3%: Chapter 05: Lamp (Lampião)
April 28, 2018 4:37 PM - Season 2, Episode 5 - Subscribe

Michele and the others discover another side to Ezequiel as he retakes his turbulent journey from Process No. 80 to the present.

*Joana and Michele arrive at hideout 8. Michele pretends to Ezequiel that she’s alone, to reveal to Joana that he’s listening to everything, and writes her a note about his threatening Andre, but a suspicious Ezequiel amplifies the audio and hears Joana’s “What do we do?” whisper.

*Back at the orphanage, Marcela asks Rafael if Michele was involved in the incident, and he tells her she may have been one of the voices he heard.

*Silas arrives at the hideout ready to shoot Michele despite Joana’s protests, but then Ezequiel arrives and disarms him, and tells them he’s there to save La Causa.

*In flashback, 20-year-old Ezequiel tells the Causa orphanage leader, Mario, he wants to enter the Year 80 Processo and win his way to the Offshore to infiltrate them from within. Later, Mario tells him the Committee has approved his idea, but not with Ezequiel as the infiltrator, as he knows too much about too many members of Causa, and could do too much damage if he abandoned the cause or was broken by interrogation. Ezequiel smashes a lamp in Mario’s face (hello Old Man) and runs away.

*At Processo 80, Ezequiel impresses young Nair during a “guess who has the red card” test, by figuring out that one of the candidates is an Offshore plant.

*Back in the present, Cassia and Marcela sneak onto Ezequiel’s office terminal and listen to Michele’s transmitter, as Ezequiel tells the group his story – how he fell away from his Causa upbringing as he was seduced by belief in his superiority as one of the 3%, and by his love of Julia. But her suicide, and the Council’s refusal to allow her burial because of it, ignited his old convictions. He tells Silas that he swapped out the Old Man’s letter with one he wrote, that the purpose of the bomb is to make everyone afraid to join another Processo but also to blow up the Council (who he invited to join him for opening ceremonies) and then convince the surviving Offshore leaders that the only way forward will be outreach and uniting with the Inlanders. He tells Silas that the flask of liquid he gave Michele will make the bomb undetectable by sensors, and gives him a ring for bypassing security.

*Ezequiel and Michele leave but cross paths with Marcela. Ezequiel tries to bluff that Michele is his prisoner, but Marcela stabs him in the gut and slits his throat, and paints a symbol on his chest in blood. He dies to visions of Julia and a watery embrace. Michele sneaks away and runs off with Joana, and in the morning they discover that Ezequiel’s body has been left on display in the marketplace to frame Causa for the murder.

*Silas wraps Ivana in a shroud and sets off her funeral pyre (and Rafael burns a scrap of bloody cloth), while Ezequiel’s body is flown back to the Offshore by a drone and interred in a funeral pod. Marcela gives a funeral speech on how the Processo must continue in his memory. Silas gives a speech on how Causa must end the Processo.
posted by oh yeah! (5 comments total)
 
I did not see Ezequiel's death coming. I mean, I couldn't imagine how he was going to deal with Marcela and Cassia hearing him say all the things he said about his past and plans for the bombing, but still, they got me.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:41 PM on April 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


I really wasn't expecting Ezequiel to go down here either. I was expecting some sort of double-double-cross but they actually played the whole thing straight, and the graphic nature of his death seemed in part intended to underscore "yes, he's definitely dead." Not a good guy at all, but I found his interactions with Michele in particular compelling to watch and I'm curious to see how the rest of the season plays out without him as the antagonist foil.

One small production detail that kinda took me out of it a little bit: I know enough Portuguese to have noticed that the actor who played young Ezequiel had a pretty different accent from João Miguel's. Maybe if there are any Brazilian MeFites here, they can comment on whether that makes sense or not? It's possible that, if the accent the older Ezequiel has is seen as a more refined one, it's a character detail that was deliberate to show the new identity he adopted once he rose through the ranks Offshore, but I don't have enough cultural context to know if that was the intent or if it was just the performers/direction being inconsistent.
posted by Kosh at 1:25 PM on May 20, 2018


count me in as also not expecting Ezequiel to die here. I hated that manipulative son of a bitch but I was almost coming around to him actually siding with the Cause. I also thought he was just playing them to get to the bomb, and then he revealed he was the one that dictated the letter they found.

I don't speak Portuguese but I did notice that young Ezequiel definitely sounded different. The only similarity was the attitude and the cadence. So perhaps the Offshore refined him?

My other complaint was that I did not want Marcela to be the one to off him. It didn't seem poetic enough I guess. Michelle or even Andre would've been somehow more satisfying, even though it's predictable and/or derivative. But the shock of him dying in this episode and the manipulation with his body made the story that much more dramatic. And now we all have Marcela to hate, which is a turn I also didn't expect.
posted by numaner at 12:41 AM on June 9, 2018


Didn’t notice the language issues, but I was struck by what a great job they did casting younger versions of Ezekiel, Fernando, and ?Joana. The kids’ faces were completely believable as precursors to the adult actors.

Meta detail: I love the asynchronous discussion Fanfare permits! We just binged s2 after reviewing the s1 discussion here as a helpful refresher.
posted by Jesse the K at 3:50 PM on September 1, 2018


Glad you liked the S2 posts. It was kind of a bummer for me that there were so few S2 comments, compared to S1.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:51 AM on September 2, 2018


« Older RuPaul's Drag Race: DragCon Pa...   |  3%: Chapter 06: Bottles (Garra... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster