Ron Does Stuff

The previous episode was a really good one, actually making me want to reread the books again and see how things played out there. It was also a great episode for the voice actors to shine, especially that final part where Aleksandar realizes who Deryn really is.

The episode opens with Deryn pulling off a retrieval operation successfully, and Aleksander watching her do it, now fully aware that she is, in fact, a girl. I’m so happy that they didn’t make the reveal of Deryn’s gender as the final conflict between the two of them because I’m just so tired of that, honestly.

Or maybe I’m wrong, because when Deryn and Aleksandar run into each other again after the mission, Aleksandar is aloof and standoffish. Well, I guess I’m just going to have to live with his. But there’s only three episodes left after this one, so at least they won’t be dragging it out for too long.

It turns out that the package Deryn retrieved is a ton of meat, which the Leviathan uses to lure away fabricated bears that had turned feral after the Russian forces had run out of food while at the site of the Tunguska event, which in this show’s alternate history is caused by a man-made event and not the crashing of a meteorite, as revealed in episode four.

Nora Barlow finally meets the scientist from episode four, who as it turns out is George Darwin, her uncle, and a descendant of Charles Darwin, which in this universe pioneered the creation of fabricated beasts. We also find out what the loris actually does, which is computing equations hundreds of times faster than a human. It’s here to decipher all the equations that George had written up on the board.

George had been investigating strange weather phenomena and noticing the similarities between them. The equations on the board will determine where the device making these phenomena happen is located, but solving it by himself would have taken months, while the loris will, hopefully, decode it much faster than that.

Later that night, Deryn tries to initiate conversation with Aleksandar by asking him to speak up and say what’s on his mind rather than keeping it bottled up, but she gets a real-time “This you?” from Aleksandar who asks her that maybe she’s the one who needs to say something to him. Now it’s Deryn who’s the clueless one. You’re letting Lilit and women down, Deryn!

While Deryn is still trying to figure things out, the loris has already done its job, figuring out that the weather is being controlled from New York, where Nikola Tesla just happens to be with his new device. George Darwin, however, doesn’t live long enough to see this breakthrough.

Onboard the Leviathan, Nora Barlow, Aleksandar, and Deryn have a conversation about the use of force as a deterrent against further conflict. Anybody who’s watched Oppenheimer already knows this argument, and it’s great that there’s a version of it available for the younger people who are watching this show. Aleksandar and Deryn also have a moment during the discussion where Aleksandar lets Deryn know that he knows, but maybe Deryn isn’t getting the hint just yet.

BUT, Nora Barlow is here to the rescue! When Deryn catches her looking at her uncle’s things, Nora confesses that maybe she should have told her uncle that she admired him before she lost the chance to do so, now that he’s dead. It’s here that she reveals she knew Deryn’s secret all along, but kept it to herself because she’s a girl’s girl and knows how hard it is to be a woman in a man’s world. But she also tells Deryn that if she waits any longer with keeping Aleksandar in the dark about her secret, her time might run out and she never gets the opportunity to let him in.

It’s at this moment that enemy units are spotted in the area, which leads us to an exciting scene where Deryn and Aleksandar rush toward the Leviathan and try to get on board before they’re left behind. It’s well-animated and I really felt the tension when the war bears arrived as Deryn was trying to get on the ladder! And the way that lead to Deryn finally telling Aleksander her secret? Chef’s kiss.