Snowpiercer Recap: Let the Games Begin

It is finally time. The lord of the engine is here, and that means utter chaos. This week’s narrator and the focus of the episode is none other than Joseph Wilford. The episode starts by flashing back to when he got exiled from Snowpiercer and used his magical engineering skills as medical skills to keep himself alive long enough to be found by the Admiral’s men and start planning his takeover of both of his trains.

That is the theme of the episode: Wilford’s relentless quest to take control of his babies — more on that later — and how he’s managed to somehow affect and mess up every single character we know in some form or another. We see this in how Layton’s life got turned upside down because of Wilford stealing his child, in Sykes’s aggression, and even in how Wilford may be slowly turning the Admiral’s men to his side. He starts with Wolf, one of the scarred soldiers, showing fascination with his scars and tempting him with the promise of treatment at the hands of good old Dr. Headwood. However, the Admiral’s choke hold on his troops is stronger than Sean Bean’s charisma. When Wilford tries to win over the troops with tales of arranging literal gladiatorial matches on Big Alice and trying to fight Big Bob, the ice mutant, they go from laughing along to almost soiling themselves the moment Admiral Milius enters the room. To exert his authority and undermine Wilford, he takes the engineer’s lit cigar and extinguishes it on the hand of a soldier. Wilford may have been a man of luxury and power onboard the two trains, but here even he is scared of the Admiral.

As a finisher move, the Admiral “rewards” Wilford by sending him on a run with the other soldiers to blow off some steam and promoting Alex to take over the engineering duties on Snowpiercer. This scares Wilford deeply, saying he knows what happens on these “incursions.” Meanwhile, Layton takes up still in the lowest floor of the silo, a nightmarish floor filled with the Snowpiercer equivalent of the Morlocks from X-Men, people with chemical scars like the Admiral’s soldiers. Turns out, years ago, there was a chemical leak of the compound used to create New Eden and they sealed off the lowest floors of the silo, trapping everyone inside and using them as test subjects for the new compound. Wilford arrives there with some of the soldiers. The “incursion” is actually the Admiral’s own gladiatorial match, a most dangerous game for the soldiers to have fun hunting the people of the lowest floors to get blood samples in a sadistic game disguised as them bringing food to the Morlocks. When the game is done, Wolf points his gun at Wilford and leaves him behind.

However, the game is not over because Wilford is now trapped on the lowest floor with Layton, who is out for blood. “You should have taken the bullet,” he tells Wilford before he beats the crap out of the engineer. Sadly, we haven’t gotten rid of the cockroach just yet because he slashes Layton with a blade and runs away, trapping himself in a room filled with equipment. Unsurprisingly, Wilford tries to convince Layton he did everything out of the kindness of his heart, kidnapping Liana just to spare New Eden from being invaded by the Admiral. He also manages to repair the equipment and communicates with the Admiral, and mocks him by saying he’s managed to turn his troops against him, including Wolf, who spared Wilford’s life rather than shoot him. The Admiral is visibly distraught and tries to save face by saying he always planned this. He wanted to leave Wilton alive in the basement so Layton could kill him (he did promise Layton last week that he could take a shot at Wilford), and in a fit of rage he sends Wolf back down with a kill squad to eradicate everyone in the basement.

Only, in a surprise to absolutely no one who has been paying attention, we discover this was Wilford’s plan all along. He knows the elevator is the only way out of the basement, and he’ll make his escape when the soldiers arrive and get swarmed by the Morlocks. Working together is the only way Layton gets to see Liana, so in about five seconds, Wilford manages to both save his life and find a way out of his predicament. However, that is easier said than done because this engineer and master manipulator’s brilliant plan is … to get into the elevator shaft, climb up one floor, then squeeze to let the elevator go down to the basement and jump on top of it to go to the top. Before the soldiers arrive, however, they face Alex, who snuck down to the basement to see the experiments on the Morlocks — since she is now part of the experiments herself to test the new compound.

Back in New Eden, Oz finds Whiggins, who is missing a hand, meaning he is the rat they’ve been looking for. After some heavy torture from Sykes, and some light erotic torture from Oz, Whiggins talks and confesses to poignant Doctor Headwood and Zarah out to the soldiers, but he swears he didn’t know Zarah would get killed. He also says he saw soldiers digging graves, except when Oz goes to check, he discovers that the Admiral’s men did not dig any graves, but rather they excavated enough to plant bombs — bombs positioned just right in order to bury the entire town.

Tailie Thoughts

• Wilford makes a speech to Layton about how the two of them used to be driven by collective well-being, only to throw that away when they became parents. Only, in the case of Wilford, he’s referring to his trains as his children. Never let anyone tell you that Snowpiercer can’t be hilarious.

• Wait, so Melanie is legitimately just out doing research? That was the big secret? Imagine how she’ll freak out when she finally shows up and realizes the big mess that happened while she was out.

• Ruth has quickly become one of the best and most complex characters on the show. After the death of Ben, she struggles with giving the remaining passengers a pep talk because she doesn’t believe that things can be okay anymore since they have no more engineers. Rather than pretend things are fine and will get better, she decides to let everyone onboard help in making an inscription in the engine room of Big Alice, to never forget the sacrifice Ben made. The Engineer will be forever bound to the engine.

• What is the point of burying New Eden? So far, the Admiral has been ruthless but pragmatic. This makes no sense, and if this is just a simple act of senseless violence on the Admiral’s side to put out any resistance to his ultimate ruling, it would be a rather disappointing development for what is so far a compelling villain.