Photo: Ben Mark Holzberg benmark.ca/CBS
Salvation: The Wormwood Prophecy is the series penultimate episode. What an intense hour of television! Even knowing that the previous episode of Salvation was setting up act two of the show, Salvation episode 12 pulled off quite a number of surprises! Here are the highlights!
Surprise Number One: Sampson is Basically Indestructible
Salvation: The Wormwood Prophecy opened up with some visuals of the giant asteroid “Sampson” being struck by another asteroid, That large rock vaporizes on impact. Sampson…keeps on going like nothing’s happened!
Both the Pentagon and Liam Cole (Charlie Rowe) get an alert of the event. Liam freaks out when he sees what happened and runs to tell Darius Tanz (Santiago Cabrera). The ramifications are major! Sampson’s core is some kind of metal. Whomever has hijacked Darius’s EM-Drive that’s powering the gravity tractor has it on course to smash into Sampson. The expectation of such an act is that Sampson would break the rock up into chunks that destroy Russia. Now it’s clear that nefarious plan won’t even work!
The Saddest Surprise: Dylan is Dead
It’s Zoe Barrows (Rachel Drance) that brings the bad news. After scaring her mom by sneaking into the house in the middle of the night, she gives Grace Barrows (Jennifer Finnigan) the news. Grace then calls Harris Edwards (Ian Anthony Dale) and tells him to come over. Zoe then tells him that Dylan didn’t make it.
Zoe: He stayed true to his cause. He said some things are worth dying for.
Photo: Ben Mark Holzberg benmark.ca/CBS
What a martyr. Honestly, I find it hard to believe Dylan and his pals took this tack. Even though it was reported that six bodies were found in the blown up Resist headquarters did anyone think Dylan Edwards (André Dae Kim) was one of them? I can’t help but wonder if he’s really dead. After all, the TV rules say if the body isn’t pronounced dead on-screen anything’s possible!
Grace’s Night Surprises
When Grace heard who turned out to be Zoe coming into the house she pulled out her gun and nearly shot her! Later on, a knock on her front door causes a similar reaction. (Having someone attack you in your own house tends to make a person more vigilant.) It turns out to be a more awkward surprise.
Darius was a bit hurt about Harris being there – but he hid it well. His shock about the president being murdered was cute. He’s apparently not always as sophisticated as he seems.
The Best Surprise: President Mackenzie is Alive
One of the first things Darius adds in is the fact that in order to figure out if the president was poisoned was that they’d need to dig up her body. Then it was Grace’s turn to be shocked. ( Harris jumped right on board. Once Grace accepted it had to happen she offered what is becoming a classic gag.
Grace: I know a guy….
Yep, it’s daddy to the rescue! Only this time Harris and Darius get to meet this “guy.” After Hugh leaves both men are rightfully awed.
Harris: So, that’s your Dad. What exactly did he do for the CIA?
Darius: My guess is everything.
Hugh Keating (Mark Moses) is by far my favorite recurring character. There’s something really fun having this secretive CIA guy who clearly is a bad*ss – and who is totally wrapped around his daughter’s finger. I just hope he never turns out to be a bad guy working against Grace’s side of things.
Anyway, Hugh gets a team together, and they, plus Harris go to dig up the body. (Harris had to dismiss the military guard.) When they open the casket there is nothing in it!
The Plot Twist
Okay, so the body of President Mackenzie is missing. Knowing what we know about how devious Claire Rayburn (Erica Luttrell) and the then Vice President Monroe Bennett (Sasha Roiz) everyone assumed they’d arranged to remove the body to cover their tracks. Harris makes it his business to track down who and how!
The suspects Harris has in mind are the president’s physician (Catherine Tait) and Grant (Dean Armstrong), his secret service friend who headed Mackenzie’s detail. With the doctor she said it was a stroke, but didn’t do an autopsy because President Mackenzie was Jewish the family didn’t want to desecrate the body. (The POTUS is a woman, and Jewish? This is definitely fiction – for now.) Hugh says whomever did it needed the help of the secret service.
To make a long story short, he gets nowhere with the doctor, but does with his secret service pal.
Harris then gets taken to where President Mackenzie’s body is and gets the best surprise!
Salvation does have a knack for bringing back the dead, but I didn’t see this one coming! The doctor explains that the president had been slowly poisoned by putting mercury in her inhaler. We now have yet another conspiracy going on – “The Loyalists”!
The Shocking Surprise: Darius Doesn’t Pass Muster to be One of the 160
This one seems outrageous. Liam’s girlfriend Jillian Hayes (Jacqueline Byers) is in charge of selecting the 160 people to be rescued via his rocket to Mars, “Salvation.” It’s supposed to be plan B – in case they can’t stop Sampson. As Darius sees all the chaos going on he decides it’s time to give Jillian his 10 personal picks for the ship. Like everyone else, they have to be put through “genetic testing and psych profile analysis.” The ones we see ar: Grace, Zoe, Harris, Darius, Jillian, Liam.
Wow! How amazing is Darius to include his rival for Grace! (My guess is the other four are Tess, her two girls, and her husband.) That speaks volumes about his character – he’s really a good guy.
After Liam and Jillian stop freaking out about if one of them don’t qualify they send all the info off to be tested. When they come back, Grace, Harris, Liam, and Jillian are fine. Darius comes back as disqualified!
Not Buying it
Why would Darius come back as disqualified? My guess is one of two things.
- Tess (Autumn Reeser) told Darius’s uncle Nicholas (John Noble) about the project and he’s sabotaged the data to keep Darius from experiencing his dream.
- The group Resist sabotaged his data.
Being that soon after this it appears the computer worm that Resist was able to slip into Darius’s vast computer network causes it to go haywire! Darius has to shut the entire thing down – with the ominous proclamation that the system might never recover from doing so.
Photo: Ben Mark Holzberg benmark.ca/CBS
There’s another possibility about what happened to the computer system. Darius sent Grace into the war-room of General Higgins (Paul De La Rosa) to steal info off the computer systems in order to regain control of the gravity tractor. He did it by implanting a special chip in her hand that was lit up. In the war room the data finishes downloading right before she has to shake hands with President Bennett. It’s lit up when he grabs her hand, but it’s out when he lets go. Either Darius turned it off or…the president did something to the chip.
No doubt we’ll find out about this next week!
Next up – One last surprise, plus all about Grace and Darius!
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