S02.E08: Exodus

[paulvdb]

Quote

Each girl on the island is engaged in some kind of struggle to find peace and the truth. Meanwhile, the boys must decide whether or not to attempt a dangerous trip.

Premiere date: May 6, 2022

[Cranberry]

The first 18 and a half minutes of this episode had zero boys, and I legitimately forgot all about them.

[NeenerNeener]

I didn't expect it to end that way. I guess there's going to be a season 3 then.

Edited May 8, 2022 by NeenerNeener

[seacliffsal]

Well, I just binged season 2 and overall it felt like there was a lot more "filler" this season even though there were twice as many characters.  I ended up fast-forwarding during Leah's delusions with the singer as well as a lot of the background stories of the boys.  Even on the beach, the boys' story felt redundant as it was mainly about Seth and all of the impacts surrounding him.

The ending kind of reminded me of some of the Maze Runner movies (I didn't see all of the movies in the series) in that there was always one more maze.  And so our characters have another challenge facing them on the island.

Weren't there a lot more employees during season 1?  The staff side seemed really bare-bones this season.  

[peachmangosteen]

18 hours ago, seacliffsal said:

Weren't there a lot more employees during season 1?  The staff side seemed really bare-bones this season.  

I think all the staff from season 1 was there. The guy that worked as the flight attendant, the 2 guys in the compound that asked the questions, and the man and woman that were monitoring the videos of the subjects.

I expected to hate there being another island of boys but I didn’t. I thought the acting from pretty much all of them was fantastic. I found them all compelling even if they maybe weren’t as likable as the girls.

I knew from minute one that Seth would be the Nora of the boys and suspected pretty early on he’d be bad news but I didn’t expect him to be quite so awful lol. The actor was great. I loved him in The Society as well. Which, unrelated, but fuck you forever for canceling that, Netflix!

Speaking of Nora, I wonder if she’s just gonna stay there and continue working for Gretchen like Seth or did she leave? Either way, damn girl that’s dirty lol.

Gretchen is so amazingly horrible in the funnest possible way to me. 

I was confused because it looked to me like the white guy of the question asking duo slipped Leah his key card in that flashback scene so I thought maybe him and Dean were both going against Gretchen but then he was with Gretchen at the end.

I hope we get a season 3!

[peachmangosteen]

On 5/7/2022 at 4:58 PM, Cranberry said:

Speaking of Leah, I heard those female names slipped in amongst her crushes! Some hope for those Leah/Fatin shippers?

Not to mention Fatin’s ‘different girl, same sorta thing’ or whatever after Shelby said she’d always love Toni. And Fatin being the first girl Leah saw when she was starting the escape. They were really throwing the Leatin shippers bones this season lol.

[Cranberry]

Yes, this exchange! I've never really been a Leah/Fatin shipper, but some stuff this season made me go, "Hmmm," haha. Of course, having the boys around next season will probably throw a wrench in things. (If they do hook any of the girls up with a boy next season, I'd like for it to be Martha... with one of the genuinely nice boys, of course.)

[peachmangosteen]

28 minutes ago, Cranberry said:

Yes, this exchange! I've never really been a Leah/Fatin shipper, but some stuff this season made me go, "Hmmm," haha. 

I never even thought about Leah/Fatin and didn't even know there was a big group of shippers until you mentioned it lol. But yea there was some stuff this season that's kinda hard to see any other way tbh.

28 minutes ago, Cranberry said:

(If they do hook any of the girls up with a boy next season, I'd like for it to be Martha... with one of the genuinely nice boys, of course.)

Oooh, who for Martha then? I feel like Bo is the most genuinely nice so I would like to see that maybe. I guess Raf but I think he's too boring lol.

[gesundheit]

I was thinking this season that Mia Healey's accent as Shelby was way messier, like it had been 2 years and she just kind of forgot what she'd been doing before. I noticed the Australian sneak in a lot. I also kept thinking I was hearing that from the actor playing Kirin and I looked him up and, sure enough, Australian. They're both great, though! Just got kind of a kick out of listening for it after a while.

[gesundheit]

4 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Oooh, who for Martha then? I feel like Bo is the most genuinely nice so I would like to see that maybe. I guess Raf but I think he's too boring lol.

Henry!

[joanne3482]

So did the guy who brought the boat die? They didn't address that. I want this to be a 4 season show and then done. I'm fine with a combo group next year but then season 4 be what happens when they return to regular civilization and their lives and then that's it. I don't want it to drag on too long so that it becomes unbelievable. 

[peachmangosteen]

7 hours ago, joanne3482 said:

So did the guy who brought the boat die? They didn't address that. 

He was on the plane with Gretchen, her son DJ, and that one agent guy.

[HerkyJerky]

Who did Gretchen get a phone call from in the end?

[joanne3482]

9 hours ago, HerkyJerky said:

Who did Gretchen get a phone call from in the end?

I think it was her son. When she met up with him she said something about forgiving him. So I think he felt angry and gave the stuff to Ian but then felt guilty because he did so he called his mom to warn her. 

[chaifan]

I'm a bit torn on how I feel about this season.  I didn't hate the addition of the boys as much as I expected to.  But it just fell short for me.  I was hoping we'd get some scenes from the "real world".  Do the parents even know the kids are missing?  Was there a pre-arranged "no contact" rule during these retreats?  Were Gretchen's people faking texts and IG posts?  I wanted just a bit of that.  What I really want to know is how they will eventually explain to Rachel's parents the itsy bitsy detail of her missing a hand??? 

I agree with @seacliffsal, there seemed to be a lot of filler.  That frisbee game alone seemed to take up a lot of screen time, for no real reason.  (OK, they got all buddy buddy with each other over the game.  Big woop.)  The Ben Folds stuff was sort of fun, but again, a lot of time spent on that.  They could have used any of that time to get back to Nora, not just the few seconds we saw of her staring at a screen.  (Also, as an aside, IMDB has Nora listed as being in all 18 episodes.  Which she wasn't.)

I liked the unraveling of Gretchen, and then her comeback.  Not that I really understood her logic on her comeback, but it was just fun seeing her swing back and forth between success and failure.  What was the deal with the sour patch kids?  Was there a reference I missed somewhere?  Were they drugged?  I was lost with that.

I liked the evolution of Leah, from somewhat crazy to full blow crazy to self-preserving manipulator.  Did the one "agent" guy give Leah her phone?  If so, why?  And why did she have just a few seconds at a certain time to use it?  I thought that could have used a little more time, too. 

I just think that with Season 1 proving to be a success, they could have given Season 2 more time.  Maybe 12 episode.  It all just felt so rushed through.  And I suppose they will keep us waiting another year for Season 3.  ugh.

 

 

 

 

 

[peachmangosteen]

1 hour ago, chaifan said:

They could have used any of that time to get back to Nora, not just the few seconds we saw of her staring at a screen.  (Also, as an aside, IMDB has Nora listed as being in all 18 episodes.  Which she wasn't.)

The Nora situation is interesting because so I saw that the actress was asked about it on Instagram and she said she tried to contact TPTB about her role in season 2 and she was ignored. That makes no sense so I think she's probably lying lol. She was also asked if she was antivax and she sidestepped it, which tells me she is. All in all, I think the lack of Nora might have been because of a conflict with the actress.

1 hour ago, chaifan said:

Did the one "agent" guy give Leah her phone?  If so, why?  And why did she have just a few seconds at a certain time to use it? 

Yea, Dean gave her the phone. In an earlier episode, he said something to her about how he found something she stashed in the toilet, which I took to be him signaling to her that he left something for her there. What I didn't get was, it looked like the other agent slipped Leah his key card but then he was there at the end with Gretchen. So I don't know if I just didn't see that part right (it was a really quick scene) or if we're maybe supposed to think he's going to be like a double agent or something.

1 hour ago, chaifan said:

I just think that with Season 1 proving to be a success, they could have given Season 2 more time.  Maybe 12 episode.  It all just felt so rushed through. 

I'm assuming the shorter season 2 had more to due with Covid than anything else. Or at least I'm hoping that because I really want this show to get a season 3.

I'm not usually a proponent of longer seasons, but someone here had mentioned this show might have worked better if they had a full 20-22 episode season where the first half was about the girls and the second about the boys. I think they could have even done season 1 with the girls and then season 2 with the boys fully. The boys were completely shortchanged imo because we barely got to see anything of them outside of the island. Initially, I wasn't into the idea of the boys island but I ended up enjoying it. And it does seem obvious that the show was always designed with that in mind. I think they made a mistake in making that into a twist because it meant some of the audience felt cheated out of more stuff with the girls and like for me I felt cheated out of getting to know the boys as well as the girls.

Fucking hell that is long. Sorry! I am more invested in this show than I thought lol.

[Cinnabon]

So now they’re all essentially being held against their will? Kidnapped. I can’t get past this.

[peachmangosteen]

They always were.

[HerkyJerky]

Was Ian even in S2 or are we expected to remember that was Leah’s friend from S1? Because that was 2 years ago!😁

[peachmangosteen]

5 minutes ago, HerkyJerky said:

Was Ian even in S2 or are we expected to remember that was Leah’s friend from S1? Because that was 2 years ago!😁

He wasn't in season 2 until he showed up at DJ's place after Leah called him. I wondered who it was at first but it clicked pretty quickly. I liked that Leah called him and that he is helping her. 

There was just a lot of stuff going on in this show and that's always gonna make it hard to remember everything, let alone when there's so much time in between seasons. And the fact that it's a show that puts all it's eps out at once contributes to it being hard to remember imo.

[Cinnabon]

1 hour ago, peachmangosteen said:

They always were.

Seems like Leah could have used her phone time to text her parents letting them know that she is alive and has been kidnapped then .

[paulvdb]

5 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Yea, Dean gave her the phone. In an earlier episode, he said something to her about how he found something she stashed in the toilet, which I took to be him signaling to her that he left something for her there. What I didn't get was, it looked like the other agent slipped Leah his key card but then he was there at the end with Gretchen. So I don't know if I just didn't see that part right (it was a really quick scene) or if we're maybe supposed to think he's going to be like a double agent or something.

I thought Leah stole the keycard while he was distracted but it was a quick scene so I could have seen it wrong.

[snarts]

I thought Dean purposely gave the keycard to Leah in the hopes that she could get Ralf to open up on the incident that splintered the boys? 

[peachmangosteen]

13 hours ago, Cinnabon said:

Seems like Leah could have used her phone time to text her parents letting them know that she is alive and has been kidnapped then .

She called her friend Ian, didn't she? And that's why he went to DJ.

2 hours ago, snarts said:

I thought Dean purposely gave the keycard to Leah in the hopes that she could get Ralf to open up on the incident that splintered the boys? 

Leah is shown getting the key card from the other agent guy. I also just watched that flashback scene and yes @paulvdb you're right, she swipes it off him. 

But Dean definitely did give her the phone and that's why he was fired lol. I hope we see Dean again if we get a season 3 though.

[KaveDweller]

On 5/11/2022 at 7:43 PM, Cinnabon said:

Seems like Leah could have used her phone time to text her parents letting them know that she is alive and has been kidnapped then .

I think she didn't text her parents because she knows they sent her off for a summer-long retreat after telling her it was a weekend. If they got a message from her saying that she'd been kidnapped, they'd probably think she was being melodramatic.

Or does Lea not know that her parents did that?

[peachmangosteen]

Yea, I think Leah probably didn't trust her parents. She might even wonder if they knew exactly what they were sending her to.

[silverstream]

So apparently Gretchen thought the way the situation would be resolved was by everybody just getting on board with her line of thinking once she explained her grand experiment? Between that, the ballroom victory speech she apparently had planned and the stylish retreat from the FBI in a private plane with her most loyal henchmen she's such a supervillain, lol.

The show is clearly impying that she "turned" Shelby somehow, but I just don't know what's in it for Shelby, unless Gretchen threatened the others somehow - I'd certainly not put that past her. I'd say especially now that she's put Seth in immediate charge (at least that's what it seems like? I am glad for Raf's sake that he's not a murderer, though) who she knows is not exactly the most stable individual, but then, neither is she. I just hope season three isn't going to mainly be Seth screwing with them, unlike Gretchen he's not really the fun kind of evil to watch (for me, YMMV).

Then again, maybe the Shelby thing is just a red herring and Nora is going to come back soon, Gretchen doesn't seem to know that she's been exposed, and they did make sure to mention her again.

[HerkyJerky]

Did I miss why Shelby has a bald head?

[peachmangosteen]

1 hour ago, HerkyJerky said:

Did I miss why Shelby has a bald head?

She cut it after her and Toni broke up and then I assume shaved it or had it shaved after they were 'rescued.' I guess we don't really know why yet though. Maybe just so it'd be more even lol. Or maybe she did it after becoming Gretchen's new operative.

[Mabinogia]

3 hours ago, silverstream said:

I just hope season three isn't going to mainly be Seth screwing with them, unlike Gretchen he's not really the fun kind of evil to watch (for me, YMMV).

Same for me. Gretchen is fun because she's batshit crazy and loving it. Seth seems mentally unstable in the sense that, if he had gotten the help he needed as a child he might have turned out differently and would probably like to be different. Gretchen seems to just enjoy being evil and that's just more fun to watch (when dealing with imaginary characters, not real people. Neither type are entertaining in the real world). 

I have to admit, I kind of loved watching the smug look get wiped off Leah's face. I think I'm supposed to be rooting for her, but I just can't stand her. She actually makes me root for Gretchen and I do NOT want to be rooting for that psychopathic villain. 

 

[peachmangosteen]

I didn't like Leah most of the time in season 1 but I loved her in season 2. She was kind of a bad ass. 

[jsm1125]

I’m a little surprised we didn’t see flashbacks of Lynn/“Jeanette” this entire season.

I must have missed it: how did Dean fuck over Gretchen? Giving Leah too much information?

Did we find out how Kirin and Ivan ended up on the island? 

[peachmangosteen]

26 minutes ago, jsm1125 said:

I must have missed it: how did Dean fuck over Gretchen? Giving Leah too much information?

He gave Leah her phone, which is how she called/texted Ian.

Quote

Did we find out how Kirin and Ivan ended up on the island? 

Ivan got Kirin expelled with that video of him saying slurs, so I assumed that's why he was sent there. I don't really understand why Ivan was too unless the school wanted them to spend time together or something.

[seacliffsal]

It was implied that Ivan's boyfriend told the school administrators that Ivan intentionally set up/provoked Kirin's outburst so he was expelled as well (one of the Kirin/Ivan combo said to the other that they both ended up in the same situation so it implied the boyfriend was really repulsed by that action and told the administrators).

[peachmangosteen]

Ah, thanks @seacliffsal.

[h2ogirl]

Just finished binging both seasons and I am annoyed with myself for spending so much time on this show. The kids were great but the whole experiment story is so ridiculous that it just made me angry. 

[Cinnabon]

5 minutes ago, h2ogirl said:

Just finished binging both seasons and I am annoyed with myself for spending so much time on this show. The kids were great but the whole experiment story is so ridiculous that it just made me angry. 

Exactly. Once you realize how insane it is to essentially kidnap these kids and hold them hostage just for a social experiment, it becomes ridiculous.

[HelloooKitty]

So, I guess we never get the full story on Josh then? Or what happened when Gretchen went in his room? And where did Nora end up? 
 

leaving Seth “in charge” seems like a really REALLY bad idea!

[MaggieG]

On 6/21/2022 at 8:37 PM, HelloooKitty said:

So, I guess we never get the full story on Josh then? Or what happened when Gretchen went in his room? And where did Nora end up? 
 

leaving Seth “in charge” seems like a really REALLY bad idea!

Well Gretchen went into his room with the sour patch kids. And then we saw Shelby also being tempted by sour patch kids. Are we supposed to think Shelby and Josh are operatives now?

Speaking of Shelby, was that singing performance in the bar a hallucination or some sort of flash forward a la Lost?

I would be interested in a season 3, just to see how the groups would interact and work together. 

[peachmangosteen]

Just now, MaggieG said:

Are we supposed to think Shelby and Josh are operatives now?

Speaking of Shelby, was that singing performance in the bar a hallucination or some sort of flash forward a la Lost?

The writers indicated that it was a flash forward and that Shelby is the operative.