Penny Dreadful

Season 1, Episode 07

Episode Title: Possession

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar

 

The episode starts with Vanessa still in trance, she then goes from being a bold Vanessa to Mina. Sir Malcolm is taking care of her but she starts to talk about his time in Africa and the woman he slept with. Vanessa gets angrier and things start to fly around the room, furniture is moved, papers are scattered and things break. Sembene arrives and slaps Vanessa knocking her out making everything stop.

Victor is asked to see her, she appears fine, stating that she doesn’t remember what happened and that she goes away when possessed. When taking her pulse, Vanessa starts to recite his last conversation with Dr. Van Helsing, scaring Victor. He gives Sir Malcolm a diagnosis of psycho-sexual, out of guilty. They are talking about what could have caused it when spiders start to come out of Vanessa’s tarot deck and they hear her screaming in her room.

Ethan arrives at Sir Malcolm’s house. They take him to see Vanessa that is now moaning and covered in sweat. She tells him that she is trying to fight what is inside her. He takes her hand and she asks if she can ask him a question. When he replies that yes, she asks him about having sex with Dorian, she calls Dorian, “The beautiful boy of our dream, the irresistible one,” and tells him that Brona also had sex with Dorian. When trying to sedate her she calls Sir Malcolm, “Child killer” and Victor, “Virgin Doctor”.

Time passes and Vanessa is still possessed, her arms are bruised from the sedative injections they have given her. She is lucid for a moment and Ethan asks her if she wants a priest, to which she responds yes. She tells him that he has been kind to her and that she had almost fell in love with him. She asks him if the time comes he should kill her. But then he appears to not be Ethan but the devil disguised as him. This Ethan’s eyes are dark. This time she calls him Satan, or as he prefers, Lucifer the Fallen Angel, with a mocking tone. She asks him what he wants with her and he replies:

“I want you to be the mother of evil. I want you to rule the darkness with me at my side. Looking over a black, scorched, death world. Where there is no more pain because I know more hearts than few, we have eaten them all. You and me together we will conquer God, topple him from his bloody throne and rule in his instead, everlasting.”

Down stairs, Ethan and Sir Malcolm are talking about Peter and how he died. They hear her scream and go to see her, blood moves through her chest and the hieroglyphic of Amunet appears in it. After a while, Victor is down stairs and looks out the window where he sees the Creature.  It starts to snow and Victor asks Ethan to teach how to shoot.

They restrain Vanessa so she can’t try to hurt herself. Ethan asks Sembene what is his story. When Sembene replies that he doesn’t have one, Ethan tells him that he has a theory, that Sir Malcolm saved his life and know he owes him, but Sembene replies that maybe it is the other way around and that Sir Malcolm is his responsibility.

Sir Malcolm asks Vanessa to connect with Mina, she tells him that he is so cruel and that he let everything happen to her so he could get her closer to the other side. The men get into a fight and in the end they decided to call for a priest. Ethan swears that if Sir Malcolm really let this happen to Vanessa he would reap his throat out.

The priest arrives, they ask him to practice an exorcist on Vanessa but he tells them that he first needs permission from the church and that he can only give her the extreme unction. When he starts to talk, Vanessa gets free and bites his chick, the windows explode and Victor is thrown out from the room. Vanessa begs Ethan to kill her. He takes out his gun and points it to her chest. Then he takes the medal that Brona gave him and starts to pray, he places the medal in her forehead and she starts to chant in a different language. Vanessa stops and faints, Ethan leaves the house without saying a word to anybody.

The next day, Vanessa wakes up to a vision of Mina and the play that she saw when she met Brona with Ethan. The episode ends with Vanessa telling Sir Malcolm that she knows where Mina is.

So now, my theory of Ethan being a werewolf turns into Ethan been a werewolf priest, so he is able to know how to practice an exorcist. Okay, maybe he is not a werewolf, but he is running from something. Every time Vanessa tells another character some of their secrets they first touch her bare hand, from now on don’t touch somebody that is possessed with your bare hands, use gloves or they will spill your darkest secrets in front of everybody. I’m not even sure if Sir Malcolm looks relieved or angry when he saw Vanessa peacefully asleep after the exorcist. I want to know if after those scenes the actors felt awkward or laughed or something, behind the scenes would be perfect. One last episode to go, let’s see what happens in the season finally and if we get more answers to those questions that haven’t been answered so far.