Helix Episode 2.01 San Jose

A lady is hiding in the boiler room of a yacht, terrified, as her fellow passengers fight each other to the death above decks.

Meanwhile, as Dionne Warwick croons "Do You Know The Way To San Jose," the intrepid Jules -- sporting an updated bionic ring finger -- is disembarking on the island of St. Germain. She mutters into her dicta/phone that "the pandemic" originated here, and while her contact hasn't shown up, she must find a cure, because there are no other options. Moments later, a guy wearing homemade hazmat gear from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre spring collection lurks up behind Jules, asks if she knows the way to San Jose, and knocks her out with a stick.

Back to the U.S.S. Minn-oh-no, where a hazmat-suit-clad team inspects the carnage. Said team includes Sarah, whose suit is snug enough that we can see she's not or no longer pregnant; and Peter, whose allegiances to his brother and/or Ilaria are still unclear to us. Said carnage is total, and revolting; the victims seem to have been stricken from the inside by a lethal cheese goulash. A third doctor, Kyle Summer, tries to get Sarah to talk about her experiences at the arctic base from Season One while reporting to the Coast Guard cutter that dropped them off that the virus is not Narvik. Sarah is typically brusque in response, and just as rude moments later when the hiding lady bursts through a door and attacks Sarah and Kyle knocks her out with a benzo of some kind. Sarah snaps that the drug masks antibodies they need to track the virus. "You're welcome," Kyle eye-rolls. Seriously!

Fast forward to the hiding lady, Leila, explaining that everyone else on the boat got sick three days prior, after a side trip to St. Germain that wasn't on the formal itinerary. Everyone was fine when they first returned, but then ... Peter and Sarah report to the Coast Guard captain that it's not an airborne virus and likely not Narvik, so the skipper declares their mission complete. Peter is determined to investigate further, and attempts to overrule her by declaring a national health ... situation? Sarah is, like, whoa whoa whoa, but the captain, after telling Peter he doesn't give orders on her vessel, agrees to take them to St. Germain to look around. She then drops a long ton of exposition about how out-of-the-way Killigan's Island is, how she can't go ashore with them, how sat phone service is spotty at best and it's too far to send a chopper, so they're looking at two weeks on their own. Leila, still wrapped in The Post-Disaster Comfort Blanket Of TV And Film, thinks that sounds just super and decides to come along because she "figured [she] should do something." Yeah, she should. She should go home like a not-crazy person.

Speaking of crazy peeps, Jules is getting hauled through some underbrush. She wakes up and screams for help as, elsewhere on Killigan's Isle, Kyle gets nosy with Sarah some more, this time about whether Alan really "blew up that building in Paris." Sarah is cagey.

Leila is not. After the team finds an eyeless dwarf-cottontail rabbit strung up in a tree, Leila spots Chainsaw Hazmassacre Guy and takes off shrieking, forcing everyone else to chase her. CHG is somehow in two places at once, too, because at the same time he's menacing Leila, he's also being creepy with Jules's hair and asking her again if she knows the way to San Jose. He hears screams outside and leaves Jules alone again as Sarah steps into a foot trap and gets a stake through the foot.

For the benefit of new viewers, Kyle asks Sarah again about what went down at Arctic Biosystems while he's treating her injury, saying that she's "quite the celebrity at the CDC" and has picked up a nickname, "Hot Zone," because of her willingness to go to every dangerous outbreak. Sarah is a humorless git about Kyle's teasing, and snits that she hasn't seen Alan in a year (which might explain her un-pregnant state now) and doesn't care what's become of him (which is hogwash). She's also mean to Leila about possibly hallucinating ... until she follows Leila's gaze to a huge killing field of toothless skulls at the base of a tree.

As Peter is commenting that the stake trap that snagged Sarah is meant for humans, not bunnies, the group hears rustling and a scream. Inside Chainsaw's cabin, Jules thrashes around, trying to get free of her rope restraints; she's caught in the act, and Chainsaw asks her about San Jose again, then takes off his gloves and grabs a Costco-size pair of tweezers from a set of torture tools. Outside, Leila has taken off again, and the doctors track her with the bloodstains she's leaving behind in ... a ... scene we guess we missed, but anyway, our heroes fetch up at Chainsaw's farmhouse. Kyle draws the gun he as a Texan is required to bring everywhere. Chainsaw's tweezers get closer and closer to Jules's eyeball. Kyle kicks down the door to find ...

... nothing. At first we think it's a different house, but then Kyle drops his bag and the rabbit sample rolls out ... and ages and decomposes over the course of 10,951 more days. That's 30 years later, at which time we pan up ... to Jules, struggling frantically, as Chainsaw pulls off the brown contacts she wears to conceal her silvery eyes. He removes his own mask in turn and says, "I knew one day you'd come."

In the past, Sarah and Peter argue "stealthily" (Kyle is two feet away; they aren't whispering) about splitting up to search, and how Peter knows Sarah's foot is fine because: immortal. Peter tells her her special Slayer powers of recovery haven't made her special, "just reckless," but before she can get any more petulant, blood dripping on Kyle's sleeve from the ceiling leads to the discovery of Leila's body, strung up from the rafters with the eyes gouged out, same as the rabbit. Before they can process this, a traveling production of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village appears in the woods, carrying torches. D...un?

Their leader, Anne, informs them that they're trespassing -- but they'd better come with her and the other robed weirdos, because the island is dangerous and they have no time to explain why right now. It's probably dangerous because of these loonytoons, but three scientists who should know better meekly go along as instructed.

Jules tells Chainsaw, whose name is Caleb, that she thinks the TXM7 outbreak started 30 years ago with "a chain of events" on the island. Caleb wonders why she gives a crap. "We started dying too," she says.

Peter, Sarah, and Kyle sit in a sanctuary-type room at Hogwarts By The Sea and explain to a triumvirate of women who are not having it why they're there and what happened to Leila. Sister Anne non-answers that their "membership" has "cut all ties with the outside world." Sister Amy pipes up that they wanted to get away from "people like you." Peter BSes that they "totally respect" the compound's beliefs, and is told that he's "lying again," at which time the third Sister pulls a stinkface and scuttles off. Anne says a guy named Brother Michael provides for their spiritual and physical security, and adds that they don't get to speak to Michael: he speaks to them.

And he's going to do that right now, as Michael has pussyfooted into the room to do some classic Jim-Jones-style pontificating about the true meanings of words. Michael admits that he likes to eavesdrop, a guilty pleasure he got from his mother, then gets into a "no, YOU shut up" stare-down with Kyle, which Sarah interrupts by tactlessly blaring that they shouldn't eat or drink anything until the doctors have tested it. Michael's like, no thanks, but "I accept your concern," and gives Peter a very awkward hug. Based on Peter's face, Michael is passing gas the entire time. Michael's also not answering their increasingly pointed questions about whether other people share the island with the Harry Potter and the Germ of Extinction crew and what (or who) might have befallen Leila. They're told Anne is prepping rooms for them, and Kyle is like, wow, NICE CULT, and Peter is like, shut it until we can look around.

Caleb fixes Jules a snack. She thanks him for not killing her, and says she's looking for someone: Alan Farragut. Caleb visibly flinches, but cedes that Alan "is here," and he can take her to him, though she may not like what she finds. Unsurprisingly, the field trip leads to the compound, which 30 years on is a burnt ruin -- and the attached cemetery, with Alan's headstone. We can't quite make out the date of death.

We can't quite make out the face under the hood in the next scene at first, as a cloaked monk brings a tray to Sarah's room. "Thank you," she says pointedly, and the camera swings around to show Brother Alan letting himself out of her room without answering.

The camera then visits the desolate halls of the abbey before bringing us to a basement lab, where a woman is undergoing involuntary dental extractions, then getting a massive tube shoved down her throat while staring desperately at a floor-to-ceiling display of specimens ... that look a lot like cheese goulash. DUN!!!!