No one can accuse Reign of being a slow moving show, but this week’s episode has to be one of the most jam packed plot wise. It was also one of my absolute favorite of the season so far. This is the Reign I remember… even if Queen Elizabeth still featured heavily.
If asked to briefly summarize this week’s episode of Reign, well, I don’t think I could do it. Catherine is regent. Claude got married, then unmarried. Lola is in England. Greer got a visit from her baby daddy. Mary was banished, then unbanished. Narcisse is a scumbag. And that’s barely scratching the surface of each of these events. So now it’s time to dig a little deeper.
Well, first off, I’d forgotten that Greer was pregnant. Her piratey baby daddy has returned and happily accepts that the child is his. He even offers to send gold and visit maybe even twice a year. Father of the year right here. And suddenly it looks like Greer might be having doubts about adopting the baby out to a noble family, but I’m not overly invested one way or the other because again, totally forgot this was a thing with how little Greer has been featured this season.
Speaking of pregnancy, someone has poisoned Queen Elizabeth and forced a miscarriage. Of course this happens right after Lola’s only substantial scene of the last two weeks where she told the Queen how great having an illegitimate child can be. To me it looks pretty clear that it was Elizabeth’s chief adviser that did this, but nothing has been confirmed. Even though I’m still not a huge fan of the England plot points, it was impossible not to feel bad for Elizabeth here. I do hope this really means the end of her zero-chemistry affair though, because that is likely what has been dragging down her character from the beginning.
Things in France are a lot harder to summarize. Remember how right at the end of last week’s episode, Narcisse announced that he would be marrying Claude off? It was done and over with before this week’s episode was halfway over. The dowery that the duke paid in order to marry a princess has also been stolen (it was Catherine, surprising no one) in an attempt to thwart the match. But then, in what has to be my favorite scene of the entire season (stay with me for a second here), Claude was shocked when her new husband slapped her. She then proceeded to defend herself with everything she had, leaving him gasping on the floor. It was impossible not to cheer for the french princess in this one, especially since it ended up getting her marriage annulled. It was also enough to break the hold that Narcisse had over King Charles, leading to Catherine finally claiming the regency. It was only the very end of the episode that really surprised me though. Catherine had bribed the duke to hit her own daughter in order to force these actions forward. I do wish she’d let Claude in on it; I think she probably would have agreed, all things considered. But this was a great reminder that Catherine is willing to do whatever it takes to protect her family and control France, and is not a good person. She’s such a great character that she’s easy to root for, but she’s the bad guy of the series as often as not. She did manage to stop Narcisse from banishing Mary though, which was pretty shocking for all of the ten minutes it seemed like a possibility.
Mary’s plot line took a step back a bit this week as her main goal was in securing Lola’s freedom and making sure Elizabeth would follow through on her goals by adding some leverage. She’d uncovered that the new English ambassador had been hired to seduce her and has teamed up with the very same in order to convince Elizabeth that that is exactly what happened. Honestly, I hope he’s still going to double-cross her because it seems like Mary is constantly finding out about plots against her just in the nick of time and no one ever actually gets one over on her. I love Mary, but I’d love to see something go actually wrong for her for a change.
It looks like Reign is on a break until spring, so this could be it for a while, but if nothing else, I was thrilled to see Queen Mary and co. go out with a great episode. Now I get to actually look forward to seeing what happens next.
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