Penny Dreadful: The Awakening #2.7

Previously in Penny Dreadful: The Awakening #2.6

In issue 6, Lily revealed that Dracula has the sable flame, a weapon given to Lilith by God which she used to banish Lucifer to hell the first time, and they set out to find Renfield. Kaetenay and his wolfpack traverse to London as Lucifer sends the upper class out to start a world war. And, Catriona speaks to Malcolm’s ghost.

The issue opens with Kaetenay’s vision of the apocalypse, Ethan and Vanessa having produced Beelzebub to rule the world. Jekyll has only told Victor that the injections they’re both taking will make them “stronger,” to keep Victor off narcotics. Renfield reports that many of Bedlam’s patients’ eyes have turned black, which they brush off before beginning to experiment on one. Lucifer speaks through him, offering Victor a deal and calls him “Doctor Death. Weirdly, it cannot speak to Jekyll. At last the reveal of Sir Hyde.

Malcolm’s ghost tries to lead Catriona out of Bedlam to safety, but she doesn’t listen, distracted by a patient’s claim that she has darkness in her heart. An orderly traps her in one of the cells with the other non-believing doctors and nurses, so she sends Malcolm’s ghost to find a key. Girl, if you don’t…

Ethan and Lily encounter Victor at Bedlam, and all parties still pretend they don’t know each other like they do. Leave it to Dorian to let slip that Lily and Brona are the same, but before Ethan can rip Victor’s head off, a winged demon blasts through the wall to take him to Lucifer. Ethan shoots him, then Victor cages him. But the possessed patients pick up the message.

Malcolm breaks them out, just in time to help Ethan and Victor as Catriona blasts the possessed with a fire hose, and they abscond with Renfield against his will, but Dorian runs off with Lily, who, for some reason, suspects nothing. Their escape doesn’t go well—a nephilim kills their driver and tosses the whole carriage off the bridge.

Overall, the plot of this issue was solid, minus the whole “ghosts can bring you the keys” thing. I’m so intrigued by the idea that Victor might develop a dual nature as well as Lord Hyde, or if the process will be interrupted before it can complete its work on him, and it was satisfying for Ethan to finally discover what Victor had done, if only briefly. If anything could rate interrupting such an event, it’s the devil, right? A few moments actually had me gleeful, from Catriona’s shocked face at being shoved into the cell after not listening to Malcolm’s ghost (I mean, really), to Ethan cursing through the frame of the demon’s skull wound, so this was quite a fun issue.