Colony recap: 'Tamam Shud'

This week’s episode of Colony is cleverly named for an unsolved 1948 mystery in which a man turned up dead on the shores of Australia with what appeared to be Cold War-related encryptions in his pocket. Where he came from and what he was trying to accomplish remained unclear to investigators, and that parallels rather nicely what happens to half of our parajumping pair from outside the bloc.

While the pilot Noah — who else is just loving all the lady power of this season, by the way? — manages to land in a couple’s swimming pool after she ditches the drone-dogged vessel, her right-hand man is not so lucky. His body is found hanging in a tree by his ‘chute. Like the Unknown Man who puzzled police down under for decades, this rebel’s got something tucked away in his belongings, too: a military-style radio. Only, that’s no help to the authorities because the person who gets a gander at it first is Will, and he smartly memorizes the frequency and then scrambles it before the bloodthirsty Burke or his redhats can take note of that precious piece of intel.

He’s doing it to protect his wife and her “friends” in the Resistance, of course, but he’s also unwittingly giving himself an edge over his employers, which will prove to be very, very handy in minutes to come. If there was ever a question as to where Will’s heart lies throughout all this, it’s gone now. Let’s take it from the top of this jam-packed episode, shall we?

The episode begins with two new rebels (of whom we’ve met a few lately, proving this is a widespread effort indeed). They’re scouting an abandoned tarmac for a workable plane that they can use to gain entry into the Los Angeles Bloc. They’ll get past the wall, our pilot Noah reasons, because there’s an electronics disconnect between the tech of now and then, but that won’t stop the drones from hunting them down once they’re inside. The fella she’s with hates to fly, but he’s volunteered for this potential suicide mission, so it’s time to put away those jitters.

Unfortunately for him, his instincts about this mission were right, in so much as he’s DOA once the drones shoot down the plane. He might’ve managed to eject before impact, but he got tangled in a tree. He had a name before the arrival, but he dies a John Doe.

Burke is too busy prodding Will for details about his family life to notice the radio in John Doe’s bag. Burke has always had it out for Will, but now that he knows Katie and Maddie are sisters, that pretty much directly links Will to the stolen file from Nolan Burgess’ computer (Will → Katie → Maddie → Nolan’s file) and thus convinces him that Will may be one with the Resistance.

Will’s smart enough to know he’s toast and that collaborating further will only hurt himself, so he gathers what he needs to from the pack and scrambles the signal before anyone else can see. Even though this girl has no direct connection to Broussard and/or Katie that he’s aware of, he’s already completed his mission of getting his kids back together, so why play nice with Homeland anymore?

NEXT: Will’s finally found out…

Meanwhile, Helena is again dealing with the fallout from this latest incident. She’s already got a lot on her plate, what with the exploded alien vessel and all, but her focus on this is laser sharp, despite the proxy’s insistence that they should again paint over the missing pilot with visions of airy-fairy optimism about the Greatest Day. She knows what’s at stake right now — here’s where that mysterious “total rendition” protocol comes back into play. It… doesn’t sound pleasant.

Will heads home to give Katie a “ride to work” at the Yonk, leaving their napping children alone in the apartment, and in the process informs her all about the pilot. He wants to make contact with her before Homeland does, and also? He knows Burke has him figured out. Katie doesn’t want him to go back to work, but he knows that if he runs, they’ll easily find him. They’ve both got some work to do first.

For Katie, it’s looping Broussard in to the pilot news and seeing what he can find out through his contacts. Broussard isn’t surprised to hear of the Colony’s newest visitor because his pal Hennessy knew someone from a cell outside of the Bloc wanted to make contact, specifically about that alien gauntlet they stole. But when they go to talk to Hennessy directly at their usual movie theater spot, his throat has been cut. And with that, it’s crisis mode time. They hit Hennessy’s house to discover what they already feared — the gauntlet has been stolen by whoever killed him — but in the process, they do discover something useful. The radio he’s been using to contact these outsiders is situated, conveniently, next to a set of codes, so they’re able to talk to “Den Mother” for a split second, long enough to let them know their contact has been killed here.

Also sharing some news of the no good, very bad variety is Burke, who informs his boss Bennett that he suspects Will is aligning with the Resistance. He knows Katie took the file, so Bennett encourages him to dig deeper. If Will is doing what Burke suspects, then he could lead them straight to Broussard and *bam* the department is finally off the hook for all its failings.

The good thing about Burke’s new solo mission is that it buys Will enough time to hunt down a radio — making one last good use of his Authority badge, to boot — to roll out the first wheel of the welcome wagon to our pilot friend. She doesn’t answer, of course, but it’s a start.

Back at Homeland, Burke finally breaks the safe house stowaway Emmett, who, to his credit, has held out quite a long time and has the bruises to show for it. He doesn’t get him to admit Will helped him escape, but he does confess that a brunette woman with big brown eyes showed up at his new hideaway just before Homeland did. Combine this with the fact that Broussard’s accomplice from the night of the host-slaying op in surveillance imagery also looks a lot like Katie, and they’ve just found out how Jennifer McMahon deleted all of Will’s house footage before her dramatic department exit… it’s enough to burn them all.

Homeland moves on the apartment but finds only the children there, lounging around and looking surprised at their new un-merry band of babysitters. They’ve also got eyes on Will, who’s heading to a rendezvous point with Katie and Broussard but catches on to his tail before he can ever implicate them. Overseeing his diverted path, Katie makes a smart call, literally, by ringing the cafe he’s tucked away into and asking for Alex Graham. He informs her his cover has been blown and tells her to make sure the kids are safe. As far as either one of them knows, this could very well be his last conversation with her ever because, to paraphrase Paul Revere, “The redhats are coming, the redhats are coming!”

NEXT: Things get brutal for the Bowmans…

Katie’s shocked by the sound of the deadened line as he’s arrested — she knows how grave an Authority arrest really is for everyone — but Broussard keeps a wiser head and advises that they move quickly. Homeland can easily trace that call in a matter of minutes and hunt them down, too. She gathers herself enough to ask for his help in rescuing her kids from the obvious danger they’re now in, and he agrees. Broussard may not have a lot of friends these days, but he’s certainly being one to Katie right now.

Maybe it’s professional courtesy, or maybe it’s a tactic in and of itself, but Will’s interrogation room is lot more spacious than Frankie or Emmett’s were, and with a lot fewer electrified torture devices in view, too. But the threats are still the same. They’ve got their kids in custody now, and Burke’s already proven to Will there’s no limit to the level of punishment he’ll inflict upon a person of interest’s friends and, in this case, family. Let’s just say, kids aren’t off limits by any stretch of his twisted imagination.

Will offers to link them to the pilot in exchange for his family’s safety. They might want Broussard now, but they need to wrangle in this pilot for the department to save face. This gets Bennett’s attention, and they manage to locate a radio where Will can once again try to make contact with the pilot on that stolen frequency, and this time, she responds. She wants to meet, Hennessy or none, on her terms.

So, while Will joins Burke and Bennett on a sting operation at a local park, with Will successfully managing to reduce the number of officers scattered in wait, Katie and Broussard storm the apartment and methodically take down all of the redhats guarding her children. This means that young Gracie, who was just blubbering about how much she missed Lindsay and thought everything was going to get better when Bram and Charlie were back, just saw her mom shoot someone in the head point blank inches away from her. This is decidedly not the greatest day for the Bowman kids.

Despite the off-site interruption at the apartment, Bennett wants to go through with the mission, even though Will knows their leverage (vis a vis the kids) is now gone, for better or for worse. But before Burke can change Bennett’s mind and nab Will to abort the mission, Will grabs a soda bottle and stabs Burke in the stomach. Ruthless, sure. But Burke had it coming by anyone’s measure. This of course sends the undercover redhats swarming, and although he manages to dodge a host of bullets and sneak into a building, he finds himself at a dead end right away. It looks like it’s game over until … pop pop pop. Here comes the pilot to save the day. She saw him stab Burke, so she knows he’s on the level now.

Katie takes the kids underground, and there’s a moment where she has to dodge the question of whether they’ll ever see their dad again. It doesn’t last long, though, because Will eventually arrives and informs Broussard that the pilot wants to meet him, again on her own terms.

This means venturing out to a darkened alley, where she informs him that she’s the second in command to one of his former soldier friends from a failed mission a few years back. She knows enough about the top secret incident — up to and including the details of his arm tattoo — to convince Broussard she’s legitimate, and that’s when she informs them, “I’m here because the real war is about to begin. And that thing you stole, it’s going to help us win it.”

Too bad the gauntlet is no longer in Broussard’s custody and we have no idea who took it. It clearly wasn’t Homeland or else we’d have heard about it, and it wasn’t Simon because, ya know, he’s dead now. Is it the red-hand rebels who’ve intercepted the device? Someone who might’ve known Mya? Hard to tell.

Also! Snyder’s about to be back in the picture in a big way. Helena’s sick and tired of the proxy she’s got in the Los Angeles Bloc right now because he’s obviously just too far gone with the Greatest Day brainwashing to make a lick of sense anymore. Plus, he’s completely insubordinate to her and mansplainey as he can be. Yeah, he’s got to go.

And with that, the Bowman family has officially gone underground, and their new mission is (probably) to help the pilot find the missing gauntlet so they can get it back over, or under, the wall somehow. Chances are, Will will want to take his family away as well, seeing as he has no place here in Los Angeles anymore. Best case scenario is they’ll shack up with Beau at Big Bear, but there’s no way it’ll be that simple.