Bo and the Kobayashi Maru
LOST GIRL – Episode 309 – The Ceremony – SPOILERS ⁓
Bo
Bo (Anna Silk) chases an Oo’Glug (Clinton Lee Pontes) because Stella Nashira (Deborah Odell), who is training her for The Dawning, says the creature’s pheromones will help her survive the Ceremony. The chase leads Bo and Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) to a warehouse where a group of underwear models are involved in a photo shoot. The Oo’Glug was a ruse to lure Bo to that place so she could feed on the models. Bo refuses, despite Stella’s warning that she needs to be fully fed to survive the impending ceremony.
Sarah Jackson as Elle, the centerpiece of the feast prepared for Bo before The Dawning
Stella thinks humans shouldn’t participate in things Fae, and tries to chase Kenzi away by whispering to her what happens to humans who are abandoned by the Fae who claimed them. (If Bo does not succeed in the ritual, she will devolve into an underfae and forget everyone she knows.) We don’t get to hear what she said, but Trick (Rick Howland) reassures Kenzi that she will always have a place in his world. Kenzi’s abandonment issues will come to the fore again in “In Memoriam” (episode 4.1).
Lauren (Zoie Palmer) arrives (after ignoring twenty-seven text messages from Bo) to wish her luck. and Kenzi does the same, saying: “You will always be my girl, Bo, even if you come out of there with a dong,” a statement one could easily take the wrong way. Bo can’t choose a weapon to take with her unless she picks a side, light or dark. She refuses, choosing to enter the temple unarmed. Trick uses essence of white oleander to draw a rune on Bo’s forehead.
Invoking a Fae tradition, Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) offers to accompany her as a “hand” and Bo at first refuses, but is persuaded to accept. A lotus blossom dropped into water opens a portal, and she and Dyson step through. When Bo enters The Temple, Dion DiMucci‘s “The Wanderer” is playing on the jukebox.
The Caretaker
She almost immediately encounters The Caretaker (Ron Lea), who explains that now that she’s in The Temple, the problem is how to get out, and for that she needs a key. The exact wording of what he says turns out to be very important. “The Key you seek,” he tells Bo, “unlocks the portal. Accept the Key, in the form it is presented and you’re free. Reject it, and, well, imagine slobbering all over the place, unable to remember the people you love…Until you find the key is in hand, you won’t go anywhere.”
The Dawning creates simulations of possible life choices and plays them out. Bo’s mind switches Dyson and Lauren. In her alternate reality, Dyson is a doctor, and Lauren becomes the one who “gave her love away”. She and Lauren work together as uniformed police officers, and her husband Dyson is a doctor trying to drug Bo into a middle-class lifestyle.
The succubus finds herself driving a late model hatchback to her home in suburbia. She is greeted by her neighbour Tamsin (Rachel Skarsten), who is trimming her hedge and suggests that it’s “a nice day for a wander”. Bo suspects Tamsin of having an affair with her husband.
Bo’s bloody neighbour Tamsin.
None of these fantasies come from Dyson. It is Bo’s Dawning, and she controls it. The image of the lead underwear model (Elle, played by Sarah Jackson) turns up in five different fantasy scenes in The Temple, The fantasies belong to Bo, because only Kenzi, Stella and Bo met Elle.
There is one vision that cannot have come from Bo. She sees herself as an infant being cared for by a man whose face she does not see. A nurse, who is not named (played by Erin Jarvis) is singing the Scottish lullaby Baloo Baleerie. Then she sees her mother Aife (Inga Cadranel) slit the nurse’s throat and abduct her infant self.
Bo as an infant. A male voice, likely her father, calls her Ysabeau
The man holding her infant self is played by Steve Cochrane, who wrote “SubterFaenean” (episode 3.2) and will write another five Lost Girl episodes. Cochrane also had a cameo as a bartender in “Masks” (episode 2.12) which like The Ceremony, was directed by Lee Rose.
In Bo’s alternate world, Doctor Dyson has her on anti-psychotics and Bo can’t remember why. She then discovers she’s pregnant with Dyson’s child. Initially happy about this, she is soon afflicted with severe abdominal pains. This makes Dyson, who has been controlled by Bo’s fantasies, return to his senses and tell Bo that she’s not pregnant; he’s not a doctor; and the whole suburban drugged-out and pregnant thing is what’s turning her into an underfae
Aife prepares to abduct baby Bo
Dyson tells her the key is within him, and that she must kill him to get it. When she refuses, he goes wolf and attacks, forcing her to stab him.
As Dyson expires, a portal forms. The caretaker appears, and tells Bo she has passed the test and can leave. Bo refuses to leave without Dyson, and draws a rune on the floor with his blood, the same rune that Trick had earlier drawn on Bo’s forehead. The drawing becomes a portal and both Bo and Dyson re-appear in the Dal. Dyson is quite dead.
Trick’s painting.
A sense of helplessness seems to activate Bo’s superpowers. Refusing to accept Dyson’s death, Bo does what she did when the Lich threatened Lauren in “Death Didn’t Become Him” (episode 2.8). She sucks chi out of everyone in the room, and then uses it to bring Dyson back to life. This time nobody dies, and Bo, speaking in an odd and powerful voice says: “I will reign as he did for I am his daughter. Together we will bridle the masses and ride on to victory. Even death will fear us. Only I will choose who lives.” Both the phrasing and the sentiment seem uncharacteristic of Bo.
After Stella leaves for Scotland, Trick unwraps a painting of a winged horse. “It’s him,” he says.
** — Revised. Originally posted on 21 March 2013