Orphan Black “Insolvent Phantom of Tomorrow” 

Ok, I did NOT see that one coming.

The recap for this week is a little late because I needed a day or two to absorb all the fastballs Orphan Black lobbed at us this week. Let’s see: the reveal of the real Castor mole, a lot of dead bodies, and, oh yeah, the reveal of the actual Castor AND Leda original. Deep breaths. There be spoilers ahead.

Sarah, Felix and Mrs. S head to London to rendezvous with Mrs. S’s endless supply of contacts. I swear, the woman has a wool-covered chum for every shady thing that has ever happened. While drinking pints in the Bayonet pub, Sarah and Felix get a little insight into their mum’s early years—including how she pretty much rocked as the lead singer of a band.

Cut to Mrs. S belting out a killer song while Terry, an old contact S put on the trail of Castor, is being tortured and maimed by Ferdinand. Remember him? Ferdinand made an appearance in the first episode of the season as a Topside enforcer and is apparently now on the trail of Sarah, Felix and S. And he’s not too subtle in his methods to find out what they are up to. Before S is even done with her song, poor Terry is a quivering pile of goo.

Speaking of goo, that somewhat resembles Donnie’s face after his run in with Jason last episode. While Donnie manages to keep Alison out of the loop, it’s not long before Jason’s crony shows up to hustle Donnie for the pill business. I guess if you throw a slap at your drug dealing over-boss, they won’t be so inclined to keep you in business. Jason’s crony snags Helena’s embryo tank in the process, at which point I almost clapped in delight. Not because we want the embryos going anywhere, but because it’s been a good long while since Helena’s been unleashed in all her glory on anyone. Since returning to town, she’s done her best to adapt the demure attitude, “walking a new path” as the mother-to-be.

While wearing Alison’s clothes and working at Bubbles without a care in the world, there are moments where you can almost see Helena adapting to suburbia. In fact, it makes you wonder how many parallels there are between Alison and Helena besides their DNA. While Alison has the suburban life down pat, if she needed to be unleashed, you have to think she’d be as off-the-chain as Helena.

Helena plays a pretty good mother hen to damaged Donnie with all her actual clucking and support of her Baby Ox Donnie. They head to kingpin Pouchy’s lair (aka garage) to make the trade — all the pills for Helena’s embryo tank and maybe a refund. Donnie, God bless him, still trying to be the cool one while Pouchy and his comrades laugh in his face. Helena does a poor imitation of Alison and is about to walk out with her tank when Pouchy’s niece Louisa threatens Oscar and Gemma. Whoops!

Helena shoves Donnie out the door and proceeds with a massacre of epic proportions on the drug lords. I mean, EPIC proportions. Helena strolls out of the garage looking like she’s recreated the pig’s blood scene from Carrie. Helena and Baby Ox FTW!

Back at Dyad, Cosima is up for a full meal of crow. Realizing Shay could very well be the mole feeding Castor info on the book, Cosima sucks it up and goes to Delphine for help. Not surprising, Delphine is alllll ready to tackle Shay with some Dyad-style scare tactics, which seemingly involve a bathtub, a razor and scary men in suits.

Orphan Black is so good at dangling those few little clues that let you think you know where you’re headed, until BAM, you’re on a very different road than you thought you were. Of course I fell for thinking Shay was the mole. One of the Clone Club golden rules has to be never trust anyone new. Yet, the mole was someone already in the mix. Little, quiet Gracie, the one who has barely said a peep the last few episodes, had Castor whispering in her ear. The lure of helping her husband Castor clone Mark was too much. Gracie sold out Team Leda and fed Castor all the info on Duncan’s book, Cosima’s illness and whatever else she learned holed up in Mrs. S’s house all that time. It’s always the quiet ones…Gracie and Mark share a romantic embrace as Castor welcomes Gracie to their side.

Back in London, with Ferdinand close on the trail, Sarah has gone rogue in order to get to the information Terry was tortured and murdered over. Tracing Terry’s steps via his cell phone, she and Felix meet Kassov, the contact who originally got Sarah to Mrs. S twenty years ago. Kassov leads them to Kendall Malone. Who is Kendall Malone? Just the prisoner who was identified in Duncan’s cypher as the Castor original. Sarah breaks into a dark apartment armed, ready to what? Kill an old man? Admittedly, I didn’t quite follow Mrs. S or Sarah’s thinking in why they need to kill the Castor original. Supposedly it’s to prevent saving the Castor line so they would stop sterilizing women, but aren’t there more efficient ways to do that? Like go after the remaining Castor clones? Or let them die out, since they have the life span of fruit flies without the Castor original.

Either way, Sarah winds up held up at knifepoint, not by an old man, but by a cross old woman. S shows up in time before any knives or guns start going off but the explosions aren’t over.

Turns out Kendall Malone is not only a woman instead of a man, she’s actually S’s mother. You can feel the bad blood reeking off the two of them. And…ready for this? She’s both the Castor and the Leda original, thanks to a male twin she absorbed while in the womb. Um what?? She’s known it all along yet somehow managed to steer clear of the whole conspiracy. How was that possible??

Next episode is the season three finale and we have some loose ends still to go.

• Will Donnie and Alison survive the fallout of Helena’s murder spree? (My guess is they’ll not only survive but thrive as the new kingpins in town but only because I want to see Donnie trying to intimidate his lackeys to do…anything.)
• Will Sarah, Felix and Mrs. S make it back home with Mum in tow? All teams are scrambling to get their hands on the Original and with her identity uncovered, how long before both Dyad and Castor come after them with full force?
• The one thread we’ve been following is the fight to save Cosima. And I suppose the Castor boys as well. What cure can be made and what role does Kira have in it? We haven’t seen her for a while but we can’t forget her little hand-of-God move last year on Cosima.
• Is this the last we’ve seen of Gracie and Mark or is there trouble in paradise for the lovebirds?

The season finale of Orphan Black airs Saturday on BBC America.