Welcome back to the 2021 Summer Binge of Altered Carbon. Last we saw Takeshi Kovacs, he’d “solved” Laurens Bancroft’s murder case but was unaware of the actions of Kristin Ortega against his sister’s clones. Now with the biggest distraction of the show gone, Kovacs can now focus on his sadistic sister.
1. Rei Means Business
Not missing a beat from the previous episode, Rei vows revenge against Ortega for killing all of her clones. While she’s off telling Kovacs in a sleeve of Ortega, Rei sent Ghostwalker to kill all of Ortega’s family. We, as an audience, have seen glimpses of how brutal Ghostwalker is when he’s fighting a formidable opponent, but it’s something entirely different seeing him slaughter Ortega’s mother and nephews. The imagery of the children’s legs lying lifeless on the floor sends shivers down your spine. Kovacs knew the threat of the ones he cared about, but knowing that he had a hand in her family’s slaughter guts him to the core. It’s also just further proof of how twisted his sister has become over the years.
What’s most disturbing is the calmness that Ghostwalker showed when he was stalking his prey and his continual question of, “Are you a believer?” His chained belief in Rei as a god has destroyed his willingness to see how evil his tasks are. His eeriness is the ace in Rei’s sleeve for whenever she needs something done right.
2. Stuck With You
After the slaughter of Ortega’s family, Kovacs realizes that he has to get Vernon Elliot and his recently reunited wife, Ava, away from him before anything wrong happens to them. He yells at them to leave and pay for any fake I.D.s and other things they’ll need to get far away, but they won’t leave. They know they wouldn’t be together without him and refuse to leave his side now in his time of need. It’s a sweet moment in an otherwise tense episode outfitted with an invisible timer before something else bad is going to happen. Kovacs has known how close he was getting to all of them, but it’s finally confirmed for the audience to see. It’s a strong realization for him that, as much as he wants to try and take on his sister alone, he’s going to need some help. Kovacs has pushed away many people throughout this case, but it’s certainly nice to see the strange little family that he’s also created along the way and how willing everyone is to contribute to closing it the right way.
3. Sneak Into Heaven
Kovacs now has his team backing him, and they create a plan to sneak into “Heaven,” aka Rei’s sex ship. (A spaceship that she stays in and uses as a brothel for those who can afford it.) Ava being the tech-wiz she is, creates a version of the rawling virus that needs to be implanted into Rei’s backup to keep her from bouncing to another sleeve if she “dies.” This plan has an Ocean’s Eleven‘s feel to it that I dig because it’s about getting them past the guards and Elliot playing the role of a creepy general to trick the people in charge. There is also an important scene with Elliot when he realizes that the young sex worker assigned to him reminds him of his daughter. It’s one of the moments that could have gone way off the deep end, but ends up ironing itself out while still keeping the audience on the edge of their seat.
4. Truth About Bancroft
Kovacs has previously questioned Rei about being involved in Laurens Bancroft’s death, but she denied it, which is true, but she was involved in what happened with him before. She admits to drugging him and killing a woman, but it was for blackmail use, so his death wouldn’t have done her any good. The truth of the matter was that he killed himself. Riddled with guilt for his actions, he shot himself before his last backup so that he’d have no memory of the incident in question. In a way, the audience gets a tiny glimpse of Bancroft having a conscience but is reminded that he went and hired a P.I. to prove that there was no way he would have done it himself. Getting the reveal of the big case was a massive sigh of relief, and it felt good to be closed finally. It’s not the show’s main focal point anymore and was “solved” in the previous episode, but finding out the cold truth was a good reveal for the audience. Rei did also whisper in his ear about getting Kovacs involved because of his Envoy abilities.
5. Everything’s Connected
The show also tied off the last small thread of an earlier storyline in Rei’s reveal of the night Bancroft died. Ortega had been obsessed with a death of a woman who died after falling from a high point in the sky, but she could never get it answered because it was coded “Neo-C,” so they couldn’t be re-sleeved. It turns out it was a woman involved with Bancroft, and after seeing him kill a woman, she ran out in fear of her own life. By killing herself, she thought she’d be able to tell the truth in a new sleeve. This is another evil method in Rei’s bag of tricks that she has to make sure her sex/murder scheme isn’t brought to light. Now that Kovacs has Rei’s confession on camera, it is now a question of how he will get off the ship to share it with the proper authorities. While Rei has been confessing, her soldiers and Ghostwalker enter the room to disarm Kovacs and Elliot.
