In Review: Motherland: Fort Salem (S3 – EP4) Happy Yule!

Synopsis: The unit spends their Yule plotting. Meanwhile, Hearst, President Silver, and Kara Brandt celebrate a victory.

The Story

Picking up from where last week left off. The Unit has been captured by The Marshall. Elsewhere, a jubilant and newly inaugurated President Silver celebrates with Camarilla members Alban Hearst and Kara Brandt who have captured Anacostia Quartermain and a few other witches and are making them fight to the death for their personal enjoyment. 

Back at the Marshall’s home. The girls are plotting their escape in the hope of saving Raelle’s life, but their plans get disturbed when they get a surprise visit from Petra Bellweather and President Wade, who is not quite as dead as The Camarilla and Silver believe her to be. Petra briefly reunites with her daughter and explains to the Unit what is going on. This allows Tally and Abigail to update their commanding officer with the news that Alda is still alive and is searching for the first song and has taken Khalida with her.

While celebrating Yule also known as the longest night of the year. Scylla enlists everyone’s help in trying one more ritual out in order to try and make contact with Raelle. Seeing that her friend is in so much pain. Tally works on trying to further her powers of sight and in doing gets a nightmare vision in which Raelle and the mycelium that the witches refer to as mother dies and leaves nothing in its wake.

The Acting

Bob Frazer dials his performance up to over the top as Alban introduces President Silver at a party in his honor. This sees Alban singing the song America in various different keys and octaves as he struggles to control his new vocal cords, which he had transplanted to him from a witch in last week’s show.

We also get a strong performance from Amalia Holm as we see Scylla struggle with the fact that she is unable to contact Raelle. The scene in which she called Nicte (Kandyse McClure) on her bullshit is really good and leads to the two former Spree having a real conversation in which Nicte opens up about why she hates Yule.

Overall

This was another good episode with a few clever and well-executed plot twists. And the lack of action in the episode is more than made up for by some really strong character moments for the key characters on the show. The final scene where the young women watch President Silver boast about his plans to break the accord that America has had with the witches really does a lot to build anticipation about what is to come. In short, I can’t wait to find out where all of this goes in next week’s show.