SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
Mary and Darnley are finally married, but the road to their wedding has not been easy. Mary was still contemplating ending their engagement, eminent as their wedding day was – it was two days away – and Catherine was ready with a plot to ruin his reputation and his life if Mary so chose; she was going to spread rumours about Darnley being unfaithful with multiple women. At least this time, her solution wasn’t murder.
As bad as things had gotten between Mary and Darnley, I still thought that she needed to Mary him in order to achieve her goal. If he’d been a total scoundrel and a terrible person – which he hadn’t – then I would want her to get out of the marriage ASAP. But I believe that there is hope yet that they can find at least contentment together, if not love. They liked each other once and they can again. Especially since both seem to want to want to repair the relationship.
If only Bothwell would keep away from Mary and stop trying to seduce her. Kissing him out in the open when she had dozens of guests at the castle for her wedding to another man was a huge risk. He may have feelings for her and believe himself to be the love that Rizzio’s prophecy spoke of, but Mary made her decision when she heard the prophecy and he needs to respect it. Said heir is apparently on their way. The choice has essentially been made for her.
I wish that her decision to marry Darnley was solidified by her being dutiful to her responsibilities as queen and not by her being trapped due to an unexpected premarital pregnancy. I do think that she should sleep with Darnley at least once after the wedding. It’s the one flaw in Catherine’s plan; that Mary go on tour and announce her pregnancy when she returns. Darnley will know that Mary got pregnant before they were married if she doesn’t and they’re trying to hide that fact from him.
Catherine swooped in and saved the day by using Mary’s wedding gifts to buy the loyalty of the border towns, something Mary feared to be unattainable without the Vatican’s help (they withdrew their support when she interrupted a secret meeting between Darnley and a Cardinal). It seems to have been unnecessary since towns which hadn’t been bought switched from English to Scottish anyway, simply because Mary had married Darnley. While this was great news for Mary, it had a devastating effect on Elizabeth.
The English queen’s appearance in this week’s episode was very brief. She placed the blame for her tenuous rule firmly on her father’s shoulders, due to his rejection of her as his heir. Then she, shockinhly, slept with Gideon. I did not see that coming at all. I had to have missed every single clue that pointed toward it. Gideon had always been a faithful servant, subject and friend to Elizabeth, but his heart belonged to Mary. It remains to be seen if his feelings are now for Elizabeth or if he slept with her to comfort her, but I’m assuming the former is true. It was just weird seeing him go from one queen to another.
Greer had her own little romance going on with James. One that was not interrupted by the appearance of Martin and James’ realisation that he’s Rose’s father. I find James and Greer to be very cute together and they are my new favourite ship. Hopefully this time Greer will settle into a relationship that works. It’s the final season and she deserves a happy ending.
I thought it was sweet how James encouraged Greer to let Martin take an active role in the life of his daughter. That being said, I’m with Greer that it’s not a good idea. She eventually agreed to it, but it really isn’t that great of a thing to allow. By virtue of his skin colour and that of Rose and Martin being around on a regular basis spending time with her, people will put two and two together and find out that he is her father.
James’ other lady love, Emily Knox, didn’t have it quite so good this week. Knox confronted her with the fact that he knew she was having an affair with James by showing her a woman who was being publicly shamed for adultery. He stripped her of her shoes and clothing and left her naked in the street. She later showed up at the castle, angrily staring at James as he caressed Greer’s face. Emily is about to stir up some trouble.
Random thoughts:
- Baby daddy drama for Greer!
- Since when was Mary pregnant?
- Oh. Well Lord White was handled very easily.
- Does Lady Lennox really think that she can challenge Catherine in shade?
- This Cardinal is a real misogynist.
- I love that Rizzio got distracted by Mary’s wedding dress, as stereotypical as it is now that it’s been revealed he’s gay.
- Really? Darnley got drunk before the wedding? If he wants to be a better man then he needs to just be a better man.
- Leave Mary alone Bothwell.
Reign airs Fridays at 9 PM on The CW.
By freeing Cyrus from prison and clearing his name, Team Pope struck a blow against Marjorie and Payas that had the potential to ruin their plans. His arrest put him in a bad light that could ensure that he would never be elected president, but Liv had a way to fix that; Mellie would concede the presidency, giving the electoral college no choice but to choose Cryus. Unfortunately Liz showed up and talked Mellie into fighting for the presidency instead of conceding. From that moment I had the feeling that Liz was working with Marjorie and Payas and I wasn’t surprised when it was confirmed later in the episode. She’s always been power hungry and ambitious, but her timing was too perfect and her speech too zealous.
Liv, in a misguided attempt to try and atone for what she’d done to Cyrus, paid him a visit and apologised, along with trying to inspire him to pick himself up and take his rightful place as president. I don’t blame him for figuratively and literally slamming the door in her face. She was horrid to him all season. She instead changed tactics and – after an argument with Mellie about her changing her mind about conceding – decided to clean up his public image. But really, there’s nothing Liv can do to make up for what she did to Cyrus.
I was so mad at Fitz at the end. I thought he had gone against Liv’s wishes and had her father arrested instead. But it turned out he had brought Papa Pope under protective custody and was giving Liv a fighting chance against Marjorie and Payas.
Given the character centric episodes we’d gotten recently, I supposed this was to be Liv’s. However, it’s not exactly in the same vein as those of, Eli, Abby and Huck. Whereas their character episodes revealed what they had been doing leading up and following Frankie’s assassination, this episode was a “what if” scenario about what could have happened if Liv hadn’t fixed Fitz’s presidential election.
I should have known that this was a “what if” episode when Jake said to Liv that Fitz’s life would have been worse had she not fixed the election. Of course, without her having done that, Fitz lost. So it wasn’t surprising when he divorced Mellie and married Liv. Without his being president, neither of those occurrences would have been a huge scandal. Without the presidency, Fitz was free. Mellie says as much later in the episode in a conversation with Liv.
Also of note is that as a powerless nobody in Washington and without her career as a fixer, Liv has undertaken a rather altruistic and noble cause; helping Marcus get his criminal justice reform bill passed. As a whole, she’s far more of a moral and ethical person since she’s not doing anything shady, underhanded or illegal. Her white hat is in no way dingy. Liv still had the same tea
Jake’s assertion that Fitz’s life would have been worse had Liv not fixed the election ultimately proved to be untrue. His marriage to Liv didn’t collapse and he started on the road toward becoming the Fitz we know. Funnily enough, it appeared that it was Mellie and what she said to Liv – as much as Fitz’s speech to Liv perhaps – that made Liv change her mind about leaving him and saved their marriage.
Competition was fierce from the beginning and the excellence with which the contestants demonstrated their abilities made it a hard one to call. However, Amber Williams and Ka-Neil Gale quickly emerged as the ones to beat, as did Jonathan Corbin Blackman and Kobia Hamlin. Amber and Ka-Neil had the model attitude and swagger the start. By the Street Wear segment, Kristi White and Alex Chandler also proved themselves to be be serious contenders. But there could only be one King and one Queen at the end of the night.
Darnley continued his streak of screw ups by insulting Francis in front of his Medici cousin, Lucrezia, who’d gone to Scotland to attend Mary’s wedding. As an important Catholic ally whose support was of great necessity to Mary, he very nearly soured any chance she had of securing Lucrezia to her side. I understand that, as he said, he wanted to defend Mary from rumours of being barren, but he could have done that without seeing any negative toward anyone, Francis especially.
Whist he and Mary are in the woods drying off from their boat escape, a scruffy looking man comes up to them and delivers a message from Bash; that she can have love or an heir but not both. His prophesy only strengthens Mary’s need to marry Darnley. She’ll likely fall for Bothwell and he’ll end up being the “love” she can’t have if she wants an heir.
Before she left French court, at Leeza’s urging, to attend Mary’s wedding, Charles was still very much a Protestant. Not even Nicole’s womanly wiles were enough to convince him to at least pretend to be Catholic in order to save face with France’s Catholic nobles. Surprisingly enough, the person who does get through to Charles is Luc.
In England, even Elizabeth is under the thumb of Spain. An English pirate, John Hawkins, stole gold from the Spanish and they are demanding that she imprison and punish him for his crimes against them. He earns himself Elizabeth’s mercy by getting drunk with her, demonstrating the wonders of the New World (tomatoes and turkeys) and encouraging her to think beyond Europe and to explore the New World as well; to obtain the wealth and power that Spain has, or even more than, in doing so. Elizabeth eventually agrees with Hawkins and gives him a royal charter to explore the New World on behalf of England.
Finally! We got back to Huck and found out what happened to him and whether or not he lived or died. As much as I enjoyed the character centric episodes and liked last week’s about Abby, I’m pleased that we didn’t get yet another one to delay us revisiting Huck’s situation. The writers didn’t give us our answer quite so easily, however. Up until the final few minutes of the episode there was no clear indication of Huck’s ultimate fate.
Fortunately, Huck actually did make it to shore, but when I expected him to get up and make the arduous trip back home…he passed out on the sand. Now it was up to Liv and the others to find him before it was too late.
Abby did have a point about the whole Cyrus situation; she was trying to save him while Liv has been trying to bury him despite knowing that he’s innocent. She’s supposed to be wearing the white hat here! And she was right about everyone having to forgive Liv but not that other way around. Lucky for Abby, thanks to Fitz, she and Liv made up in the end.
It was only when Quinn brought up Jennifer Fields and using her cellphone to locate Huck that I questioned why Team Pope hadn’t already thought of trying something of the sort. It also made me realise that they – and me myself – completely forgot about Jennifer. We were all hyper focused on Huck; finding and saving him. No one cared about Jennifer unfortunately.