Snowpiercer – Season 3 Episode 9 “A Beacon For Us All” Recap & Review

A Beacon For Us All

Episode 9 of Snowpiercer Season 3 starts three months back from our current timeline. Melanie is still alive. She’s desperate to find the Snowpiercer but for now, she’s been unable to find it. She’s on a train of her own; a single carriage whizzing up the tracks sending out a signal to try and find the train.

Returning to the present, Layton and the others catch up with the solitary carriage and remain determined to bring Melanie aboard. Traveling parallel to the vehicle, Layton organizes traffic and manages to bring her onboard. Even Wilford lets himself smile when he sees her onboard.

Melanie has been keeping herself going with a cocktail of suspension drugs. It takes her three days to fully recover but eventually she comes around and regains consciousness. Alex is there to see her too, and admits she’s been keeping Melanie alive in her head this whole time, clinging to the hope that she’d still be alive. And lo and behold, she is.

Melanie eventually recovers enough to start wandering about, looking into New Eden and learning that everything seems to be pointing toward this being the salvation they’ve been after. Mel isn’t so sure but remains determined to find out exactly how Wilford managed to find her with the signals.

So Melanie visits Wilford, who’s pretty much neutered up to this point. He apologizes for leaving her to die and eventually gets down to brass tacks. He needs Melanie’s help to convince the train to see sense. He’s not happy with the fantasy regarding New Eden and has his doubts over whether this is right, “We’re running out of time, Melanie.” Wilford warns, pointing out that they need to keep the train running rather than chasing this fantasy that may or may not hold weight.

Melanie decides to study the data a lot more closely after her chat with Wilford. What she finds lends itself to inconclusive results, and as we know Layton has completely fabricated this whole story about the tree too, which doesn’t help. Alex bites back against her mother and points out she was dead for a long time and they needed to make a decision. For now, they’re going.

Elsewhere, there’s a party about to take place in the train and we see various characters scurrying around getting ready. Till asks Audrey to go with her, clearly taking a fancy in her. LJ starts to show her crazy side again, while Layton tells Josie he loves her… but is rejected outright. Josie admits that they’ve left too many of their pieces behind and for her, she believes Layton needs to focus on leading people off the train.

With Ruth on the tannoy, she lets them all know they’re passing the Great Pyramids and well on their way to their destination. The guys on the train all toast to “new beginnings” as they pass the pyramids and ready themselves for the next stage of their journey. Or they would, if not for Melanie. She takes over from Ruth and broadcasts to the whole train that New Eden is a lie. She’s studied the temperature and it’s still minus 98 degrees out there..

As the personnel aboard Snowpiercer start turning on one another, the party ends and Wilford smokes his cigar, pointing out that they’re at war. This appears to have been his plan all along. And as Melanie heads down to first class, she notices that several of the train workers have been poisoned, courtesy of Wilford using a vial of poison presumably mixed with tobacco.

The Episode Review

So Snowpiercer’s penultimate episode finally sees us gain some headway in the storyline involving Wilford, New Eden and finding Melanie. It was perhaps obvious that she’d show up alive and after several days of recovering, she’s back on her feet and ready to seize the day.

That obviously comes in the form of outing Layton’s whole New Eden plan but then at the same time, Melanie should be well aware of the lies kept aboard Snowpiercer to keep things running. I’m still not sure why she’d align herself with Wilford but at the same time, she’s well on her way to taking the reigns of the train back from Layton, who is going to find himself in a very tricky position going forward.

This third season has been a real mixed bag and the storyline this year has been meandering and rather disappointing across the board. Hopefully things do pick up for the finale but this has not been a season to remember.