"End Sinister" is the tenth and final episode of the third season and the series.
Synposis[]
The episode explores the themes of evolution, culture shock, and future shock across time and space.
Opening title[]
Trevor plans to shoot a ray that will change the course of human evolution.
Act 1[]
In a space ship, aliens are succumbing to a skin plague. One with mismatched eyes escapes in a pod before the ship crashes on Earth. A satellite test fires a ray, "Aldus B," at the Earth. Trevor Goodchild expects the ray to kill weaker organisms with similar skin lesions, thereby making all Earth life more resilient. Before he can proceed, Aeon Flux steals the satellite control and buries it in the woods outside of Bregna. She finds the stasis pod in the woods and revives the alien inside, but Trevor's pursuing henchmen capture the alien. Trevor examines it and finds no orifices but signs of exposure to his ray. While he goes to investigate crashed ship, the alien escapes from the laboratory by clouding the mind of one of the guards.
Aeon reaches the ship first. She finds a case that appears designed to hold two balls. She opens to find two soft pouches: the first is empty, and the second contains an eye similar to the one the alien has. Trevor arrives and explains that the ray somehow affected the aliens, they went in search of its source, but failed, so therefore he concludes that the crew's death proves they are weaker and establishes the importance of his evolution project. He ignores Aeon's sarcastic quips to speculate that the surviving alien was the navigator and not a scientist. Unnoticed by both, the alien slips in as Aeon and Trevor's banter becomes foreplay. The alien opens the case, and replaces its normal left eye with the one Aeon found, then watches Aeon and Trevor make out. The alien can telepathically see their feelings as the images of Trevor and Aeon's faces unite in its mind.
Act 2[]
The alien, agitated, drops by Aeon's home. Aeon tries to understand what it wants and guesses. She returns with two small bottles that have an attachment to place on the eye. Aeon gives it one, places one on her own right eye, but the alien stops her. When Aeon protests that it is "fun," the alien stands, points at her face, then at its eyes. It removes its human-appearing left eye and tries to hand it to Aeon, who finds it repulsive. Dejected, the alien replaces its eye, and Aeon gently tries to explain how humans "do it," which repulses the alien, who leaves. "You'll be back," Aeon quips. Aeon watches from her window as it approaches the border and apparently surrenders to Breen guards. As they take it into custody, it looks in Aeon's direction. Aeon has a vision of Trevor and the alien together in a fashion best shown in the Gallery. Amused, Aeon quips, "I don't think so, sweetheart. You'll definitely be back."
Meanwhile, Trevor briefly watches a set of screens depicting various citizens involved in things ranging from S&M to preparing food. He derides their "secret appetites and petty needs." He instead admires the alien that requires no physical sustenance, including air or water. As he discourses, he approaches the alien who sits in a lotus position. He touches the alien's face as he declares it will be his evolution. From her window, Aeon watches with binoculars but notices that there is a ship prepared nearby.
Aeon infiltrates this ship. She discovers that the planned journey will take more than five hundred years without a return. She leaves and enters Trevor's bedroom to find him in bed with an apparently sleeping alien. They engage in their playful banter for some time over the subject of control. Trevor admits that he was wrong to try to change human evolution. He reveals that he plans to accompany it to its home world. Their banter continues with Aeon begging Trevor not to leave, but he reveals he has replaced his left eye with the special alien left eye and Aeon leaves.
Alone, Aeon tries to think to the alien that the rescue pod has been recovered by other aliens. The alien leaves Trevor sleeping, wanders into the area where its pod lays, only to be knocked out by Aeon. She places it in the pod with a sarcastic "sweet dreams," only for the alien to punch her, knock her out, and place her in the pod. Aeon awakes in the pod and struggles desperately until she realizes there is a button that opens it. She sees Trevor's ship in the sky. Inside, both prepare to enter stasis pods, but Aeon desperately tries to think to Trevor to eject since she left a bomb in the ship. To her horror, the bomb explodes, and the feathers of birds that were in the sky fall around her. To her shock, she still sees the ship flying away.
"He'll be back."
She then enters the alien's pod and closes it as she vows, "I'll be waiting."
Arriving on its homeworld with Trevor, the alien eagerly exits but stops. The incomprehensible landscape has golden fragments floating and a virtual robot that grabs at them. It reacts with despair, and when Trevor tries to comfort it and claim he feels its pain, it reacts with anger, and Trevor quickly confesses that he does not. The alien walks to a nearby ship. Inside, both sit and the alien appears to control it telepathically. The ship flies away.
Act 3[]
On Earth, the seasons, then the very landscape, change around Aeon's pod. Aeon awakens after thousands of years and finds Bregna apparently overrun with aliens. An elderly Trevor is also there, caring for a hybrid human/alien infant. When Aeon accuses him of bringing the aliens, he produces a floating golden fragment and insists that they were already there. Aeon runs from him and encounters the original alien who has two of the "normal" eyes. She accuses it of making her the only human left. When the alien tries to send her its memory on its planet, Aeon rejects it and runs. The alien then imagines cradling a large golden fragment that disappears. Aeon vows that it is now either it or her as she flees the city. She runs to the forest, where she digs up the satellite control. She fires the satellite at the Earth, and aliens, save the original, all begin to die of the plague. As a serpent slithers near Aeon's boot, Trevor arrives and takes away the control. Sarcastically, he asks her if she remembers the night when she stole it and how she refused to let him kill half the human race. He interrupts her rejoinders to reveal that there were no aliens; she annihilated evolved humans. When he "congratulates" her for killing off the human race, she knocks him out with a punch.
Some of the aliens, including the first, board a ship. The original notices to its horror that the plague erupts amongst the crew. As this happens, Aeon carries Trevor to the pod. She returns to Bregna where the aliens are dying. She see one try to care for another and realizes its anatomy is slightly different which confirms that they are evolved humans. She returns to the pod and lays in it next to Trevor. Over Trevor's closing remarks, the ship arrives back at its home world. The light on one of its pods blinks.
Closing[]
"We are all winners, those who will be left once I use the ray. We have already evolved so much our actions would be incomprehensible to a human from a thousand years ago. It's the evolution revolution. Go forth and multiply."
Trivia[]
- The episode title is a pun on bend sinister, a sign of illegitimate descent in heraldry.
- Aeon removes from her back a bomb similar to the one that detonated her body in "Pilot".
- "And the Serpent was the Wisest": reference to Genesis 3:1-5 and subsequent verses appear throughout.
- Control: Aeon and Trevor's banter on "control" matches their individual character arcs as depicted. Briefly, Aeon objects to being under someone else's control, while Trevor argues that it is better than being out of control. He then insists that he is in control, which Aeon suggests is just his delusion. However, when Aeon insists that no one will change her without her permission, Trevor reminds her that the alien has already changed them both.
- "I was W-w-w-w-wrong!": both Trevor and Aeon admit they were wrong about something.
- Why the alien had one eye replaced but not the others seen.
- Why an alien was free to visit Aeon, then return to Trevor.
- The alien appears to have a feminine face, and Trevor declares that it is a female. Aeon seems to accept this, and both refer to it as "she" and "her." The episode, of course, does not reveal if human gender applies to the aliens.
Quotes[]
- "And let you kill off half the planet? I don't think so, Trevor." – Aeon
- "The ray will be fatal to only a small minority at most!" – Trevor
- "There. That's a long-time dream of mine." – Aeon after delivering a kick to Trevor's nethers
- "No apparent bodily orifices anywhere. Well . . . how do they . . . do it?" – Trevor
- "You've made your sickbay. Who else you going to ask to die in it?" – Aeon
- "What would it be like . . . with an alien." – Trevor
- "Why am I bothering to save these people with their secret appetites and sorry needs?" – Trevor
- "I could kill you right now!" – Trevor
- "Oh come on, Trevor. You could kill me at any time. I've always wondered why you don't." – Aeon
- "Right now, so do I!" – Trevor
- "You were right, I was wrong." – Trevor
- "Extraordinary words to hear from the mouth of Trevor Goodchild." – Aeon
- "Trevor? If this is an I Told You So speech, don't bother." – Aeon
- "Congratulations. You've just killed off the entire human race." – Trevor
Gallery[]
| Episodes | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | • Pilot • | ||
| Season 2 | • Gravity • Mirror • Leisure • Tide • War • | ||
| Season 3 | • Utopia or Deuteranopia? • Isthmus Crypticus • Thanatophobia • A Last Time for Everything • The Demiurge • Reraizure • Chronophasia • Ether Drift Theory • The Purge • End Sinister • | ||