In the seventh episode of the third season of Alias, I am exhausted. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Alias.
Trigger Warning: For discussion of consent and trauma.
This show remains A Lot. A GREAT DEAL. AN ETERNALLY LARGE AMOUNT OF TOO MUCH. Like I said at the end of the video for “Prelude,†I now understand how season three is possible as a long story arc. Sydney’s missing two years continue to mystify and entertain me, and this episode is like every dangling plot thread colliding in chaos and terror. HOW.
THE.
FUCK.
DOES.
ALIAS.
KEEP.
ESCALATING.
SO.
CONSISTENTLY.
For the first half of “Prelude,†we are forced to contend with the secret of Sydney’s bizarre alter ego, Julia Thorne. There are both internal and external reasons for this plot being as suspenseful as it is, and y’all, I love how intricately it was woven into the arcs for at least FOUR characters. It affects Sydney in the most personal sense, of course, because she can’t remember that time, and it’s horribly upsetting and traumatic to discover that your body was used in this particular way. (I say this as someone who has had to deal with lost time and assault, and while I wouldn’t equate all experiences under this umbrella as being identical, I do know how trauma like this can manifest. It’s very, very unnerving to not be able to recall details of something when there is undeniable evidence that it happened.) On top of that, the Covenant stole her time. Her body. Her memories. And they stole the opportunity for Sydney to continue her relationship with Vaughn. The world moved on without her, and she’s spent this season trying to catch up.
It hasn’t been easy, either! Vaughn loves his wife, but Dixon’s order to keep Sydney’s story a secret is clearly taking a toll on his marriage. Even that is so much more complicated than merely an issue of trust. Like, there’s no manual that explains how to deal with the messy emotions that come with your ex-girlfriend returning to your life after you thought she was dead and you moved on and married someone else. Vaughn can’t just delete his feelings for Sydney, either. He didn’t get closure when she left! That also doesn’t negate his love for Lauren either, who has her own insecurities over Sydney’s return. Her stable marriage is no longer stable! How does she navigate that without being cruel? Without making Vaughn and Sydney cut off contact with one another?
And then there’s Jack, whose dedication to his daughter is about as intense as you could get. It’s a remarkably consistent part of his characterization: after years of being distant and detached, he’s now INCREDIBLY DETERMINED TO PROTECT HER AT ALL COSTS. That includes setting up Vaughn and Lauren to get KIDNAPPED (!!!!) so that he could murder Javier Perez and keep Sydney secret safe. Which, for the record, is immediately made moot when Sark reveals the truth to Lauren anyway. (And I do feel some type of way about the fact that one of the only Latinx recurring characters was murdered for literally nothing.) For Jack, there is no line he won’t cross to help Sydney. So what about Vaughn? Is he willing to go just as far?
Well, I’m guessing that the next episode is going to reveal that to us, though I have no idea what Jack and Vaughn are going to plan. An extraction for Sydney??? How is that going to work???
But what I’m most interested by in “Prelude†is the very first hint of a real answer to Sydney’s biggest mystery. I get now that the bizarre dream Sydney has twice in this episode was actually the first time that she remembered something: the stone angel that she could see from Julia Thorne’s apartment in Rome. Why that place? Why did she buy it? Why did she return there? How does it fit into the puzzle of those lost two years?
I suppose that I was drawn to this, too, because memory loss is such a fickle, subjective thing in certain respects. You can’t control what memory decides to come back, and in this case, the angel statue was Sydney’s trigger. That, couple with the letter she sent herself (HOW???? Did she break from her programming and send that as a way to hopefully unlock the truth of what had happened to her?), allowed her to trace a route back to a place that meant something to her. I adore that she uses tactile sensations to try to trigger more memories. That sequence where Sydney drifts about the apartment, running her fingers over surfaces, was powerful, as was the moment when she laid down on the bed and saw where that dream image came from.
And after all that, she’s barely closer to the truth. Seriously, I hope that Vaughn and Jack are trying to rescue her, because LORD KNOWS SHE CANNOT GO THROUGH THIS PROCEDURE.
The video for “Prelude†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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