Defiance Episode 2.03 The Cord and the Ax

Alak is in the DJ booth, breaking in the newest recruit, China Doll, but when she begs him to treat her rough like his daddy did, it's clear she has a different definition of "breaking in". Alak gives in to the seduction for a moment - he's only Casti, after all - but then looses himself from her grip and runs to his wife's father's home in time for a family dinner. And the family is bigger than expected - Christie's pregnant! Rafe calls Bertie, their trusty Liberata house helper, who rushes home from the market to celebrate.

But fate, or Irzu, or whatever force has been working through Irisa to kill so many folks from coast to coast, has other plans. The little demon girl - let's call her, "child of Chuckie" - forces Irisa to attack and kill Bertie. Irisa has no memory of the act, simply of finding herself astride the poor woman's lifeless body. She spends all night burying Bertie in the woods. When she returns home, Nolan demands the truth, but Irisa won't open her mouth.

Alak, under pressure from Rafe to act right and give up his thug life, goes to visit his father to ask for his blessing in walking the straight and narrow path. Datak refuses, and wrestles the truth out of his son: that Stahma has been heading the family business and leaving him to rot in the pig sty of Camp Reverie. Datak swears revenge, but Alak defends his mother, then runs home to her like a widdle baby.

Datak and Alak aren't the only ones wrestling with daddy issues: Irisa's gone missing, and Nolan finds bloody Liberata gloves in her room, leaving him to wonder if he ever should've taught his little girl to throw knives in the first place. Irisa is tortured by the repeated murders she can't stop committing. She seeks council from Sukar - but then she kills him, too! Thass cold. Dead, twice in one lifetime. Well, guess the second one had to happen sometime.

Irisa grabs Sukar's rifle. If she can't stop herself from killing, maybe killing herself will stop it. She shoots herself in the face, but of course the powerful technology within her heals the wound as Child of Chuckie watches over her. Once she's healed, C o C disappears, just in time for Bertie to appear. No, this is not a dream sequence! This is really happening! Bertie is alive, we see that fishmonger girl from AngelArc is alive and in Defiance AND Sukar later turns up alive. What is going on?

Nolan and crew have, by this time, tracked Irisa to the woods. When Nolan sees his daughter with the woman he thought she killed, he's furious that she won't tell him the truth. She says that, if she knew what it was, she would tell him. Rafe and his family are just happy to have Bertie back. Little do they know, she and the others owe their second chance to the weaponry in Irisa's body, and they, too, are weapons spreading steampunk genocide (as seen when the fishmonger lady kills, and presumably resurrects, a kid in the same way Irisa killed her).

Mayor Fancypants, meanwhile, got Amanda high and then continued to spy on her. Was that his new low, or was it when he used Doc Yewll's severed finger to open the safe in her old office, where he found all the neat plans for the high falootin' weapon that Doc worked on last season? He asks Yewll if she can do everything the plans say she can. She confirms, and says that if he wants her to start work, she'll need an assistant by the name of Datak Tarr.

And that is the story of how Yewll freed Datak from prison, and he went home, got in the bath with his wife and son, and tried unsuccessfully to drown the former. And they all lived happily ever after. Sweet dreams!