Review: Final Space “The Chamber of Doubt”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Gary and the crew celebrate Ash’s sudden return, though Avocato is wary of her and her sudden aging. They are then found by the Gatekeeper, who helped them meet Bolo in Season 1. It seems Bolo is losing his mind due to a wound from earlier and the crew must find the remaining spark of sanity to restore him. However, Ash gets lost along the way and is found by Invictus’ influence within Bolo, where he brings out Fox’s controlled body. Gary eventually finds them, but Invictus forces Gary to “murder” Fox, bringing his “prediction” to fruition and enraging Ash. Bolo is able to take back control of his body, but Ash is distraught over her brother’s death, even though Bolo tells her that Fox was already dead. Also Quinn starts thinking that she is becoming Nightfall due to the implant in her head kinda making her look like her future self.

OUR TAKE
The word of the day is “contrived”. Whether in the deliberate sense with Invictus actually contriving Gary to kill Fox (apparently being able to possess machines in Gary’s arm as well as people, so what the hell CAN’T this guy do?) or in the literary sense of characters forcing an identity crisis on Quinn, there are way too many things across this episode that feel like they are pushed into happening instead of feeling earned. Even though it’s a minor thing in the episode, let’s talk about the Quinn thing first. As far as I could tell within the first two seasons, Future Quinn going by Nightfall was just a name she used so that you could tell the two Quinns apart, not that they were two separate identities. Quinn was from the present and lacking the development that Nightfall had from being from the future. Not to mention that Nightfall isn’t some inevitability for Quinn, since we’ve seen plenty of times now that the timeline can be changed. So pretty much all of this is just forced drama I can’t really get behind.

Likewise, literally everyone and their mother saw Invictus controlling Fox to manipulate Ash, though I honestly didn’t predict that he would even force Gary to use his arm sword (is that the only reason why they introduced that?). Or that it would happen this soon. You would think they’d give that some time to breathe and let rebond with the rest of the crew before turning on them, but it looks like the upcoming betrayal is coming as soon as next week. And it’s not even like it’s her choice, she is being forced to think this and for some reason no one is really clarifying everything JUST FOR DRAMA. And let’s not forget adding yet another tragic backstory that really doesn’t add much to the character it’s about, in this case Fox, who was part of an apparently peaceful race before they decided to just…cut off his violin playing arm and give him a cannon. Kinda feels like it would be easier to train him on how to use a gun than graft one on, but what do I know. And I’m not sure how literally to take the visuals, since they could be metaphorical, but either way it just seems like more edginess that makes things feel like self-parody instead of legitimate pathos. But at least they didn’t try to force more jokes in where they weren’t needed.