This is the “widening gyre” episode where everything goes to hell. That’s pretty standard for the penultimate one, and it does get a little giddy watching so many things go catastrophically bad at once. The Wonder Twins’ lifelong lovefest screeches to a halt, egged on by Conner Graff’s manipulations and Mary’s cluelessness to the depth of Otto’s need. Alexa’s story finally becomes clear in the same moment all her dreams shatter forever. And Gracie flees town with her cute boyfriend, little knowing (and really, the show should have set this up, it comes out of the blue) that he’s another of Conner’s thugs, seeking the family genome rather than an underage girlfriend.
It feels like we wasted a little time with old high school boyfriends and random monsters of the week getting here, but the epic tone does work pretty well, as the writers pull on all the episodic threads they’ve been setting up at once. Duvall and Jimmy have gotten to a pretty good working relationship (one excused by Duvall’s boss in a nearly believable way), so it’s too bad when Otto removes Arthur from all Lookingglass systems that they crash utterly, including Jimmy’s rejuvenating tank. Mary springs into action and saves him, but only for a day.
It takes her awhile to really grasp what has happened with Otto defecting to a rival company, but Dilshad Vatsaria plays her as a woman over-confident of her caretaking and managerial role, as unprepared for her changing feelings towards Jimmy as she was for Otto’s extreme rejection of her independence. Or the fact that Jimmy wasn’t the first of his attempts to make a Frankenstein that would heal her, and that Albert Lin and Alexa were his earlier victims, callously abandoned to be rescued by Conner and used for his own purposes.
There’s no time for the amusement park shenanigans of last week, and though all evidence points to Conner, it’s actually taking place in an undisclosed bunker no one knows about, so he’s untouchable, and Otto is safely squirreled away. Mary tries to cope admirably with the shambles her company has become, as Lookingglass without Otto and his avatar Arthur has trouble locating a working laser printer (much less the 3D printer Otto uses to make a gun).
The most tragic moment comes from Alexa, as her aged husband decides to end her dreams of his own rejuvenation very forcefully, not because he hates her revived form, but because he still loves her more than ever. And when she returns to Mary’s side in honesty for the first time ever, it’s the one glimmer of hope in a dire situation. Most dire of all from Gracie, who’s gone from being in a family sitcom to a kidnapped conspiracy victim in one episode. Our heroes need Arthur’s help more than ever, but Arthur isn’t a person, and Otto has seemingly gone too far to turn back.