Welcome back for another episode of Altered Carbon for Multiversity Comics 2021 Summer Binge. Last we’d seen Tekashi Kovacs he had been captured by Colonel Carrera and being sent to the Governor of Harlan’s World. Let’s not waste anymore time and see how Kovacs will get out of this tough situation in this episode called, “Nightmare Alley.”
1. Kovacs’s Old Friend
While being captured, Colonel Carrera and his men excavate inside of Kovacs’s mind to find what they can use to hurt him and find out his true identity. Kovacs was tight-lipped to give any clues into what he knows or who he was until Carrera saw both Reileen and Quellcrist Falconer in his mind. It was at this point that Carrera was able to not only find out it was Kovacs but to reveal his secret.
Carrera is a man named Jaeger, the original CTAC agent who recruited Kovacs and promised his sister a safe home.
This reveal came out of nowhere but was perfect in that it also fueled Kovacs with a revenge element that we hadn’t yet seen. A rivalry between former student and teacher with both men having betrayed each other already and now just waiting for the time to kill the other. Carrera had previously seemed more of a one-note villain, but this blast from the past gives a revamp to the cat and mouse game for this season.
2. Poe Needs A Friend
The governor of Harlan’s World, Danica Harlan, decides to maker a spectacle of Kovacs’ capture and turn it into a public execution for all to watch. Poe catches wind of it and realizes that he has to move as quickly as possible to rescue his only friend. Between Poe’s fractured mindset because of his injury and the thought of losing the only person that he’s connected to, we see Poe panicking and scrambling to make sense of this strange new world.
I think it was a great decision to let him go off on his own and find another AI that knows the lay of the land a bit better and can see his current injury and understand that if let alone, he’d end up causing more harm than good. His new cohort is an AI named Dig 301, an out-of-work AI originally designed for archeological digs, but with the new governor banning that type of work, there’s nothing for her or the other AIs to do. This tidbit of information gives the audience a reason to believe she has the time to help while also leaving the door open to why that type of work would be banned in the first place.
3. The Reunion
Danica’s public execution is known as “The Circle,” a one-on-one round in which Kovacs is fighting against his past as soldiers take the sleeves of people from his past, including Kristin Ortega, Vernon Elliot, Reileen Kawahara, and Quellcrist Falconer. The first round has Kovacs fighting Ortega, and he’s riddled with guilt for having a hand in her family being slaughtered by Ghostwalker. Still, when the soldier slips up with information regarding her nephews, he realizes it’s not her. Then it’s off to the races as we get to see Kovacs in his natural state of killing and beating down anyone that gets in his way. He’s disabled since he’s trying to fight off the drugs in his system simultaneously but manages to do pretty well up until Rei comes into the mix. The audience gets to see the flashbacks of not only her last moments before she died but when they were kids. It’s a reminder that although she went off the deep end and betrayed him, they still had a shared childhood and were survivors of a terrible ordeal.
It nearly costs Kovacs his life until the real Falconer comes in and kills the fake Rei to help get him out of this torture chamber. Their escape was due to another believer of Falconer’s ideology cutting the power giving them a small window to use the darkness to their advantage. It’s a glimpse into the hidden soldiers that believe in Falconer’s ideology to stand up to Danica and her reign over the city.
Continued below4. Governor vs. Carrera
The tension between Danica and Carrera is displayed much more in this episode with the added interactions and scenes. The reason why is given from one side of the relationship. Danica wants Carrera out of the city so he cannot undermine or question her leadership ability. From the beginning of the episode, Carrera suggested killing Kovacs quickly before things escalated. And now with him back on the run, she is in fear of losing her city.
During the Circle fights, she was shown laughing and acting cocky, so sure that Kovacs would be taken care of. She even went as far as starting to place bets on when he would be killed, so it made it all the worse when Carrera bet that he wouldn’t be. Carrera seems only to want more power and control of the city, but the exact detail is unknown. After Kovacs latest escape, Carrera was granted unlimited resources to try and capture him again and more than likely cause massive damage during his hunt.
5. I’m Quellcrist Falconer?
In the final minutes of this episode, Kovacs wakes up in his room back at the hotel and sees Falconer staring off, and he can’t help but smile because not only did she save him, but they are now reunited. The mood quickly shifts after Kovacs thanks Falconer, and she has a look of fear because she has no memory of her name.
Not only does the question of what happened to Falconer during her time not in a sleeve, but also what does she remember? Falconer has shown she still has her ideology and beliefs on death, her combat skills, and perhaps even Kovacs in some small capacity. However, if she cannot remember her name, who knows what vital information could have been forgotten or erased.
