This episode begins with several of Concordia’s current residents explaining why they chose to uproot their lives and partake in the experiment. The biggest contributors appear to be acceptance and a declining outside climate.

Juliane Ericksen (Christiane Paul) seeks solace in nature while Isabelle Larsson (Nann Blondell) continues researching the school shooting. At about the same time Noah Ericksen (Steven Sowah) joins her, she becomes frustrated and closes her laptop. This leads to her telling him about Dr. Peter Blom’s (Duncan Green) plans to meet with Edvin Claesson (Dietrich Hollinderbaumer) on the day he supposedly committed suicide. He notes the strange timing and adds that it just isn’t something you expect to happen in your own home. This statement inspires Isabelle to call Thea Ryan (Ruth Bradley) and ask to see the drive from Oliver Miller’s (Louis Landau) case. Thea appears hesitant but eventually agrees, under the condition that she picks it up at her house.

When Thea ends the call, she learns from a troubled Alexandre (Hugo Becker) that there has been an incident with her mother, Veronica Ryan (Cara Kelly). Thea offers to go but Alex knows her heart isn’t in it and tells her to stay. She does offer to watch Talon (Edward Wray), which he very reluctantly agrees to.

A very brief scene suggests that Marco Vieri (Niccolo Senni) may have made contact with Leon (Jonas Nay), using a message board known as Toxic Onion. While that takes place, Isabelle arrives at Thea’s flat to pick up the drive which she accesses there on-site, using her laptop.

Despite the incident, Alex finds Veronica unharmed and manages to get her back to the apartment without incident. Much to his surprise, she even recognizes the photos of Thea and Talon but continues to refer to him as Albert. During their brief encounter, it is also revealed The Technician (Yuho Yamashita) is still remotely watching the flat. Alex later interrupts a lunch meeting between Thea and Fatemah Amin (Ahd) to report the success. Being that Fatemah has just asked Thea to run point on some upcoming meetings, she suggests Alex return to Concordia with Veronica. He’s once again reluctant but agrees in the end.

Marco calls Thea, with the news that he’s intercepted and deciphered a coded message on the message board that leads to a Berlin address. Suspecting the address to be a physical dead drop, he offers to send his operative. At the same time, Isabelle has just discovered Oliver’s game footage with The Hunter where he discusses modding the Ice Pass. This leads to logging into Spiral, creating a character, and visiting the Ice Pass.

Marco maintains constant contact with his operative as she arrives at the dead drop. When someone finally arrives to collect the message, it comes down to either detain the operative or save the burning message. They opt to save the message which Thea later reveals to Concordia’s higher-ups to only be half readable due to the damage. Despite the damage, Marco tracks the coded message to a classified ad in a Hamburg newspaper, looking for a local cleaner who can begin work in Kopwitz ASAP. Thea, along with Noah appears to think it’s a message for Faceless to abandon Concordia and refocus efforts on the Kopwitiz Project. The meeting concludes with the Higher Ups agreeing to link all their assets, Marco, Hanna Bremer (Karoline Eichhorn), and Adrian Grant (Peter Seaton-Clark).

Noah makes a major lapse when after the meeting he tells Thea that he’s glad her family is returning for the launch. She immediately becomes suspicious of how he would know about Alex and Veronica’s return but doesn’t get much time to ponder it due to the abrupt arrival of Mathilde (Josephine Jobert). Mathilde asks about the drive and says that AJ Oba (Kenton Nakajima) has been hounding her for it. Thea doesn’t mention letting Isabelle look at it but only promises to return it ASAP.

Isabelle spends several minutes in the Ice Pass checking out the mods that appear to change everything from her character’s attire to the surrounding environment. One particular mod titled, ‘Eye in the Sky’ soon draws her attention which leads to the discovery of the extended video that Oliver made during the opening. Oliver reveals that he was contacted by Elodie Cailleux (Alba Gaia Bellugi), with the claim that some of the Concordia Higher Ups were corrupt. Initially thinking she was referring to crooked financial or hidden taxes, he agreed to look into it. What he ultimately discovers leads him to the extended version of the video that AJ used to force Peter to resign. The extended version of this video reveals Peter was struggling with not reporting his suspicions about Jesper Claesson’s (Anton Petzold) behavior.

Seeing all this completes Isabelle’s memory of the school shooting.  As it turns out, it was Young Isabelle (Rim Ghebrai), who grabbed the lost gun and shot Jesper after the Teacher (Katja Preub) surprised him from behind. Isabelle soon receives a call from Mathilde who is remotely monitoring her heightened emotions with an assistant (Laura Storz). Isabelle downplays her response as stress and Mathilde apparently buys into it.

Elodie becomes irate and confronts Leon after she discovers she’s being locked in her room. Much to her surprise, Leon claims it was a safety precaution and attempts to use Oliver’s death to persuade her further. This only makes her madder and although she claims she knows what she signed up for, she says she did not sign up to be locked away. Elsewhere, Thea uses one of Marco’s operatives (Emanuele Gabrieli) to search her flat for a bug. A later phone call reveals that he not only found bugs, but he also found spyware on nearly all her devices.

Thea later confronts Juliane and Noah with the discovery, although she directs most of her anger and accusations towards Juliane. Much to her surprise, it was not only Noah who ordered all this to be done but he did so without Juliane’s knowledge. Noah justifies his actions by pointing out the risks she proposed to the company. Much to his surprise, she claims to sympathize, although she doesn’t necessarily agree with his method. Before the meeting is over, it suggested that he wants her to take a bigger role in the company. She doesn’t refuse the offer but at the moment, only wants to focus on a successful launch.

Tessa Vogel (Maeve Metelka) returns to the compound to find Elodie still in a sour mood. This slightly changes once she tells her about her father’s successful operation. Their meeting is brief but Tessa does promise to arrange for her to speak with him. After their meeting, Tessa confronts Leon about locking Elodie up. This leads to a slightly heated debate, with Leon reminding Tessa that Elodie was always meant to be a means to an end. The debate goes back and forth for a few minutes but ultimately ends with Leon promising to keep Elodie safe. He also asks for Tessa’s phone so he can install new encryption software on it.

Marco appears to make another major discovery on the Toxic Onion message board while Hanna and her Chief of Staff, Ulf Schrader (Christopher Nell), meet Adrian ‘The Brit.’ Hanna is left speechless when Adrian tells her that their intel now suggests the threat isn’t Kopwitz but her life.

The episode ends with Isabelle confronting Juliane about what she and Peter did. This also leads to Juliane claiming that she and Peter were having an affair while her husband was dying. Juliane goes on to claim that during her time with Peter, she shared her dream of creating Concordia. When Jesper came along with his homicidal tendencies, Peter didn’t just look the other way, but he apparently encouraged him, in hopes that it would be a foundational catalyst for Concordia. Isabella walks away once Juliane says that Noah doesn’t know and asks to be the one to tell him.

 

Concordia Review

Wow, what a shocker of an ending. I certainly wasn’t expecting that and am not 100% convinced that it is true. That said, I can’t recall but I do believe I have seen cases before where psychiatrists have encouraged their patients to act on their tendencies in order to achieve something they wanted. The episode felt a bit drug out at times but it all came together rather nicely in the end. Really, the only thing I can complain about is Alex’s utter submission to his wife.

He’s obviously a good dude and his job must provide the latitude to look after Veronica, but his utter submission to her leaves something to be desired. It’ll be interesting to see where the story goes from here. I’d give this episode a 5.3 out of 10 due to the fact that nothing really happened.

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