Sense8 - S1E8 - We Will All Be Judged by The Courage of Our Hearts
Previously on Sense8, ‘W.W.N.Double D.’
I like how the title of most of these episodes usually gets spoken by one of the characters and thereby have a literal effect on the story, like “smart money is on the skinny bitch,” “what’s going on?” and “what would Nancy Drew do?” This episode’s title gets spoken by Hernando in what was, for me, a surprising but believable twist. But before that, we get treated to what is arguably the best action sequence yet when Will, Sun, and Capheus help Nomi escape—displaying a courage of heart that is equally important.
It all starts after witnessing the terrible “suicide” of Niles Bolger (who was being controlled by Whispers), Nomi and Neets are overlooking San Francisco at sunrise. Nomi doesn’t feel right, and wonders how something can still look so beautiful after what they saw. There is some kind of disconnect, like watching a movie where everyone is laughing but you just don’t see the joke.
As it turns out, that very thing is happening to Kala at that moment. In Mumbai, she is in a theatre crying as the rest of the audience laughs at the movie around her. She’s feeling Wolfgang’s pain, from Berlin, as he sits next to Felix in the hospital bed who is clinging to life after being shot by Wolfgang’s cousin.
Kala excuses herself to the ladies room and begins to sob. Wolfgang and Kala appear to each other, and he explains to Kala what happened: he tried to prove something, to change what can’t be changed—the past—and this is the result. So it’s all Wolfgang’s daddy’s fault. He asks Kala where she is, and she tells him about the movie. In a flashback, he recounts how he and Felix used to watch movies together as kids soon after they met. We see a young Wolfgang and Felix watching Conan the Barbarian and saying most of the lines right as Arnold says them.
Just then a phone rings in a darkened room and Lito answers it. Daniela tells him that she got her phone back from Joaquin and they have nothing to worry about. It’s good news, but both Hernando and Lito wonder why they don’t feel particularly happy about it. So Nomi’s “disconnect” continues.
In Nairobi, Capheus is feeling it to. After seeing that man’s hands chopped off, he wants to be done with Silas. So he goes to Jela—his bus partner—and tells him the good news: they’re going back to work. Jela’s wife is happy about that, but as the two men share a beer they are unaware that someone is watching them from a distance.
Meanwhile, Sun is talking with her new friend in prison who is teaching her to sew. As the woman who stole her garments from the previous episode walks by, Sun extends a leg and trips her. She tells her friend that while her mother never taught her to sew, her father taught her a lot about business and about something called the mover’s advantage… sometimes it doesn’t pay to be first because the second mouse gets to enjoy the cheese. So after the two get to turn in their garments and go outside for the first time in a while, they meet up with a third friend who is painting a mural and join her. Sun starts painting an image of her mother. But then the woman comes and throws red paint on it, and has her crew backing her up. She tries picking a fight with Sun but Sun effortlessly handles her and her friends before being hauled away to solitary by the guards.
In Berlin, Wolfgang is still recounting his childhood with Felix. There was a time when Wolfgang was accosted by a group of bullies and saved when Felix ran out with an iron rod reciting lines from Conan: “No one will remember if we were good men or bad, only that two stood against many!”
But that memory is nothing compared to one involving his father. He punches Wolfgang in the chest and then berates him for crying, calling him a bitch. That’s when Felix bashes Wolfgang’s dad with a vodka bottle and really cemented himself as a brother to him. At the hospital, Wolfgang says that sometimes family isn’t made by blood, but something stronger—choice.
Kala, still grapping with her choice of making a family with Rajan, tells her family that she wants to move the wedding to the temple of Ganesha, because she sees through his eyes and he sees through hers. An astrologer says the new date is even better than the last.
Will is at his apartment getting ready for the day when Riley appears. They look relieved to see each other after what happened the last time they visited. I think it’s cute how much Riley absolutely beams around Will. She tells him how happy she is to be home in Iceland, and Will visits her there. She shows him around and learns about her deceased mother. Back in Will’s apartment, Riley is going through his record collection (who still has records, though, really?). Then he’s back in Iceland, telling her how he wants to visit and see the volcano no one knows how to pronounce. And as a train passes by Will’s apartment, the two lean in and kiss.
Unfortunately, Doubting Diego walks in on them and continues to have doubts about his partner.
In Mexico, Lito and Hernando wait for Joaquin and Daniela so she can get her things. When she finally shows up, she has a black eye but reveals that she had to agree to marry him in order to get her phone back. She tells them that if life has taught her anything, it’s that she can take a punch.
The gloomy mood sticks around, and comes to a head when Hernando visits Lito during a shoot the next day. Hernando is acting strange and Lito is worried it has something to do with Jaquin. It doesn’t… but it does have something to do with Daniela. She reminded Hernando of the things he allowed himself to forget because of how much he loved Lito, but he can’t be with someone who will allow someone else to be hurt just to protect his career, repeating a line from Lito’s movie: “in the end we will all be judged by the courage of our hearts.” Since Hernando feels that Lito does not have any, he leaves.
In Chicago, we learn that Will has again used his dad’s clearance to get footage of Nomi talking to someone named Niles Bolger. They watch Niles suddenly become coherent before going on his rampage, not knowing that he has been possessed by Whispers. How could a vegetable kill the doctor who did the surgery on him? Nevertheless, he finds out that it is the same doctor that was going to do the same kind of surgery on Nomi. And the company that paid for the surgery is the same company that made Jonas disappear.
The company is called BPO, or the Biologic Preservation Organization, according to Nomi, who is figuring it out at the same time. They are “a multinational research group studying the human genome and the search for positive and consequential mutations.”
Will visits Nomi and asks how she got the financial records, and we get a clever scene in which Nomi is talking to someone in front of Neets, who cannot see him and so calls it like FaceTime without the phone. Meanwhile Diego is also watching as Will talks to nobody. Just then, Whispers shows up at Nomi’s door. Will hears him arrive and warns Nomi not to look at him—that’s how he hunts, according to the information he got from Jonas.
Neets tells Nomi to head out of the window as her mom tries to misdirect Whispers at the door. Unfortunately, he pushes past her and Neets pretends to be changing her tampon to buy Nomi more time. But the cops see Nomi escaping and catch up with her.
Thus begins my favorite sequence in the series so far (yes, I found it even better than the sensate orgy). Nomi pleads, “Cop guy, where are you?!” But Will is being called to the captain’s office, so she pleads again, “I don’t want to go back to the hospital. Someone please help me.”
Sun wakes up in her solitary cell. Will is there too. Sun fights for her and Will coaches them on what the officers are going to do next. He directs Nomi to get on a bike and run. She does, and goes to steal a car before remembering that she can’t drive.
But Capheus can, and he’s there with her, too. Invoking the spirit of Jean-Claude Van Damme, he does some stunts with the car and they drive away.
Out of danger, Will returns to Chicago as his captain strips him of his badge and gun for once again going too far with his father’s clearance. The captain says this isn’t a movie or a fucking TV show (heh). As Will gets suspended without pay, in India Kala runs into her father-in-law-to-be, who came to the temple just to see her. He has reconsidered continuing the wedding as planned and gives her a Terminator 2-esque speech about fate being what we make.
Luck isn’t a factor, he tells her. Luck only offers opportunity, but without the will to make the right choice, luck is as meaningless as the elephant headed god Ganesha. Kala doesn’t think this is the place to have the conversation so as the two go to a more secluded place, Papa-Ji just comes out with it and tells her she should not marry Rajan because luck has given her the opportunity to correct the mistake. Then, some rejected Son’s of the Harpy people with masks come out of nowhere and stab Papa-Ji to death.