'Motherland: Fort Salem' Episode 3 Review: Alder and Tally are at the center of lighter 'A Biddy's Life'
Spoilers for 'Motherland: Fort Salem' Episode 3 'A Biddy's Life'
A part of the Wiccan culture, and a General Alder (Lyne Renee) secret highlight 'A Biddy's life'. The festival of Beltane is an important event in Wiccan culture. It marks the transition from spring to summer on the Wiccan year wheel and is considered a potent time for lust, passion, and fertility, marking the return of vitality to both the Earth and the Sun.
At Fort Salem, Beltane is the time male witches come in and that means interaction with the opposite sex. It's a bit of a respite from the everyday rigors of training, and a chance to build meaningful relationships. The episode also marks the arrival of a new character in Kai Bradbury's Gerit Buttonwood who goes on to become Tally Craver's (Jessica Sutton) potential love interest.
And in what comes as a heart-warmer, their relationship doesn't come across as a mere fling. That sort of frolicking is right up Abigail's (Ashley Nicole Williams) alley as her Beltane starts with making out with a couple of male witches and ends with humiliating Libba Swythe.
Tally's excitement when she sees the men arrive is part amusing, but also understandable. Just as calm as things are at Fort Salem, Alder's storyline sees her combat a new crisis that sees her and the highest orders of the Worlds devise a plan of action against the Spree who leave their mark with another genocide.
Alder's lifeline comes into the picture. For a while, there was a question of the old witches' purpose apart from the fact they were by her side always. It is revealed that the old witches are in fact young and fit women who give up their youth to Alder so she could reign in longer and be the inspirational leader to the witches. The transformation of Alder from a wrinkled old lady to her youthful self is definitely one of the best scenes in the series so far.
Scylla Ramshorn (Amalia Holm) has been one of those mysterious characters. In 'A Biddy's Life', we see her past being explained as she confesses about her true intentions to join Fort Salem. Her parents are revealed to be Dodgers and in an arrest gone wrong, they are killed leading Scylla to sign up and fight so as to give the world a taste of its own medicine. Now, the revenge theory seems believable, but her Spree conversation from the last episode is still weighing in, in our minds.
Further supplementing this thought is the fact that she kills Porter, one of the male witches who had been in a relationship with Scylla before. He threatens her of exposing the truth, but Scylla incants him as he attempts suicide.
After all the intense training, the rich history lesson and some character development, 'A Biddy's life' serves as a bit of lighter episode. There's enough romance in the air as Alder and Scylla get in some screentime to build their arcs. The episode keeps the unpredictability factor going and it feels like the drip-feed style of revealing details about the Spree is intentional.
This one's for Alder and Tally fans.
'Motherland: Fort Salem' airs 9 pm ET on Freeform.