Snowpiercer Season 3 Episode 4 review: Alex comes face-to-face with ghosts of past

3/5

Story: Snowpiercer’s journey to ‘New Eden’ is delayed when the train runs into a blockade – three cars, which, as Alex realizes where the ones that Wilford let go off years ago, when he wilfully culled some of the crew of Big Alice on the basis of their physical and mental stamina, as well as skill sets, to ensure the survival of the rest.

The cars are locked to the track and the system has to be manually disengaged, to allow Snowpiercer to gently nudge them out of the way. Alex volunteers to head out for the two-man mission with Ben, but it’s not only to put her engineering skills to best use, but to quite literally confront ghosts of her past – one of the cars is where Alex lived, and left her best friend Shilo behind in the dead of the night, when Wilford came for her.

Review: So, after three action-packed episodes and everyone back onboard one single train, it was time to take the foot off the gas, quite literally. Snowpiercer has run into a traffic jam – three cars blocking the track and while Ben and Alex set off to clear it, there’s precious little that the others onboard the train can do than work on their personal issues.

Pike, as we’ve seen earlier, has trouble accepting Layton’s leadership, and he makes that abundantly clear yet again, telling Ruth that it ought to be her leading the people. Layton’s got even more trouble to deal with – there’s Asha, who still has trouble coming to terms with being on Snowpiercer and the lie about New Eden she’s now telling for Layton, then there’s the issue of the genetic experimentation that Zarah allowed to be done on his unborn baby, and, of course, the simmering tension between him and Pike.

Layton’s biggest problem, though, crops up when Ben and Alex can’t figure out how to disengage the locking system and need Wilford’s help after all. But he’s indisposed at the moment – turns out Roche had an axe to grind over the death of his wife and pumped Wilford’s heart full of the chemical used to put people under in the drawers. Alex realises that she can work it out, but in doing so, it also becomes painfully obvious to her that just as much as she hates Wilford for his hand in her mother Melanie’s death, she loves him for having taken care of her and taught her everything about the train. It’s complicated, you see.

Verdict: So, Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) is back, but just not how we wished for, which also means she won’t be around much. Wilford’s (Sean Bean) in bad shape, but can pull through. Here’s hoping that the writers aren’t thinking of wrapping up the Wilford arc. Even if he’s not in charge, Wilford is the foe that Layton needs; the drama with Pike is not even remotely interesting enough to make up for the loss of Wilford. And finally, how about spilling the beans on who Asha (Archie Panjabi) really is and how she managed to survive so long.