The Rig – Season 2 Episode 1 Recap & Review

Episode 1

Episode 1 of The Rig season 2 starts with Coake causing chaos as he organizes traffic and brings some of the group down into isolation. They’re all separated into different rooms, ready for the next bout of drama. They’re on another oil rig, this time up in the frozen north. We don’t actually see them touch down, but for now there’s a bit of a scramble to get order re-established.

Fulmer and Kat are in the med bay, with the former appearing to be infected. He’s been experiencing extreme rage and he’s convinced that Emily’s story about the ancestors getting revenge is starting to bear fruit through him.

News of the tsunami spreads across mainstream news, as a huge Scale 12 tsunami wipes out the oil rig and hits parts of Europe and the UK. World leaders are pledging to send resources out to help, but coastal areas, especially across the UK, have been devastated.

The rest of the group hold up in the cafeteria, and Magnus tries to keep them together, despite Hutton’s usual antagonistic behaviour. Coake shows up and offers a way home. There’s a contract and a 200k package to keep quiet about everything. They’ll also get yearly payments to keep them sweetened but there’s a strict NDA of course, meaning they can’t talk about their big ordeal or incriminate Pictor. The camp are split, with those realizing that they’re being bribed but others signing just so they can get back home to their families.

Magnus and Emily are brought out with Coake, who explains that the company needs them here. He’s actually playing second fiddle to a higher power, which happens to be Miss Morgan Lennox. She’s knows about the entity and heads in to greet Magnus and Emily after touching down in a helicopter of her own. Lennox explains that she’s the CEO of Pictor and wants to mine down deep to bring out rare minerals from the Earth. Specifically from the sea-bed, as a way of transitioning more smoothly to green energy.

However, there’s further drama here. A survey team have been exploring underwater and they’ve recently lost contact with them. They were near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and Coake explains that beyond the rig, there’s a steep drop called the Abyssal Plain – 4500 meters down. they’ve narrowed down the survey team to a specific area but since going dark, it’s up to Rose and Magnus to bring them back.

There’s a war being fought inside Pictor though, and Lennox explains that she wants to pivot the entire company across to renewable energies but she’s receiving friction and push-back from many on the board. She intends to try and manoeuvre the whole industry in this direction, while simultaneously keep Coake in check, given he just wants to rip up the Earth.

For Lennox, she’s all about the future, apparently, and she’s also going to release the details surrounding the entity as well, when the “time is right”. She wants Rose at the heart of all this, and offers her the chance to take over everything. At least for the time being anyway. Rose believes Lennox is more trustworthy than the rest but of course this could just be a façade too. She is CEO of this company after all!

Lennox speaks to Kat next and wants her to get medical help off the rig. She promises that the truth will come out, through Emily, but she also needs to sign the contract and leave for the time being. This would mean keeping her mouth shut given they need evidence to back everything up. However, this contract reads “no injury sustain”, which Kat scoffs at.

Lennox leaves the room and speaks to Coake, pointing out that she’s convinced a few others to leave. Her real play here is the survey log… but why? What’s on there?

With those left behind on the rig now with renewed focus, Magnus briefs them and brings the group to mission control, where they prepare to dive deep. Fulmer is also released from isolation too, but time is of the essence. They only have a little over an hour until those in the survey team lose oxygen completely.

While we meet a new dive technical here called Dale Cameron, we cut across to the lab and meet another new character too. There’s a scientist here that believes in the marvels of discoveries and sustaining life. It would appear he may be a pivotal character going forward, so we’ll have to see what impact he has on the story! For now, we follow the Dive team, as Easter and Dale head down with the Rover to bring the team back.

As the mission progresses, Magnus speaks to Fulmer and he hasn’t had any flashes from the Ancestor for a while. That could well change though, given Pictor initially found it down in the deep. Rose doesn’t oversee the entire operation thoguh as she decides to leave, right in the middle of this. She’s going to “investigate” but Rose and Magnus are in charge.

Down deep, there’s a disagreement over the best way to proceed forward. Dale and Eater find the wreckage of the other Survey team, but Magnus wants to assess the situation before sending anyone over. Coake wants to recover the crew right now and check the wreckage.

As they argue over what to do, Easter and Dale decide to do this themselves. Dale heads out in his suit and goes over to check on the Rover, despite the atmospheric pressure that would almost certainly cause this to be a suicide mission.

The damage appears to be a pressure failure on the glass, but the crew are dead. He heads on inside and grabs the log. Dale Cameron makes it back to their Rover and they prepare to ascend. However, the Log actually seems to be affecting the Ancestor for some reason, and down-deep along with in the lab, the parts of the Ancestor seem to be going crazy.

Tendrils reach out to the Rover, where Easter decides to try and push through. This is the wrong play, as it surrounds them. In fact, it squeezes them. The umbilical is ripped off too, leaving the Rover stranded.

The Episode Review

So The Rig is back and with this new season, we get a return of old issues and the same set of characters scrambling to make sense of what’s happening. With the Ancestor now finally showing up at the end of this episode, it sets up a dramatic series of events to follow.

It’s quite funny though that after escaping a rig and with the promise of some new locations, we end up on… another Rig. The visual design still feels very basic and simplistic, with a lot of the rooms plainly dressed and not much in the way of visual flair. The scenes underwater are pretty good though, especially those scenes of the Ancestor and the tendrils reaching out, which looked pretty slick.

Lennox is obviously going to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing here and it’s odd that she chooses to leave right then, just as the action picks up, and gives Rose control of the Rig. It almost feels like she’s setting Rose up for failure here. I’m sure we’ll find out soon but for now, we’ll have to see what’s in store for us in the next episode.