‘Pandora’ Season 2 Episode 3 Review: Is Matta gone forever? Unexpectedly decent part sees Ancients take her away
Spoilers for ‘Pandora’ Season 2 Episode 3, ‘Gates of Eden’.
For a change, ‘Pandora’ managed to write an episode that wasn’t altogether terrible. I mean it still depended on many cliches and tropes but it was better written and produced than anything we have seen so far on The CW’s sci-fi series that tries hard to look like ‘Star Trek’ without actually having any of its substance.
The episode started where the last one ended. We saw the green antimatter wave heading towards the planet Zatar (where Ralen is from) and it would surely destroy the whole plant and all of its people. Of course, it is up to Jax to save them. She and Xander go tell the Admiral that they have to find the Ancients, the race of super-advanced aliens who have ordered the destruction of their universe. Jax and Xander tell her that they need her uncle Donovan Osborn’s help to locate them. The Admiral, of course, hates Osborn and has kept him jailed. When she chooses to not listen to their suggestion, Xander takes matters into his own hands and gets Ralen to free him. Ralen does a spectacularly bad ‘Mission Impossible’ stunt and frees him and they then escape to the planet where Osborn had found baby Jax more than 18 years ago.
The episode jumps between the past and the present as we see Osborn as a young soldier, at a time when humans and Zatariams were at war. On that same planet, they track down the Pandora we know as Jax’s evil clone. They do so to make sure she did not go to the Ancients to tell them to destroy their universe. And while escaping some enemy Zatarians, Osborn chances upon baby Jax. Of course, the aforementioned good production value of this episode does not cover the baby that looked like (and most likely was) a cheap baby doll.
In the present, Xander, Ralen, Jax, and Matta look for the portal to the Ancients. The former two and the latter two pair up because Jax is still angry at Xander for killing her evil clone. As Jax and Matta look inside the caves, they arrive at the portal. And they are transported in what looks like the visualizations from WinAmp players in the early 2000s. And they arrive at what looks like the empty parking lot of a cheap motel on Earth.
The Ancients all appear to look the same — White, bald, and mustached. And they appeared to know everything. They are not convinced if Jax has any conviction in her suggestion to save humanity. But they offer her a chance to find more evidence. They allow her 121 days to change their minds and they also keep Matta, saying she would be with them while Jax looked for proof. The episode ended with Ralen being heartbroken about losing Matta. We don’t know if Matta is gone forever, but the show seems to be treating it as such for the time being.
New episodes of ‘Pandora’ Season 2 arrive every Sunday at 8 pm ET on The CW.