The sky is falling this week on See, Apple TV+’s fantasy epic about a world with no sight. In the penultimate episode of the series, Baba Voss and Maghra have precious few resources left at hand to defend themselves from Sibeth Kane and Tormada’s explosives.
Harlan has one last gift to give Maghra. And Tormada learns what governing next to Sibeth really looks like. Plus, we get flashbacks to Baba and Maghra’s courtship. All in all, it’s a pretty good episode of a very silly show.
See recap: ‘God of Thunder’
Season 3, episode 7: In the episode, entitled “God of Thunder,” Kofun (played by Archie Madekwe), arch-genius that he is, has fallen into the clutches of deposed queen Sibeth (Sylvia Hoeks). She and Tormada (David Hewlett) bind Kofun’s hands and are going to make him watch as they launch bombs into Maghra’s (Hera Hilmar) city.
Maghra and Tamacti Jun (Christian Camargo) prepared as best they can for the invasion. However, they are quite simply not at all ready for what Sibeth has in store. They’ve never seen the explosions firsthand … until now. The bombardment starts just as Baba Voss (Jason Momoa), Wren (Eden Epstein), Haniwa (Nesta Cooper) and Ranger (Michael Raymond-James) make it back to town.
Maghra heads back to her chambers to get the baby, Wolf, and is caught in a blast and buried under some debris. Kofun sees this from a distance and, of course, assumes that his mother’s dead in the blast. While she’s unconscious, she flashes back to when she and Baba first met.
Later, Sibeth frees Kofun so he can deliver a message to Maghra; this pisses off Tormada, who feels like she should have asked before giving away their only sighted captive. He needs the sighted to make more explosives, after all. She allays his fears by screwing him.
A message for Maghra
The message Kofun delivers is predictable enough: Maghra needs to abdicate or Sibeth will level the city. Maghra stands up to go do it, but then passes out from exhaustion.
When she wakes up, they’ve disabused her of the notion of leaving. There must be another way. Maybe Harlan (Tom Mison) can help from beyond the grave. He gave Haniwa a key before he demanded they leave him for dead. And that key opens a box with nothing inside but a tuning fork and a map.
The map is of the city … and it has tunnels in it. Smuggler’s tunnels that Harlan used to use to get in and out undetected. They just have to get everyone out of the city while they manage to stall Sibeth as Wren and Haniwa find the tunnels. (This scene is infuriating. They have, like, seconds before the city is destroyed, and they take their sweet old time looking around. You’d think they had all damn day to make a decision about getting slaughtered.)
Once they resolve to lead everyone to the tunnels, Baba and Maghra have a heart-to-heart (juxtaposed with another flashback, to a tender moment from Maghra’s pregnancy when they were falling in love). She asks him what he thinks is best for the future.
Baba gives Ranger one last chance to go home to Lu (Mainei Kinimaka), but he doesn’t take it. As soon as they’re sure everyone’s making it to safety, they vanish. They’re gonna finish the battle themselves.
Baba Voss can’t defeat an entire army by himself
Photo: Apple TV+
This episode of See was kind of silly because of all of the time it took to really relish in old memories and the central family members talking about how much they love each other. Don’t get me wrong. It all plays, it’s all quite nice to watch, but it’s also just a scream that they’ve seen their entire city get charred and now they’re taking time to have a few nice chats, to really look around, stop and smell the roses.
A sadistic lunatic is out there with her finger on the button and everyone’s like, “Yeah, we’ll get to it when we get to it.”
Beyond that, it’s pretty excellent stuff, with very little of the show’s usual problems. (Glaring omission: When Wren and Haniwa find Harlan’s cave, there’s this moment where they’re supposed to be staring into the abyss, astonished at how deep it goes. It’s their salvation, but of course because it’s a digital TV show in the Game of Thrones mold, you can’t see 6 inches in front of them. All that pomp, and it just looks like they’re staring at absolutely nothing.)
This season’s dramatic arcs have been sharpened to a point by now. It’s just one party versus another, and whoever survives wins. We’ve got one episode left, and it seems like it’s just going to be Baba Voss (who they’ve dressed like a full-on garbage samurai for his big showdown) and Ranger cutting people’s heads off.
That’s perfectly fine with me — and a fair way to send off See. The show wasn’t ever much more than Baba Voss cutting people’s head off to begin with. One more round of big, bombastic nothingness and then it’s bon voyage, Baba Voss.
★★★☆☆
Watch See on Apple TV+
New episodes of See arrive on Apple TV+ every Friday.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
