Alright, time for Episode 7. After the last episode saw that Kovacs isn’t the last Envoy, will this episode continue to maintain the momentum or will this episode crash and burn?

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhFM8akm9a4[/embedyt]

Warning: Spoilers Ahead! Turn back now if you haven’t seen the episode!

It’s that time once again folks! What am I talking about exactly? I’m talking of course how this is a FLASHBACK EPISODE!! Well, we do cut back and forth from Past and Present, this is still an Expectation Dumb Flashback Episode (EDFE for short).

We start the episode with Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), with his sister Reileen Kawahara (Dichen Lachman), using shock pads on Kovacs so she can get him stabilized. Kovacs is tripping out from the Reaper in his system and keeps having flashbacks to his childhood. Like when he killed his father and joined the CTAC to become an Envoy. Rei tells Kovacs he is going to need a new sleeve after all the damage he taken from the Fightdrome and Kovacs refuses because he knows the value of the sleeve. Rei is able to save him for now and tells him the story of how she is still alive after Kovacs thought she was dead for so long.

The flashback starts with Kovacs getting back his original sleeve with the Envoy and getting assigned a mission to take out a man named Saito. While on the mission, he comes across Saito but also finds Reileen working for Saito as well. The two of them are able to reconnect and go on a shooting rampage, killing all of the Soldiers and Yakuza in the room. They escape and go to a bar to talk about what comes next since they both are being hunted by the Yakuza and the Protectorate. Kovacs asks her if she remembers a place in the forest only they know about and they head out to the forest. The walk in the forest and come across a rock with a pulsing light on it, this is a sight that they are getting closer and they decide to camp near it for the night. During the night, they are discovered by the Envoy and get taken away. Kovacs wakes up to find himself tied to a bridge with several Envoy watching him with the leader Quellcrist Falconer (Renée Elise Goldsberry), walking and talking to Kovacs. She tells him that Rei is safe and she convinces Kovacs to join the Envoy. Later on, Kovacs meets back up with Rei and she tells him that She also joined because he joined as well and they couldn’t come up with a better plan. This makes them now Envoys and they must eat, sleep and train together like a family. We cut to the next day when Falconer gathers them all up for a weapons training session which we have seen footage of in past episodes.

We then cut to a mission briefing where they plan on infiltrating a Protectorate database, steal the data and then blow up the database to make it look like a sabotage. They all go into machines and dive in to complete the mission, everyone else gets knocked out with Kovacs being the only one left inside. Kovacs completes the mission and the Envoy celebrate later that evening. We cut to the next day where Falconer is telling them about a program she created called Acheron that downloads into the DHF and rewrites it, giving everyone’s stack 100 years to live. Kovacs tells her that she would have to download this into all the stacks created. Falconer tells them she is going to lead a mission to a Protectorate Garrison on the planet, steal the casting source codes for the central core and use the codes to put the program into the Central Core. Everyone realizes this is a suicide mission and Falconer is ready to die so that others can live. She gathers a team of five to attack the Garrison and they roll out later that night. They get into the building and download the program into the system, they head down to the basement area but Kovacs gets trapped behind a glass door and gets captured by the CTAC (Colonial Tactical Assault Corps) soldiers. He later wakes up in a VR Room with the same man who recruited him to become a CTAC, Jaeger (Daniel Bernhardt). Jaeger tries to get information out of Kovacs about his friends and Falconer is able to stop Jaeger from cutting up Kovacs. Falconer tells Kovacs that he is drugged and needs to wake himself up from the room. Kovacs wakes up and everyone is there to grab him and walk out of the Garrison. Later on, Rei tells Kovacs that they shouldn’t go through with the mission because Kovacs was captured and almost gave up info about what they are planning. Kovacs tells her that they are Envoys and they stuck together no matter what. Kovacs goes outside to talk to Falconer and thank her for saving his life. Falconer tells Kovacs that she is the one who created stacks and her real name is Nadia Markita, she created stacks so she could transfer the human conciseness so that people can live many lifetimes. Kovacs thinks this is beautiful but Falconer disagrees and wants him to stop looking at her. They get closer together and start to make out which later turns into sex. Meanwhile, everyone is getting ready back at base to get to the central core when Rei goes out and finds Kovacs with Falconer together. Rei runs off and Kovacs goes after her, while things back at base start to seem off, people are stopping what they are doing and acting strangely.

We cut back to present day where Kovacs wakes up and Rei tells him that she saved the sleeve and offers him a CTAC stim called Goliath to give him back his strength. Kovacs says no and Rei tells him that he should eat something and saying that she never believed that she would find Kovacs again.

We cut back to the flashback where we see that airships fly over and start to bombing somewhere in the distance. Kovacs goes back to the Stronghold and finds it covered with ashes and dead bodies. Kovacs does find some of his friends alive but they kill each other and we find out that Jaeger is the one that found them and killed everyone except for Kovacs, Rei and Falconer. Kovacs runs away and tries to contact Rei and Falconer and they tell him that they are on the bridge near their ship. Kovacs wants them to take off and leave him behind so they can carry out the mission, Rei and Falconer refuse to leave Kovacs behind but Kovacs gives them no choice because he distracts the CTAC while the ladies get on the ship and take off. Before the ship can leave the area, it’s blown up by lasers, leaving Kovacs the only one alive and Jaeger tries to find him but Kovacs covers himself in ashes and escapes.

We cut back to present day where Rei is finishing her story, Kovacs asks her if she remembered how Falconer died and she says no. Kovacs says he’s going to go splash water on his face because he sees fireflies swarming around him and thinks he is still hallucinating. Kovacs walks around and finds a room with a couple of sleeves in containers, each sleeve being someone that Kovacs will recognize. The first one is a woman from the party, second is Hemingway and the last one is a little girl Kovacs talked to earlier in the season. We get to see a flashback that Rei was the one who caused the explosion and killed Falconer. Why? Because Falconer gave Rei life. Rei discovers that Kovacs has found them and he says that he knows now why she doesn’t remember because she backed up her memory before the explosion. Kovacs asks her why and she says that she did it all for him.

I will say that when it comes to flashback episodes, I’m not always excited because they can be bad sometimes. However, this isn’t the case with this episode. We finally got to learn more about the Envoy, Kovacs’s past, Falconer and Rei as well. Learning that Falconer was the one who created stacks was unexpected and a great way to give her character more meaning in this show.

Learning that Kovacs was a CTAC before he became in Envoy made sense since he was the training and the power to back himself up. Kovacs is a badass who has gone through hell and now you can understand why he just wants to be left alone to enjoy his freedom.

Rei being the cause of Falconer’s death means that she has a secret plan in mind for Kovacs. Also, to find out that she was interacting with Kovacs by using different sleeves really does enhance the fact that she is up to something. Maybe she wants to get Kovacs to join back up with her and make a new type of Envoy? who knows.

The acting in this episode was very great and everyone was able to get enough time to shine so they can stand out from the other Envoys. I really did like that Falconer’s and Kovacs’s love didn’t feel forced, even though they didn’t get much time to spend alone, it’s still a better love story than Twilight.

One thing I also want to add that this was the longest episode of the series, the episode was over an hour long. The fact that it so long meant that it had more time to flesh out the flashbacks. This was a great decsion because even though it’s a backstory episode, it was still entertaining and enjoyable to watch. If you can make a flashback episode over an hour long and still have it be enjoyable, means you really did something great.

The Verdict:

Episode 7 was a fantastic example of how to do a flashback episode right. We got to learn a bunch of cool things like who created the stacks, how the Envoys operated and what their true mission was. Learning that Rei has an ulterior motive and was the one that killed Falconer was a great twist and shows that she has bigger plans for Kovacs.

9.5/10

Next up, Episode 8.