Raised by Wolves: Control
February 19, 2022 7:39 AM - Season 2, Episode 4 - Subscribe
After the Trust uses the children to strike back against Marcus, Mother takes matters into her own hands, and Father has a breakthrough.
It's good to see Mother back in full power
I hope HBO has a better endgame planned for this mother of dragons than it did for a certain other one -- I imagine they do.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:14 PM on February 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
I hope HBO has a better endgame planned for this mother of dragons than it did for a certain other one -- I imagine they do.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:14 PM on February 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
God, I love this bonkers insane weird-ass show. I don't know why, I can't explain it, but it just scratches an itch. No major emotional wounds to deal with, no deep dive into trauma, just Weird Shit 24/7.
posted by Kyol at 9:32 AM on February 21, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Kyol at 9:32 AM on February 21, 2022 [6 favorites]
Yeah, it is compelling, although I'm not sure if there is a master plan to all of this or if the writers are just pulling stuff out of their asses.
A few stray observations:
There seems to be some sort of parallel between whatever plans "Sol" (or whatever the voice people keep hearing is) has for Marcus and for Mother. Their sex scenes in S1 are complementary in interesting ways: When Sue is on top of Marcus, he hallucinates some sort of vision of the stars and a flood of blood raining down on him. When Mother is making it with Faux-Campion Sturgiss in the sim, she also has a hallucination of the heavens and is then drenched by a flood of Android Milk/Future Jizz.
Re-watched the scene at the end of S1E10 when Mother & Father fly the lander into the center of the planet through the core; second time around the insemination imagery was super obvious: the ship is a tiny little sperm diving into the giant fiery egg of the core.
I mentioned before that Mithraicism appears to be some sort of syncretic religion; I've been paying a bit more attention to the obvious biblical allusions: the tropical zone as the lost Eden (even protected against "Sol's" transmissions); the voice everyone keeps hearing is playing the role of Satan/Adversary/Tempter -- telling Mother she can be a real mother, telling Marcus he can be king, telling Paul the truth about his parents, trying to convince Campion to kill himself so he can reunite with his siblings. The Mithraic beliefs diverge from Judea-Christian beliefs, though, in that the Tree of Knowledge is something to be sought after, not a forbidden fruit. Could Kepler 22b be the source of all of Earth's religious texts?
I think the Dark Photons are going to be (more) important going on. They seem to be some sort of bridge between biological and technological constructs, perhaps? It's the Dark Photons in Mother's body (or the embryo's body) that the rapist-guy absorbs through the umbilical cord in S1, and apparently the Dark Photons in her eyes are what gave Marcus his powers.
Fun game: spot the allusions to other sci-fi properties! The very end of the credits sequence when we see the silhouettes of the planets looks like a 2001 reference to me. The somewhat medieval nature of the Atheist & Mithraic societies (primarily the latter, but also in their respective armors) reminds me a bit of Dune, plus that giant pentagonal "temple" has a built in Gom Jabbar test, when Marcus thrusts Hunter's arm in and he experiences pain but no actual damage. The anti-android/AI bias of some of the characters also reminds me of the stories about the Butlerian Jihad. The flashbacks to the ancient past of Kepler-22b also suggest that it may have been a society ruled by technological beings: the milk-spouting thing in the giant d12 appears to be just like the android-thing that Father reactivates: some sort of bio-tech hybrid, perhaps, with devolved human cultists worshiping it? Which also makes me thing of Battlestar Galactica (the reboot)... which gets me a little worried, as I wonder if they are going for a lazy "this has all happened before, this will all happen again" theme: humans destroyed themselves on Kepler 22b millions of years before but a few managed to survive and make their way to Earth... where they eventually destroyed themselves with a few managing to come back to Kepler 22b. That would be pretty stupid, though. And not a sci-fi reference, but Sol's whispering voice reminds me of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, squatting like a toad and whispering into Eve's ear.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:52 AM on February 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
A few stray observations:
There seems to be some sort of parallel between whatever plans "Sol" (or whatever the voice people keep hearing is) has for Marcus and for Mother. Their sex scenes in S1 are complementary in interesting ways: When Sue is on top of Marcus, he hallucinates some sort of vision of the stars and a flood of blood raining down on him. When Mother is making it with Faux-Campion Sturgiss in the sim, she also has a hallucination of the heavens and is then drenched by a flood of Android Milk/Future Jizz.
Re-watched the scene at the end of S1E10 when Mother & Father fly the lander into the center of the planet through the core; second time around the insemination imagery was super obvious: the ship is a tiny little sperm diving into the giant fiery egg of the core.
I mentioned before that Mithraicism appears to be some sort of syncretic religion; I've been paying a bit more attention to the obvious biblical allusions: the tropical zone as the lost Eden (even protected against "Sol's" transmissions); the voice everyone keeps hearing is playing the role of Satan/Adversary/Tempter -- telling Mother she can be a real mother, telling Marcus he can be king, telling Paul the truth about his parents, trying to convince Campion to kill himself so he can reunite with his siblings. The Mithraic beliefs diverge from Judea-Christian beliefs, though, in that the Tree of Knowledge is something to be sought after, not a forbidden fruit. Could Kepler 22b be the source of all of Earth's religious texts?
I think the Dark Photons are going to be (more) important going on. They seem to be some sort of bridge between biological and technological constructs, perhaps? It's the Dark Photons in Mother's body (or the embryo's body) that the rapist-guy absorbs through the umbilical cord in S1, and apparently the Dark Photons in her eyes are what gave Marcus his powers.
Fun game: spot the allusions to other sci-fi properties! The very end of the credits sequence when we see the silhouettes of the planets looks like a 2001 reference to me. The somewhat medieval nature of the Atheist & Mithraic societies (primarily the latter, but also in their respective armors) reminds me a bit of Dune, plus that giant pentagonal "temple" has a built in Gom Jabbar test, when Marcus thrusts Hunter's arm in and he experiences pain but no actual damage. The anti-android/AI bias of some of the characters also reminds me of the stories about the Butlerian Jihad. The flashbacks to the ancient past of Kepler-22b also suggest that it may have been a society ruled by technological beings: the milk-spouting thing in the giant d12 appears to be just like the android-thing that Father reactivates: some sort of bio-tech hybrid, perhaps, with devolved human cultists worshiping it? Which also makes me thing of Battlestar Galactica (the reboot)... which gets me a little worried, as I wonder if they are going for a lazy "this has all happened before, this will all happen again" theme: humans destroyed themselves on Kepler 22b millions of years before but a few managed to survive and make their way to Earth... where they eventually destroyed themselves with a few managing to come back to Kepler 22b. That would be pretty stupid, though. And not a sci-fi reference, but Sol's whispering voice reminds me of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, squatting like a toad and whispering into Eve's ear.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:52 AM on February 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh, and I forgot the other possible reference I just happened to stumble upon the other night: I'm reading Philip K. Dick's VALIS, a story about a man named Horselover Fat who hears the voice of God and writes down his inspired scriptures, which include:
"In dormant seed form, as living information, the plasmate slumbered in the buried library of codices at Chenoboskion [Nag Hammadi] .... Jesus foresaw not only his own death but that of all... Homoplasmates. That's a human being to which the plasmate has crossbonded. Interspecies symbiosis. As living information the plasmatic travels up the optic nerve of a human to the pineal body. It uses the human brain as a female host ... in which to replicate itself into its active form... The Hermetic alchemists knew of it in theory from ancient texts but could not duplicate it, since they could not locate the dormant buried plasmate." I'm only up to chapter 4, so we'll see what else pops up...
Which reminds me of another thing: Why is it that you shouldn't look at Mother when she's weaponized -- does the sound somehow enter the body through the optic nerve? I'm pretty sure I've seen her scream-splode people who had their backs turned, so I'm like, whas the deal?
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:55 PM on February 21, 2022
"In dormant seed form, as living information, the plasmate slumbered in the buried library of codices at Chenoboskion [Nag Hammadi] .... Jesus foresaw not only his own death but that of all... Homoplasmates. That's a human being to which the plasmate has crossbonded. Interspecies symbiosis. As living information the plasmatic travels up the optic nerve of a human to the pineal body. It uses the human brain as a female host ... in which to replicate itself into its active form... The Hermetic alchemists knew of it in theory from ancient texts but could not duplicate it, since they could not locate the dormant buried plasmate." I'm only up to chapter 4, so we'll see what else pops up...
Which reminds me of another thing: Why is it that you shouldn't look at Mother when she's weaponized -- does the sound somehow enter the body through the optic nerve? I'm pretty sure I've seen her scream-splode people who had their backs turned, so I'm like, whas the deal?
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:55 PM on February 21, 2022
Oh boy, those buboes were seriously effectively disgusting - turning lizard was a relative relief.
posted by porpoise at 1:46 PM on February 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by porpoise at 1:46 PM on February 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh god yeah. Anything to do with skin puckering and swelling and crusting... ugh, gives me the willies!
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:06 PM on February 22, 2022
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:06 PM on February 22, 2022
Will the next episode mostly be popping bubble wrap boy?
posted by snofoam at 5:47 PM on February 22, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by snofoam at 5:47 PM on February 22, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'd imagine buboes go "splortcgh" more than "pop."
splortcghsplortcgh splortcgh splortcghsplortcghsplortcgh splortcgh splortcghsplortcghsplortcgh splortcghsplortcgh splortcghsplortcghsplortcghsplortcghsplortcgh splortcgh
posted by porpoise at 6:19 PM on February 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
splortcghsplortcgh splortcgh splortcghsplortcghsplortcgh splortcgh splortcghsplortcghsplortcgh splortcghsplortcgh splortcghsplortcghsplortcghsplortcghsplortcgh splortcgh
posted by porpoise at 6:19 PM on February 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
Didn't they show Paul's eyes turning reptile like?
posted by Catblack at 6:51 PM on February 22, 2022
posted by Catblack at 6:51 PM on February 22, 2022
Yup, "turning lizard."
Sorry, I guess I was just being a bit silly.
posted by porpoise at 7:00 PM on February 22, 2022
Sorry, I guess I was just being a bit silly.
posted by porpoise at 7:00 PM on February 22, 2022
If you haven't caught up on the last few eps... it's going more and more bonkers.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:10 AM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:10 AM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by jquinby at 7:44 AM on February 19, 2022