Several characters question what freedom is to them in this week’s episode of Star-Crossed, and one character escapes to Eljida — but is he gone for good?
The main storyline involves the Atrian seven getting the chance to explore more of Edendale, the town I assume surrounds or is nearby the Sector and home to the humans they go to school with.
Gloria lets the Atrian students know that if they’re on their best behavior, and the trip goes well, it could mean more freedoms for their people as a whole later on. No pressure, though.
Phone Tag
And that whole cell phone plot from last week’s episode of Star-Crossed? Still going on during this episode as well. Lukas and Roman are still looking for whoever was calling Roman’s father, Nox, on his forbidden phone, and though we know who it is, they still don’t at the beginning of the hour.
But that all changes fairly quickly, and Lukas goes to Roman when he gets a signal from the phone. It’s on the third floor of their school building, so the two boys go looking and find it, along with a note written in Nox’s handwriting.
We learn another interesting bit of trivia about the Atrians thanks to this scene: Lukas can’t see the writing, and Roman explains that Atrians can see further on the UV spectrum than humans. So he can read what it says, but Lukas can’t.
The note gives directions to Eljida, and Roman wonders whether his father wanted him to find the note. Lukas warns that it might be a setup, but Roman blows him off.
Grayson’s in Trouble
Meanwhile, Grayson and Emery’s relationship continues to blossom despite his dirty secret that he’s a Red Hawk. When they’re out on a movie date, Grayson gets a call from Eric, then tells Emery it’s an emergency and he has to go give the other boy a ride. She stays to save him a seat, and Grayson is off.
As it turns out, Eric was hanging out with a bunch of people who decided to beat up a shopkeeper and destroy his place of business. He was asked to be the lookout, he explains to Grayson when the whole group gets into his car, but he doesn’t actually know them. That seems super safe!
The police show up, and Eric and the other guys run while Grayson gets busted. The next day at school, Emery questions Eric and he tells her Grayson was arrested.
But Grayson’s parents arrange it so that Eric will take the fall, and Grayson won’t get charged with a hate crime. They promise to get the other boy a good lawyer and help him when he “gets out,” but it still kinda sucks for the guy.
Emery’s Assistance
Grayson tells Emery how he’s being let off the hook, and she wants to help Eric to not be charged, either. She tells Grayson that if he sees the good in Eric, she just has to trust him. Because we all know she made the right choice trusting in that guy in the first place, right?
Eventually, Grayson and Emery use information on the guys from Eric to find a biker bar where they believe the actual perpetrators are hanging out. They almost get pretty badly beaten up there, but Emery saves the day by getting a name and photo of the guy assaulting Grayson and threatening to send it to a friend who will spread it to other Red Hawks who don’t believe in their way of dealing with the Atrians.
So they make it out, and by the end of the Atrian day out, one of the biker guys confesses to the hate crime and Eric is off the hook. “You and Eric are free,” Emery states. But is Grayson? So long as he holds on to his Atrian hatred, I’d argue that he never really will be.
Oh, and they kiss again, in case you’re keeping track.
Drake’s Mission
So what’s Drake up to in this episode? Mostly, still trying to impress the Trags, and getting into bed with a human. Well, not a bed so much as a side room at some sort of club. Anyway.
Drake is tasked by Vega with meeting an operative on the outside during his time out in Edendale, to bring a cyper cube to the person. Teri tries to get in on the action too, probably trying to prove something to herself as much as to her mother, but Drake is reluctant to give up any part of his mission.
He and Teri go to this club place to meet up with the operative, and Drake is to sit alone at a table and wait for the person while Teri watches from afar. Only problem is, Taylor sits down across from him first.
Drake/Taylor? Draylor?
Taylor has had her eye on Drake for a little while now, and she takes the Atrians day out as an opportunity to get her hands on him too. She befriends Sophia, taking the girl shopping for girls and such, in order to find out more about the other Atrian.
She doesn’t get much out of Sophia, aside from the fact that Drake is a bit of a mystery. So when she approaches Drake at the club/restaurant, she acts coy, and he mistakenly believes that when she hints “You know why I’m here,” it’s for something totally different than what she’s actually planning!
They end up in some sort of side room or storage area and proceed to make out, before the scene changes to a commercial, which is the PG-13 signal for “They totally have sex.”
Afterwards, when Taylor makes a comment that makes Drake doubt that they were meeting up for the same reason, he splashes her with water from a sink to prove that she’s not an Atrian who’s hidden her markings. He realizes his mistake and rushes back out to the table.
The Operative
When Teri goes to Drake’s table and Taylor’s friend, whose name I still haven’t caught, approaches, she tries to take over for him. But the friend won’t have that, and when Drake returns, it’s revealed very quickly that she is in fact the operative he’s been waiting for.
She leads Drake away for a special mission, and both Teri and Taylor are left in their wake. The Trag spy leads Drake out to a remote location and tells him to dig, and when he does, they soon uncover a body: Beaumont’s body, in fact, the traitor Trag from a few episodes ago.
While he’s digging, Drake asks whether it hurt to get her marks removed. She said it hurt more than anything else, but she understood what she had to do for their cause. After she explains that they will put the cube on Beaumont’s body so it will take root and spread black cyper around the area to kill humans, she reveals that her father was sent to the Crate — whatever that is — when she was little, leaving her all alone.
It was the Trags who helped her, and she states that they have to be willing to pay a price for their freedom. Drake mentions that his mother was taken to the Crate when he was little too, so we know a little more about why he hates the humans so much.
After their little heart-to-heart, Drake is more resolved than ever, and he puts the cube on the body and reburies it.
Detour
Instead of hanging out around town with the other Atrians and the humans, Roman deciphers and follows the directions given in the note written by his father, with a little help from both Lukas and Drake at different points. He heads out into the bayou to seek entrance to Eljida and spends basically the whole day looking for Jesytur, the Eljida gatekeeper of Atrian legend.
But someone is following him, and after he lights three fires at a building labeled “Jessy’s Tours,” he finds out who it is.
Gloria steps out into the open, and she and Roman argue by the light of the moon. She says she needed to know how to get to Eljida, and claims his father wanted a safe place for his family in case integration didn’t work. He claims that his father would have told them that, and demands the truth. And boy does he get it.
The Truth Comes Out
Gloria tells Roman that she and Nox loved each other, and he is completely thrown. She says she needs to know where Eljida is in case integration fails, so all of Nox’s people can be safe, but he says it’s no use. He’s been waiting for hours since lighting the fires, and no one has come. He leaves, disappointed by his failure and by his father’s tarnished memory.
But that’s not the only truth that comes out in this episode. You know how Lukas has been chasing Sophia around? Well, turns out that not only does she not return that attention, she isn’t interested in any guys at all. Because she’s into girls — one girl in particular.
While Sophia and Taylor went shopping so the blonde could get information from the Atrian on Drake, Sophia was apparently in heaven, because she got to hang out with the girl of her dreams! The poor girl is in for some heartache there, unless Taylor changes her boy-crazy personality in a big way.
Gloria’s Decision
So why was Gloria so desperate to find Eljida? Early on in the episode, she and a woman I am assuming is her mother watched through a security feed while that shopkeeper was attacked. They’re in a safe room, but Gloria knows she can’t protect her son forever.
So she made the decision to find Eljida and bring her son there, but the problem was, only an Atrian could find it. So she had to follow Roman, and when he leaves after their conversation, she sticks around to wait for Jesytur just a bit longer.
Well, she lucked out, because the gatekeeper shows up. She calls her mother to bring her son out of the trees where they were in hiding, and asks the gatekeeper to bring her son to the mythical land. He promises the little boy will have everything he’ll need, and Gloria gives him up.
The little boy cries for his mother while the gatekeeper rows them away, and I have to say, I probably would’ve cared more if I felt more attached to these characters. It’s just too early in the game for me to feel all that much for Gloria, unfortunately.
Roman and Emery
Our star-crossed couple actually don’t interact much in this episode, what with Roman being on a mission and Emery trying to help her lying boyfriend and his friend out. So when they do chat near the end of the episode, it’s notable.
Roman makes a comment about freedom not being all it’s cracked up to be, and mentions that he liked seeing Emery in her town. She reminds him that it’s his town too, and this is about the moment that I realize we don’t see Julia in this episode, do we? Otherwise, she would’ve been hanging out with Emery in Edendale!
Certainty and Uncertainty
When the Atrians have to get back on the bus, Roman runs into Teri, who is drunk after a little male-bashing bonding session with Taylor the two girls enjoyed after Drake went off with Taylor’s friend. She makes a comment about Drake’s mission, which Roman catches and later questions the other boy about.
He finds Drake at the Wall of the Missing, where he’s touching the depiction of his mother’s face. He tells Drake that joining the Trags is not the answer, and when Roman admits that he isn’t sure what his father wanted for their people and in regards to integration, Drake tells him that while Roman might be unsure, Drake is more certain than ever of his convictions.
Drake warns that if Roman doesn’t work out the whole integration thing, he is prepared to lead the charge of Trags and their people against the humans. So Roman had better get pretty sure about what he wants to accomplish as Nox’s son, and fast.
They’re sure trying to amp up the drama on Star-Crossed, aren’t they? But we still aren’t seeing a whole lot of actual “star-crossed lovers” action!
Keep watching Star-Crossed every Monday night at 8pm on The CW.
(Image courtesy of The CW)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
