Last Light – Season 1 Episode 2 “Twilight” Recap & Review

Twilight

Elena finds Sam in Lucas’ (the doctor) arms at the start of Last Light episode 2, who takes both of them to the airport. As it turns out, Mika is an MI6 agent and knew all along the danger that Andy was in. The contractor is upset with her for not revealing the truth to him. Farooq spots a village nearby and they ditch the cars and head towards it.

Bergman, who seems to be an important man in another secret service, is called away to attend to the urgent crisis. Laura wakes up the next morning, hungover, and is called downstairs by a noise. It is a window banging against the pane and her phone rings. Owen, with whom she shared a kiss last night, is at the backdoor. He calms her down by saying nothing happened between them. Laura had passed out and Owen just slept on the couch.

At the airport, the services are shut down. All flights are canceled in lieu of the plane crash. Lucas then decides to take them to the train station, where they find no luck either. Elena is stuck with Sam in Paris. His surgery too has been rescheduled to a later date. Whilst in the car, Lucas switches to French and informs Elena that Sam has lost more photoreceptor cells than the doctors would have hoped for. To keep up hopes of the surgery taking place later, Elena must put the medicine he gives her in Sam’s eye every day without fail. If he develops an infection, the surgery will not be able to go through.

Bergmann’s intel matches that of MI6. There is a targeted attack on the energy infrastructure across the globe. The fuels have been tampered with and rendered almost unusable. Life, without power and fuel, will not sustain and society will descend into chaos if the situation is not resolved quickly. Andy is not able to reach either Laura or Elena and is worried about the safety of his family. Mika and Farooq spot two cars incoming from a distance but it turns out, the cars are from Khalil. The trio boards the cars and heads for the lab. Owen and Laura are on a date together and she surfs the internet. She learns of the power crisis and all of a sudden, two cars collide in front of them.

They go up in flames in no time and the people at the restaurant rush to safety. It is announced that England’s borders will be closing. No one will be allowed to get in or out of the country. Andy hands over the samples to the labs. He stays in a hotel with Mika for the evening. When Lucas reaches the gas station to fill up his car, a hoard of cars awaits him. Many scampers around to get the last of the gas in tanks. He also fills up his car, not knowing that the fuel has been tampered with and will destroy his car. When they stop for coffee, Lucas expresses his interest in Elena, albeit very slyly. We do not know if she reciprocates.

Lucas and Elena notice that there is something wrong with their car. When they abandon it, it goes up in flames, just like the other cars. In the chaos, the medicine drops out of Elena’s purse but she does not know that. Mika had sent a photo of one of the dead assassins from the truck. He is identified as Thomas Goodwin, a member linked to the Apocalypse Watch. It is an eco-terrorist group known for its notoriety. It had attacked the gas pipeline last week and functions like fanatics. Their manifesto declares them committed to protecting mother Earth at all costs and defying the subjugation of resources. Lucas, Sam, and Elena reach the UK border, which is sealed off.

Lucas has a skirmish with one of the guards and inadvertently comes in front of an arriving ambulance, falling to his death. Elena is horrified and is comforted by a woman, who brings along Sam with her. Andy had left for the lab without telling Mika. When he reaches there, he finds a slew of bodies, realizing that more gunmen have arrived to get the samples. Andy successfully takes the laptop with the results in it and is pursued by the gunman. He loses him momentarily in an alley and Mika saves the day on a bike. The episode ends with a mysterious stranger walking into the house and Laura having to fight him with Owen’s help. While they are escaping, the man shoots and injures Owen but the couple does manage to escape.

The Episode Review

Juggling too many balls at once is not for everyone. Clowns do it well but the caveat for others should be not to look like one while doing it. The people behind Last Light dangerously seem to be treading that path.

All the intrigue of episode 1 lost steam and something new was suddenly tried by the writers. There are so many directions that the series can take at this point that confusion seems natural. And from what it appears, the people behind the project have not been able to make the right creative decisions. Episode 2’s disappointment starts with the laggard choice to make Andy the center of all attention.

The crisis that is unfolding carries the potential to actually end the modern world. But there was no focus on bringing that out in the story. When you do not put in the legwork, how can you brand the story and plot about that very thing? The laziness is killing me. Lucas’ death was so generic that they might as well have killed him in the hospital itself.

An angel-like stranger finding the damsel in distress with her blind boy is just so 1990. Last Light has until now, offered nothing original. It has regurgitated recycled genre tropes with zero ambition to do anything useful. Watching the rest of the series might prove to be painful if I am being honest.