It’s going to be super interesting to see the entire crew’s reaction to Lorca being Mirror!Lorca. It’s interesting to note how unwilling they were to believe Tyler was Voq but how easy Burnham was to believe that Lorca was Mirror!Lorca. I guess one mid-boggling revelation of the identity of someone you know makes all the rest easy to get over.
No cold open in today’s episode as we go straight from the ‘previously on’ to the opening titles and the episode. Lorca is releasing his followers, including Mirror!Landry, who we last saw in the early episodes before she was mauled to death by the tardigrade. Lorca tracks down Mirror!Staments, allowing him to exposition how he got to the Prime Universe (he beamed on to his original ship, at the exact same time that torpedoes hit and also the ship went into an ion storm and this caused him to transport into the Prime Universe – does this mean Prime!Lorca beamed into the Mirror Universe (where he died on the ship?)).
Staments releases a bioweapon through the ship, killing mass amounts of crew. Georgiou decides to remove Burnham as a weakness and sends her to the brig, but she escapes.
On the Discovery, the Spore Drive is functional again but the mycellium crops are damaged. The way that the Terrans power the palace is by drawing energy from the network in such a way that poisons and diminishes them, with potentially catastrophic results to life across the multiverse.
A civil war breaks out on the palace as the two factions fight. Lorca’s group and Georgiou’s group engage in a fight in a hallway which results in Georgiou having to beam out as her troops are gunned down. Burnham contacts Discovery and tells them about Lorca, which they take fairly well, as compared to their difficulty with Voq. They tell Burnham she needs to drop the containment field around the palace’s core so they can blow it up.
Lorca breaks into the throne room (having killed the only surviving council member, making him being spared last episode kind of pointless, I guess?). Having decided Mirror!Staments is too risky, they kill him (I can’t decide if this is surprising pragmatic for the show or predictable – I mean he’s still like super clever right?). Lorca tries to recruit Burnham, who eventually finds Georgiou. She convinces Georgiou to let her stop Lorca, and to tell her how to drop the containment field.
Over at Discovery, it’s discovered that destroying the core will require them to use all of their remaining spores, therefore preventing them from returning home. Further, they’d have to be close enough that the blast would destroy them. Saru gives an inspiring speech, which is pretty decent and concise, and the crew follow his lead.
Lorca has won the allegiance of the remaining crew. Burnham meanwhile brings in Georgiou as an apparent prisoner. She offers herself to Lorca in return for her crew’s survival. Meanwhile Tilly wonderfully works out that they can ride the shockwave from the explosion and use the mycellium energy to power their spore drive simultaneously.
Saru is given the signal to warp in on the Charon. It briefly appears that Burnham was genuinely sacrificing herself to keep the crew safe, but the deception is revealed when, on Burnham’s surreptitious signal, their plan goes into action. Georgiou and Burnham attack their guards, while Saru (in a very nice aggressive moment) orders his crew to fire on the bridge, incapacitating most of the soldiers (it’s a nice trope, though I do have to wonder exactly what guarantees the same thing not incapacitating the good main guys js). This leaves Georgiou to vs Lorca and Burnham to vs. Landry.
I must say, I’m pretty sure Discovery puts the most effort out of all the shows into their fight cinematography. Enterprise was pretty modern, but everything prior it was very much the distinctive, Kirk-esque style of fight. Eventually Burnham gets the upper hand and has a phaser on Lorca. She refuses to kill him, but Georgiou does, running him through with a sword and then pushing him into the core (which I mean … seems to pretty definitively kill him which I was not expecting …). Georgiou promises to buy Burnham time to beam out – claiming that now that her people have seen her weak, she is a dead women, but will go out fighting. She starts mowing down Lorca’s troops, but as Burnham starts to beam out, in a move clearly inspired by her regret at her failure to recover Prime!Georgiou’s body from the Klignon ship, literally runs up and grabs Georgiou in a hug which beams her over to Discovery.
Discovery immediately goes to Black Alert and fires on the core. The Charon explodes and Discovery spore warm drives through the network, with some weird trippy effects, before arriving in their universe – but 9 months into the future.
Where the Klingons have won the War :O
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