Pantheon – Season 1 Episode 5 “Zero Daze” Recap & Review

Zero Daze

Episode 5 of Pantheon Season 1 is where everything starts to come apart at the seams. David’s time is limited, and he blinks out. It seems he’s been found, and Maddie is forced to get out before it’s too late. Someone has taken the servers offline, and of course that stems back to Logorhythms. They’ve just taken control of Aeterna.

However, they don’t have control of Cary or Caspian. The latter shows up to see Hannah, demanding to know her connection with Renee. After seeing them at the mall last episode, Caspian is a man possessed and eventually gets the truth from her.

Hannah reveals that her real name is Rachel, an actor that was recruited by Candle Street, which is a Shell Company name. She was given $1 million to keep her mouth shut and play up the role of Caspian’s partner in this “social experiment.” It turns out Rachel’s mother has cancer and she’s done this to pay for her treatment.

Caspian agrees to stay quiet about her part in this… but only if she does exactly what he says. Hannah (Rachel) plays her part well, pretending that her meeting with Caspian was just a run of the mill meet, with nothing untoward occurring.

Caspian listens to the call with Renee the entire time, realizing, with despair, that his mother is in deep. He also learns that Cary has gone rogue, shocked that his “father” isn’t the sadistic abuser he was led to believe.

The next day, Renee suggests to Caspian that they head up the coast and get away to Santa Barbara. This is, of course, all a ruse but Caspian plays along all the same. On the way, Caspian notices Renee has taken her gun “in case they find Cary.” So naturally, when Renee stops at the gas station, Caspian drops all pretences and takes control of the car, leaving her high and dry.

Meanwhile, Maddie communicates with David, as the pair reconvene in the digital world and go over what they’ve discovered thus far. It seems Logorhythms have new tracking algorithms in place, and they’re covering their tracks too, with no upload files in their main HQ depicting the surgery or the awful experiments they’re conducting.

Maddie immediately thinks outside the box though, bringing up a remote location, namely that of Norway, where Logorhythms are operating.

David uses his technical knowhow to hack into Pope’s satellite phone, downloading an echolocation in order to get a scope of the facility. It’s basically a massive server point, but David decides to drain Pope’s battery completely remotely to find out where the charge point is.

Using the phone’s vibration function, David moves it across the desk to a nearby laptop, which inevitably allows Laurie access to download the project files.

This seems to do the trick, giving both Laurie and David access to the mainframe of the laptop and the files within. As they begin digging into the files they realize there’s another inside the computer – Vinod Chandra.

With the project files being downloaded, Pope is informed of what’s going on but it seems he knows. In fact he’s in collusion with Waxman who is watching the hack from his computer. The pair decide to work together and trace the origin point back to Maddie’s place. They assemble a team and move on their location. Their cover is blown… or is it?

Waxman’s team show up at the complete wrong location, confirming David’s ruse as Pope finally understands his phone has been hacked.

While this is going on, David finds the project files on Caspian, who could well solve the flaws in the system given his brilliance. As for Caspian, he returns home to find Cary there wanting to talk. He admits that Caspian was created from Stephen’s genome and he is basically Stephen’s perfect clone, the one designed to take over the man’s legacy. Holstrom never uploaded because he realized the system hadn’t been perfected yet.

When Caspian leaves, he finds Renee there waiting. She keeps up her charade but Cary breaks it completely, admitting that he’s told their son everything. Renee shoots Cary but before he can bleed out, Caspian takes off with him in the car.

The Episode Review

So the truth about Caspian’s true nature and why he’s so important is revealed in a shocking climax to this episode There’s plenty to like about this chapter, which continues to deliver compelling sci-fi drama. Some of the ideas are certainly not outside the scope of possibility for where humanity is heading in the near future, while the big reveal about Caspian is a nice reveal to show exactly why he’s so important to all of this.

In fact, Caspian’s storyline is, so far at least, much more compelling while Maddie feels like a passenger for a lot of what’s transpiring right now. Despite that though, there’s more than enough to like with this one and next week’s episode promises to be quite the dramatic affair as well.