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nevers-complicated.jpg

This Week's Complicated 'The Nevers' In Less than 220 Words

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 17, 2021 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 17, 2021 |


nevers-complicated.jpg

This week’s midseason finale of HBO’s The Nevers was a trip. And I’m sure that we all had a similar experience during the first half-hour: Am I on the right channel? Did HBO load up the right show? What is this weird Alien knock-off and who are these characters? It takes until the end of the episode, really, to fully understand that the first act is actually a prequel to The Nevers set in the future. While it’s also initially both confusing and inscrutable, it eventually unwinds itself in a surprising and enjoyable way to finally reveal what The Nevers is actually about.

It’s also a fairly simple story, and while I enjoyed the act of processing what was going on in real-time, the episode was also needlessly complicated. It can be unfolded concisely and in less than 220 words:

In the distant future where a large percent of Earth’s inhabitants and resources are gone, a person named Stripe is involved in a war between two factions over a squid-like alien species known as the Galinthe, which has largely been destroyed by Trump supporters Freelife. The Planetary Defense Coalition (PDC), to which Stripe belongs, has been trying to protect the Galinthe, which came to Earth to help us save ourselves. The PDC has been losing. In an effort to regain an advantage, the soul of Stripe — whose real name is Zephyr Alexis Navine — is sent back into the distant past by a Galinthe, where she inhabits the body of an unhappy London woman who threw herself into the river. Molly is reborn as Amalia True, adapts to her time, and tasks herself with amassing and protecting a new PDC to take on Freelife, or whatever version of Freelife exists in 1896. Only Dr. Cousens and Penance Adair know Amalia’s true identity, but at the end of the episode, Amalia decides to confess everything to the rest of The Touched orphanage. The only catch is that someone else from the future has also been sent back in time to inhabit someone in 19th century London, and we can surmise that it is likely Lord Massen.

That’s basically it. It’s steampunk body-swapping Terminator.