Gettin' My Eps In: Lazarus S1E11
An action-heavy episode kicks off what is likely to be an extended finale.
Lazarus
Season 1, Episode 11: “Runnin’ With the Devil”
Written by Tsukasa Kondo
Directed by Youhei Tsuchiya & Yasutomo Okamoto
Streaming on (HBO) Max
When a TV series has a plot that develops across a season, building to an expected payoff, you want to make sure that it will deliver on its promise. Fortunately, it seems like Lazarus is doing exactly that. While it has occasionally meandered in its journey, long-running plot threads are finally reaching a culmination in the last few episodes of the season, and if this episode is any indication, the finale should be pretty satisfying.
At the end of the last episode, it seemed like we were going to get an extended fight scene between Axel and the assassin that government officials had sent to kill him. And that’s sort of what we get, but other plots are also progressing, possibly providing some answers to mysteries while leading toward what could be dramatic and tragic conclusions to character arcs. Exciting!
The plotline that may be most important kind of gets the least attention here, although it’s likely to take the fore soon. Eleina and Doug fly to Pakistan to try to track down the hacker who may have a connection to Dr. Skinner, but they’re being pursued by the U.S. Army, who want to stop them for some reason. Eleina is experiencing some health issues that may be related to the effects of the drug that is about to kill most of humanity, but she’s keeping this hidden. Doug manages to stop the pursuers so that Eleina can proceed on her own, and while she does manage to find the hacker, she collapses, leaving us with one of the episode’s cliffhangers.
The machinations of some officials in the U.S. government who are trying to foil the efforts of the team get some attention when Dr. Hersch goes to their headquarters to confront them. She has learned that they experimented on prisoners when developing the prototype for the drug Hapna that’s going to kill everyone, and all the test subjects died except Axel. That’s why they’ve sent the assassin to kill him, hoping to cover up their schemes. All of their efforts seem kind of pointless, since most of humanity is scheduled to die in a few days, but this highlights the ways many people in positions of authority care only about themselves and focus on protecting their reputations or engaging in power struggles even while the world is falling down around them. We’ll have to see how these schemes continue to play out, since Hersch ends up being detained, providing another cliffhanger that will need to be resolved.
In the midst of all of these plots, a good portion of the episode involves Axel’s fight with the assassin, who sets off some explosions in the middle of a busy highway and proceeds with his attack. We get some pretty exciting action, with the two of them engaging in hand-to-hand fights on top of moving trucks, occasionally using weapons, and dodging more explosions when grenades get thrown around. It’s all very cool, mostly delivering on expectations, even if it’s not totally mind-blowing.
The episode takes a somewhat experimental turn near the end in a final confrontation between Axel and the assassin, who, after seeing a pendant Axel wears around his neck, starts having visions that seem to be flashbacks to his training and programming. This involves a lot of glimpses of violence and death, with some interesting animation techniques, including some figures that are depicted in a rough, scratchy art style, as well as scenes where the backgrounds and other objects seem to pulse hypnotically. It’s really striking and innovative, conveying the character’s mental breakdown effectively while also providing some hints that Axel may be connected with whatever happened to this guy in the past.
It’s uncertain whether this will be followed up on or if it is just meant to serve as a tantalizing glimpse of a tragic backstory. It seems like the last couple episodes of the season will need to cram in a lot, paying off the various cliffhangers and providing some sort of conclusion to the ongoing quest to find Dr. Skinner and determine whether it may be possible to stop the impending mass death that is hanging over everyone’s heads. Based on the strength of this episode, which provided plenty of excitement while advancing plots toward some sort of endpoint, the likelihood that things will come to a satisfying conclusion seems high.