It’s impossible to talk about what we’ve learnt in the last three episodes of this season of 12 Monkeys, without starting at the end. The Witness has returned to Titan, and she didn’t even know it, until she did. Even she thought that Athan was the Witness from the future that she had been praying to all of her life.
But it was always Olivia. It was never Athan. She has always been the sad, lonely demon issuing orders from the end of time, telling lies and half-truths to her followers – including her younger self – to preserve the cycle that begets the bitterest and darkest of souls.
Think of all the things that the future dark lord of time has had to do before it could trust itself with the knowledge of its own origin story. It had to break and humiliate her younger self. It had to create an army to worship someone else as a false idol.
Olivia only came to Titan when she felt she had finally succeeded in using everyone else to bring ‘him’ down: Kill all the guardians – something Cole, Cassie, Deacon and Hannah took care of. Find Athan – something only his mother could do. Kill Athan – something Jones thought she did.
For a moment it was confusing to see Mallick not at all bothered that everyone thought that Athan was killed, even before Olivia realised she was the Witness. Perhaps the Jinn Witness who had been issuing orders through time, had already revealed secret details to Mallick before anyone else, to prepare the faction within the army that will no longer recognise Athan to be at its helm.
I’m heartbroken for the Railly-Cole family. They were thrown together only to be torn apart. They never got a chance to really get to know each other. Not yet anyway. In the final three episodes, we finally got a real chance to get to know Athan, and it’s impossible not to love him and to want him to have the chance to be with his mother and father.
Rather than to recap the details of the Athan-centric episodes, I’ll just say this: it’s truly remarkable how much story got packed into three episodes. It’s as if time stretched before me as I watched them for the first time. We meet a kind man, watch him fall in love, watch his world torn apart, see him resign himself to a fate which he thought was inevitable, and then we see him find hope again. We see how much like his mother and father he is. And our hearts swell when in the end, he never gives up.
We also watch the Project Splinter family turn on each other, with one side fooled into believing Olivia is an ally, and torturing poor Jennifer after they discover that she’s been protecting Athan and his parents. Jennifer had to sacrifice her tortoises to a paradox just to be able to save Cole and Cassie from Jones, Deacon and Hannah. In the end, it was Deacon who set her free, unwilling to allow Jennifer to die twice because of him.
Before Athan departs to Titan, where Olivia will take his life, he had an important final exchange with Jennifer. Remember when Jennifer saves Athan from the mausoleum? She tells him to use his Primary mind to fast forward to the end and that they can ‘do the middle later’. There’s room for the middle in Season 4.
What’s interesting is that we see Athan and Jennifer in 2018, watching the same news broadcast that brings Chechnya Cole to the CDC. So it appears that everything is still set to happen in the same way, and the only thing that has changed is the date in which Cassie dies. Cole had always arrived there at the behest of the time stream, so as it turns out, the date is not so important to the casual loop of events.
Remember future Cole and Cassie in the opening episode of this series? These two are going to do something for Jennifer before the end comes. Through his powers of prophecy, Athan told Jennifer that her mission is to decipher the symbols that they have been seeing all their lives. He also told her that she will need Cole and Cassie, and they will need Jennifer. To do what? Well, to break the cycle, of course!
“How does one stop what never began? I think you’re the answer, Jennifer.” I am still hopeful that Jennifer will become the Goddess of Time, and the deciphering the symbols will be the key to this transformation.
At this stage of the story, defeat and inevitability will be the easy way to end it. But if there’s anything we’ve learned through 3 seasons of 12 Monkeys, it’s that the story keeps folding in on itself beyond our wildest imaginations. When victory comes, it will not feel cheap. It will leave us speechless and proud.
As for Deacon, he was saved to be the Jinn Witness’s secret weapon. However, we’ve seen how Deacon is anything but a defeatist. He will use this betrayal as fuel, and he will do his part to tear Olivia down. He promised us that he intends to go out with a bang. We still love you Deacon, even though you can be a bad man, there’s more than enough good in you.
The end of the season returned us to a young Cole with his father reading a bedtime story. Matthew Cole reads a book that was left to James by his mother, whom he had never met. We only know that she was running from the army of the 12 Monkeys. She left a poem about the ouroboros, and a battle against a demon.
The image on this poem has appeared in Jennifer’s and Athan’s primary visions. The serpent in the story has also been something that Shaw Jr mentioned at the night room and again by Olivia when she was held at Raritan. Cole’s mum is still a mystery to us, but we’ve been given a hint that she is probably intimately connected to the primaries and the villains. I’m going to put my faith in Athan, that the end is not yet written.
Season 4’s filming is already well underway. It’s so exciting that we’ll find out how Olivia transcends into an evil Jinn, and what tricks our favourite protagonists still have up their sleeve to try to bring her down. The story will end with the death of a thief – let’s hope that it will be Olivia, and not time itself.
Season 4 of 12 Monkeys returns in 2018.
Jessica Hardaway
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Thank you for these reviews. Will you be reviewing Season 4 as well?
Thank you Jonathan. I’ve replied to you privately re: my reason for not doing Season 4. Still my favourite show. Nothing has changed there.