'Pandora' Season 2 Episode 2: Eve reveals Jax has a stepsister on a planet where all aged over 25 are killed
Spoilers for ‘Pandora’ Season 2 Episode 2 ‘Don't Think Twice, It's All Right’
Even someone as obnoxious as Gary Goodspeed from the TBS space dramedy ‘Final Space’ had a better about-to-die-in-the-vast-outer-space-soliloquy than our man Xander (Oliver Dench) in ‘Pandora’. Predictably (and fortunately) enough, viewers were saved from hearing him speak for too long thanks to Jax (Priscilla Quintana) finding him fairly soon enough -- even though the previous episode showed that they had given up all hope for anyone surviving.
Now saved, Xander is ordered by the Admiral to find out what exactly was in the canisters that caused the freight ship to be annihilated that fast. Xander’s best guess was that it was antimatter and that enough quantities of that could well act as a “planet killer”. No one seems to question the fundamental question -- how was this supposed antimatter stored in matter without causing a chain reaction. But then that is ‘Pandora’ for you. A show where ridiculous leaps in logic are taken with as much ease as Morpheus takes actual leaps inside the Matrix.
Moving past a whole sequence of Xander suddenly feeling the guilt of losing all his men in the mission -- guilt that arrives and stays momentarily and then fades away completely -- we see Ralen (Ben Radcliffe) figure out a way to track Jax’s supposedly-dead mother, Eve (Charisma Carpenter). Eve had ambushed Xander leading to the cataclysmic destruction of the freight ship. Following the energy signals, they reach an unknown planet. Despite the planet being heavy with greenery, Xander asks the astute question: “Do you detect any signs of life here?”
Non-mammalian discrimination apart, the planet did have humans. They were the descendants of a group of colonizers from Earth sent to explore the deepest parts of space. And their leader -- a 24-year-old nubile woman -- seems to find Xander attractive, something that obviously doesn’t go unnoticed by Jax, who decides that she won’t wait for answers and heads out in search of Eve.
The planet, it turns out, is more messed up than anyone could have thought. Due to a lack of resources, the people there began sending anyone above the age of 25 inside a portal to a “better place” to make sure that they had enough for the young and strong people there. In fact, Ralen discovers that the unstable portal actually destroys anyone or anything that enters it. Effectively, they had been killing their own people for more than a century and passing it off as tradition. Even for a show like ‘Pandora’, this is pretty difficult to digest.
When Jax and Xander confront the council, they realize that they are the actual surviving members of the original ship, remaining youthful thanks to the radiation emitted by the malfunctioning portal. Things escalate quickly in ‘Pandora’ don’t they? And during this confrontation, Eve shows up. She tells Jax that he had been studying the portal -- something that took precedence over regular genocide being committed. But who is to judge her priorities. She also reveals to Jax a rather huge secret in the most offhand manner. Tierney (Tina Casciani) apparently is Jax’s stepsister, the daughter of Eve and Harlan Fried (Luke Fetherston).
At the same time, the aforementioned council leader tries to get Xander to stay, promising him that she would spare one life if he stayed with her there. Obviously, Xander disagrees and the crew is sentenced to enter the portal. Predictably, a badly choreographed fight sequence ensues that is interrupted by the appearance of Jax’s Pandora clone. She tells Jax that she has already informed the Ancients that this universe is not worth saving and that the process of its destruction is underway (yay for millennials who want the world to end already, right?)
As Jax pleads with her to change her mind and convince the Ancients of otherwise, the Pandora attempts to push Jax into the portal. Xander intervenes and pushes the Pandora in instead. The episode ends with Eve being arrested and brought onboard where she ominously says that this was exactly where she wanted to be, and a Xatarian space-ship seemingly being attacked by the same antimatter we saw the last episode.
That’s a lot for one episode, right? And clearly, there’s so much more left to witness in the season ahead. New episodes of ‘Pandora’ Season 2 arrive every Sunday at 8 pm ET on The CW.