Biohackers – Season 1 Episode 4 Recap & Review

Certainty

Getting The Files Back

Episode 4 of Biohackers begins with Mia awakening after a bad dream and immediately finding a text from Niklas. He has the files and managed to snatch them up before Lorenz could find them. However, he wants answers.

Mia ignores this for now and messages Jasper, asking how he is. After answering, Lorenz arrives at the lab and tells Jasper to be careful from now on. After a brief pause, she turns the attention toward the disconnected wi-fi router.

She immediately suspects Mia… but Jasper takes the blame for it himself with a wonky excuse that probably won’t fly with her. And it doesn’t.

Understandably suspicious, Lorenz instead tasks Monique with bringing up Mia’s CV and finding out just what this girl may be hiding.

For now though, Mia’s mission comes first as she desperately tries to get the files back from Niklas. Getting nowhere fast with him, she instead heads to the library to look up Project Homo Deus on the computer. Mid-research she bumps into Jasper.

He’s doing more research on his pet project involving the virus and this time looking into the possibility of it being transmitted to mosquitoes. Before he gets much further with this, he questions her over the wi-fi router from that evening. In her usual flustered, suspicious way, Mia immediately flies off the handle and tells him she had no choice as the wi-fi wasn’t working.

Does Jasper believe her? It’s hard to tell but for now he takes her excuse at face value and leaves.

Plan B – The Truth

Mia instead heads back to see Niklas again and tries a different tactic. She apologises for her behaviour earlier in the day and admits that Emma Engels is her real name. Now we hear more of her past. Lorenz was involved in the death of her twin brother and also may well have been involved in the car crash and taking the research.

With her home, brother and parents gone, these files may just hold the clues she needs to uncover what really happened in the past. She has a contact in Berlin too – a journalist- whom she’s been liaising with all this time.

As she looks through the files at Niklas’ house (given he smartly won’t let her leave with them), she uncovers the name AKS. Or Arnold K. Schumann. This man is a former lab technician and lives in as nursing home up in Basel. Deciding to track the man down, she invites Niklas along for a train ride to figure out what’s going on.

Back at the lab, Monique shows Lorenz the security footage from the Archive lab. Seeing her typing on the computer is enough for Lorenz to pull up the DNA samples again and really dive deep into what’s going on.

The Curse Of The Freckles

The freckle incident comes back to haunt Mia as Lorenz brings Jasper into her office. She suspects that Mia is a spy and switched the samples but Jasper isn’t so sure. He scoffs at the notion of Mia lying and tells Lorenz that he’ll see her tomorrow.

Jasper immediately heads over to Mia’s apartment for answers but she’s obviously nowhere to be found. Instead, he phones her while she’s on the train. Mia reveals that she’s in the library studying but clearly isn’t happy about lying though but suspects that the truth is too risky to tell him right now.

Thinking back over all the combined shifty moments in the past is enough for Jasper to start suspecting Mia may not be wholly truthful. The big tell here comes from the sample switching and he decides to get to the bottom of this. He sneaks into Mia’s room to mull things over. When he turns on the radio, he hears the speaker completely muffled and begins to suspect all is not what it seems.

Basel

Eventually Mia and Niklas make it to Basel and head into the Nursing Home looking for Arnold. Unfortunately he’s clearly not all there. Mia wastes little time though and immediately cuts to the chase and asks what Project Homo Deus is.

It turns out Lorenz was purposefully making her subjects sick to test cures on them. The test subjects and the therapy that followed unfortunately didn’t work. Almost every patient seems to have died. Only… if Emma has survived does that mean she’s been cured?

Blinded by rage, Mia decides to make Lorenz pay for what she’s done. Before she does that though, she takes a detour and meet Jasper. He’s not there for happy reunions though and immediately cuts to the chase. He asks who she is and who she’s working for. After admitting to changing the samples in the lab, he giggles bitterly and walks away.

He knows everything that’s going on and saw the newspaper clippings for Lorenz in the speaker. He also managed to obtain a hair sample too. On the back of this, Jasper phones Lorenz and tells her the truth. Mia is spying on her and isn’t who she says she is. Speak of the devil, Mia arrives at Lorenz’s door following this phone call and admits her name isn’t Mia.

The Episode Review

With more of the past slowly starting to be revealed, the cliffhanger ending leaves things wide open for the future. The idea of making subjects sick to cure them is plausible from a cold and sadistic perspective. It’s certainly motivation enough for Mia to get her own back on Lorenz who plays this icy antagonist relatively well.

Jasper meanwhile is now angry and annoyed but I can’t help but wonder whether he’s more annoyed at himself than Mia. Blinded by his infatuation for this girl, he’s brushed aside all those shady instances in the past 2 weeks and only now figured out she’s lying. Given he’s supposed to be a brilliant logical scientist, this does seem a bit far-fetched.

Then again, they do say love is blinding so I guess we can give him the benefit of the doubt.

The supporting characters are just starting to get their own sub-plots now, including Chen-Lu and Ole’s cute romance, but ultimately this is Mia’s story and she’s the one who’s front and center here.

With lots of questions left unanswered in this one, all eyes now turn to the final two episodes to see exactly how this one is likely to wrap things up.