the table. The hunting knife she used to carve the words spins on the table beside her.
- John Henry has BIONICLE toys, and accurately explains their characters to Ellison.
- Shower Scene: Neither a Shower of Angst nor a Shower of Love (although there is a little
Les Yay when Jessie brushes her hair), Riley's first shower in 2007 is important. - Sound-Only Death: Sarah hears Eileen and the psychiatrist being murdered through the listening device she left in the office.
