Review: Pantheon “We Are You”

 

Overview

Last week, the dangers presented to the group when Chanda let out the technology to scan people’s minds were completely hypothetical. Boy oh boy, that hypothetical turned into certainty real quick.

That’s the problem with rash decisions. Trust me, I’ve made a lot knee-jerk reactions when it comes to getting really pissed off at a situation. I would know. Then there’s the world of regret that comes from it. Do scanned uploaded intelligence feel regret? Anyway, Chanda made the decision. Let’s see how it plays out.

So, here comes those effects to come with the cause. Laurie decided to go public with everything. A Russian UI took down a drone, killing a Saudi prince and US Secretary of Defense effectively ending Saudi / US relations. The stock market crashed. Things got turned up a notch. The biggest problem that arose from everything happening at the end of “You Must be Caspian” was that Caspian just bailed on everyone.

So, Carey legitimately got into a hospital. However, Caspian is on the run. Last we saw, he was peeling away from Maddie’s house. This week, Caspian is living his best hobo life, commuting by freight trains. He then finds a monestary, church, I’m not sure. All I know is that they look like monks, and they’re working at a soup kitchen. This is the part I don’t get, because it almost feels out of character for Caspian, so I’m going to question it a lot here. Caspian then wants to help out.

Later on, when I started getting scared that Caspian was going to become a monk or a friar, the unexpected happened. This man becomes a teacher at their school, teaching the other transients that were on the train. He had a fantastic way of teaching “solving for ‘x.'” In this moment, it started happening. Caspian almost solved the code. After giving a fantastic speech about expectations, choices, and expectations, this man goes full on Good Will Hunting” by running math equations almost in a trance. Caspian’s getting a lot of character development, and I am all for it.

In the back end of the episode, Caspian finally meets Pope, who finds him at the soup kitchen. Caspian knows things are going on. Pope is getting deep on this. Pope is playing a dangerous game, because he’s playing with Caspian and intimating that he’s going to give Caspian full control over Logorhythm, and shut it all down. Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that isn’t going to happen.

Cody was in the dark about with Laurie’s plan to tell the world. You know, for being an all around omnipotent intelligence, Laurie miscalculated what Cody is capable of. He’s hatched some half-cocked plan on breaking into Logorhythm’s arctic lab, and steal Laurie’s source code, and start again. Just off the top, I can tell you a lot of different ways this is a terrible idea. Reuploading this intelligence does literally nothing to help, considering she would need to relearn everything she’s done and figured out thus far.

The last segment reaffirms this, because Laurie literally said “it’s day one me.” The plight of all of the UI is rough. All Laurie wanted to do is fix the flaw. And as of tonight, that flaw isn’t fixed. She wants to get this truth out there, and tell the world what’s going on, but it will literally destroy her. Her final plea is to just leave her be, because she doesn’t want a Laurie uploaded who resented and didn’t love Cody. It’s actually pretty admirable.

Meanwhile, our three uploads hatch a plan to get the rest of the UI’s to team up to help work on fixing the flaw. They meet up in China’s supposed entry point, which is modeled after Reign of Winter. China knows their gold farming prisoners best, I suppose. These three, almost worked for a minute until Laurie lost control due to the flaw’s decay. Causing the main Chinese upload to port everyone back to China. The fight was actually fun to watch, even though it was a little short.

But the result of Laurie’s actions means she has one action left. She’s going to go public, and push her message out to every single person in the world. This triggers Chanda to go into self-preservation, and try to kill off Laurie. The chain reaction pushes David to save her, and threaten Chanda with uploading the message himself if Chanda tries anything again. This shit is getting serious, for sure.

“We Are You” ends with Chanda making a ballsy play, and calling Maddie using David’s…number? Who knows. Anyway, his play is to sway Maddie into helping him…and David by proxy. Chanda wants Maddie to get her dad to step aside and let Chanda get the rest of the uploads onto his side to help fix the flaw, or at the very least, stop Laurie from blasting out her message to the world. It’s a ballsy play, that will be sure to get David back onto the board and in a fighting mood. Chanda then goes to destroy Laurie to protect the uploads, by destroying Laurie’s server ship. Holy shit. I caught some serious Game of Thrones vibes watching that.

Our Take

Where do I even go with this? There were so many twists and turns everywhere we went this week. I didn’t see Caspian becoming a temporary teacher, and server at a soup kitchen, just to return to Logorhythm to (probably) get played by Pope. I didn’t see Laurie want to expose everything to the world, just to get her server farm and ship destroyed. I didn’t see David just get punked, and subverted by Chanda and be completely powerless with trying to save Laurie.

Let me put it to you like this. I just stopped writing for about 10 minutes. I am trying to piece together exactly how I want to summarize “We Are You,” and what to say. This week was god damn amazing. There was so much to love. Caspian finally got some much needed character growth and a final destination on this trip. The central focus of the episode was not Maddie, Cody, and Ellen, but our three uploads. We were finally seeing what they can do as a team, and will ultimately destroy the common bond between them.

I’ve been saying this all along. If Pantheon isn’t on your list of shows to watch, you’re doing it wrong. This show is easily worth the subscription to AMC+, and will hook you from the start. The one thing I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, “We Are You” is the best episode of the season. Hey, AMC, why the fuck is Pantheon not on broadcast TV? You’re missing out.