3 Body Problem: Our Lord

"When they arrive, you'll be so grateful."

The virtual reality video game appears to be over. And yet, the aliens are becoming so much creepier.

This episode filled in some of the blanks between the sixties flashbacks and the present day. In London 1982, Wenjie met Mike Evans at a restaurant. She had become a university professor, while Mike, still an environmentalist, had inherited his father's oil company. She told him about the San-Ti, and he became her partner in betraying the human race. In 1984, Wenjie and Mike chose an oil tanker, the appropriately named Judgment Day, as their movement's headquarters.

The present day scene on Judgment Day with the happy cult of alien worshipers didn't fill me with Close Encounters of the Third Kind confidence. Mike was talking with "the Lord" – a female voice – via that microphone and speaker set-up, and apparently, the Lord could actually see Mike. For pity's sake, how?

In the creepiest, most alarming scene in the episode, the Lord didn't understand the plot of Little Red Riding Hood because she couldn't grasp the concept of deception. She asked Mike if he lies, and he said that we all do at times. This wasn't what the Lord wanted to hear. After an interesting back and forth, she said, "We cannot co-exist with liars. We are afraid of you," and apparently, she just hung up.

What does this suggest? That the San-Ti cannot lie or deceive because they're mind-readers? Are all of their brains connected? Is this like the thing in the game where a character said that if one of them survives, they all survive? That doesn't seem possible, because what about the pacifist alien that answered the original message back in the sixties and warned Wenjie not to respond?

Of course, if the San-Ti never lie, then the pacifist was telling Wenjie the truth about their intentions. Earth is in big trouble.

The Oxford Five, now four, were dealing with the loss of one of their own. Overwhelmed with grief for Jack, Jin agreed to Shi and Wade's request that she go undercover with the San-Ti worshiping cult. (If the San-Ti's goal was to recruit Jin's mighty brain, killing Jack was definitely a mistake.)

Undercover Jin arrived at the summit and discovered that Wenjie had drunk her own Kool-Aid, big time – she was the leader of the cult. The joyous Wenjie told the crowd that the San-Ti would arrive four hundred years from now, and that they would fix the Earth. When the military broke in, Wenjie was all Gandhi, telling her followers not to resist, that the raid must be the will of the San-Ti. After all, they're coming, they can't be stopped, and when they arrive, you'll be so grateful.

The thing I still don't understand is the obvious. If the San-Ti are four light years away, how can they be so powerful right now on Earth?

Bits:

— The Oxford Five seem to be more about Jin and Auggie, my two favorite characters, and I'm okay with that. Jack is now dead, and I don't really understand what role Saul and Will have in the story.

— Wenjie and Mike Evans were once a couple. Was the late Vera his daughter?

— At the summit, Tatiana, who has been part of the San-Ti cult since she was a child, realized Jin was lying to them and tried to shoot her. How has Tatiana carried out her invisible tasks, recruiting Jin, killing Jack?

— Sea Shimooka, who was also on Arrow, plays the woman with the sword in the game. I think she is also the voice of "Our Lord." Am I right?

— There was an interesting bit with Detective Shi arguing with his son, who was playing Mortal Kombat, an interesting choice considering the San-Ti's horrendous life and death virtual reality game.

I find myself more intrigued with every episode of this series. Four out of four... I don't know, what do you think?

Billie
---
Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

• 3 Body Problem season 1
• 3 Body Problem home