[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1 Episode 2 “Jules.”]
Now that it’s been revealed that Keeley Hawes is playing an adult Kira (!), the door is open for Echoes to bring back characters from the original Orphan Black in an organic way, and it does just that right away in the second episode, with Jordan Gavaris (aged up with makeup) back as her uncle Felix! (Yes, he still calls her “Monkey.”) And he’s the perfect person for her to have around now as we begin to delve into just what she’s done.
“I think because her relationship with her mom was so troubled, her uncle Felix was sort of always there for her in this kind of lovely supporting way, and I think there’s just sometimes less conflict with family that’s not your direct family of origin in a certain way,” creator, writer, showrunner, and executive producer Anna Fishko tells TV Insider of bringing back the character of Felix. “He was really there for her in this more uncomplicated way than her mom was. So I really loved the idea that he would still be in her life and be able to show up and help her when she needed help.”
Felix visits Kira as she’s worried about Lucy (Krysten Ritter), the printout she made who fled the facility two years ago upon waking and is now being hunted down. Kira had called her aunt, Cosima (one of Tatiana Maslany‘s many roles in the original series), at the end of the premiere, and she knows that she called him. Cosima’s worried about her and thought she could use checking up on, and Kira’s mother Sarah would pickaxe him if he didn’t stop by while in town, he admits.
Felix gives us an update on Sarah (she couldn’t be happier working in a shelter, helping women), and Kira admits that while she loves her mother, after what happened, things have never been comfortable between them. And yet she still has Dr. Moreau book, he points out. She says she hasn’t opened it in years. He suggests that Kira needs a break, but she’s against going to a bar (Felix describes it as “Neolution without the tails” once they walk in) at their ages—until she hears she could get cocaine, for her experiment. Felix steps in when she tries to figure out how to go about finding and buying the drugs, then Kira’s son Lucas (Jaeden Noel) joins them (Felix called him). He’s part of this spiritual community that’s not a cult, he insists, and left school because he finds it pointless. He knows something’s going on with his mother, and Felix says he’ll get it out of her, but she remains vague when they talk in her office after.
Kira says she’s always tried to be good—a good mom, good scientist, good person—but now, she’s worried with this project she’s working on, what if all the terrible, painful things they lived through didn’t make her better and just made her selfish? Since he only knows about the organs she’s printed, he points out the lives she’s saved. But how would he react if he knew she printed out a person?
Meanwhile, that printout has tracked down another, younger version, Jules (Amanda Fix); she has no memory of her parents who died in a car accident, and they have the same scar. Lucy essentially kidnaps her, and Jules stabs her in the shoulder and escapes. Lucy then turns to her boyfriend, Jack (Avan Jogia), who has gotten caught up in everything with his daughter Charlie (Zariella Langford), to patch her up. But if she can’t be honest with him, their relationship is over, he says, so she brings him to the warehouse where she woke up and tells him everything. After he takes a bit of time, he tells her he believes her and loves her. So why did she trust him with the truth?
Sophie Giraud / AMC
“He’s kind of all she’s got, right?” Ritter points out. “She loves him, and she doesn’t have anybody else. That’s her chosen family. Jack and Charlie are everything to her, and she doesn’t want to lose that. So I think I would hope if you love somebody, you would trust them with your secrets. Yeah, I think that was because she loves him.”
What did you think of Felix’s return to the world of Orphan Black? Do you think Lucy was right to trust Jack? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Orphan Black: Echoes, Sundays, 10/9c, AMC