Melanie’s big secret is out and the first class passengers are ready to kick her to the curb, but will it be just that easy? Episode 8 of Snowpiercer, entitled “These Are His Revolutions,” continues the action and suspense that we’ve come to expect already, with a good bit of bloody battle mixed in at the end for good measure. The title of this episode is a play on words as “revolutions” means both turns around the world for Snowpiercer and also uprisings. Yes, plural.
Of course, the rest of this post does contain massive spoilers. Thanks for asking!
This episode begins with Miles sneaking LJ Folger into the engine car to have a look around. You might remember from the end of Episode 7, Layton promised to tell LJ the train’s dirtiest secret, and now we get to see why. Once she’s convinced that Wilford truly doesn’t exist, she swipes a photo of Melanie and her young child to prove to the others that she was in Melanie’s quarters.
Melanie spends a few moments with Miles as he drives the train to have a heart-to-heart about her lost daughter. But just when you start to feel sorry for her, she’s called to a meeting with the First Class committee where they reveal that they know there is no Wilford, and they want answers. Commander Grey’s jackboots restrain Melanie and take her to a holding area where she is to be held while the Folgers and Grey figure out what to do next.
Meanwhile, Layton gives the speech of a lifetime to the Tailies, encouraging them to rise up now and take over the train. No more do we hear “One Tail!” as a rallying cry; Layton changes it to “One Train!” to show that they’re in it to win it all this time.
Ruth, who we see at the very beginning of the episode tidying up and pledging her allegiance to the great Mr. Wilford, is now out for blood against Melanie. She leads a charge to the engine where Javi admits to her that Wilford has been dead since departure. “What will people hold on to now?” she wonders.
As the two rebellions are going on simultaneously in the front and back of the train, Commander Grey figures out that this was the plan all along: to divide and conquer “while we squabbled over Wilford up here,” he says. “That’s no bloody coincidence.”
We can see quite a change in Ruth throughout these last two episodes, but it really hits home when she interrogates Melanie alone. Melanie finally admits everything to Ruth, claiming that she “left Wilford trackside to die” on departure day because he’s a fraud, trying to claim the train’s entire construction as his own. Melanie says (as she has stated before) that she’s the one who built Snowpiercer, so we can see why she wants to hold on to it by any means necessary.
But Ruth is just done with her at this point, not willing to listen any more. “You’re a filthy liar and a murderer,” she says before telling Melanie that she will be executed for her betrayal.
The Tailies are gaining ground on their mission to reach the front of the train, but when they get to the third class cars, Roche and the other Brakemen are there blocking the way. This is when we hear my favorite quote of the episode from Roche after Osweiller shows fear at the idea of 400 Tailies coming up to meet them. “Well, good thing for you you’ve been so nice to them over the years, then, isn’t it?”
Roche soon changes his tune when he talks to Brakeman Till about why she switched sides, though. Roche realizes that Melanie’s lies mean that she’s done, and fighting the Tailies would be moot at this point. So he lets them pass through without conflict.
Snowpiercer Is underrated af . The episode 8 was phenomenal, from character relations to story building . So fuckin good.
— Awais (@Hawwwais) July 6, 2020
Now comes the bloody battle scene part that frankly surprised me — but in a good way. We’ve seen some grit on this show before, but nothing to this level. It certainly stepped things up a few notches, and I would even go so far as to say that I haven’t seen this much gore on TV in a while.
After the battle, and just when we think that Layton and his crew won, Commander Grey comes back in with an arsenal of teargas to draw the Tailies back, leaving their wounded for dead. At this point I’m thinking that maybe they have another plan up their sleeves, but you can tell by the look in Layton’s eyes that he feels defeated.
To make matters worse, we discover that Pike is missing from the drawers, meaning someone pulled him out before all this started. You remember Pike, right? The pushy loud-mouth guy, played by Steven Ogg, who gained international stardom as the voice and likeness of Trevor in Rockstar’s GTA V video game? Ogg is listed as a major reoccurring character in Season 2 already, so we were kinda just sitting back, waiting for him to pop back up, but this explains it.
As Pike sits there, chowing down on some chocolate cake, surrounded by Grey, Ruth, and the Folgers, we see how he will play into all of this. Pike tells Grey that he is very close to Layton and knows exactly what will bring him down. Pike is ready to rat out Layton for another piece of cake. “The thing about Layton is he’s an idealist,” Pike muses. “He doesn’t have the stomach for sustained cruelty. He took a big risk today and he lost. Keep grinding. He’ll crumble.”
me, episode 1: it’s nice to see steven ogg playing one of the good guys for once 🙂
me, episode 8: pic.twitter.com/s6J3pweOzF
— hector escaton stan account🦩 (@CourtneyInSpace) July 6, 2020
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