BillQS

I agree with The Omen references. However, if anything the Omen child is the destructive force behind Saturn Dreaming of Mercury. Should we call SDoM The Omen II? :-)

I have as many questions as all of you, but my gut reaction is that Lucas is Lucy in another form... not just a minion. It looks like Lucy murdered the pregnant mother and assumed the form of Lucas... not sure how, but as Frank always says, the correct question is why? I agree with the above poster who said the dad was not evil. If you remember Simon/Lucy caused the face of the doctor examining Jordan to assume demon features and there is no indication he is evil. The story shows that while both Frank and Jordan have the gift, the gift alone will not always guide you. Frank has had 50 years to hone the gift and to be able to tell when someone or entity tries to manipulate it. Jordan, while I agree may well be one day more powerful than Frank, is still too new and hasn't learned to question EVERYTHING as Frank has. Even trusting everything the gift shows you can lead you astray. The collection of eyeballs is certainly interesting. Maybe that odd collection of "antiques" is what opened the door for Lucy as Lucas to be placed with them. The whole intent was to show Frank that Lucy could be a threat to Jordan, but as Frank states her main goal seems to be fear which Frank will not let her overtly see. I really agree with the poster on the Antipas thread that Frank is too strong to be influenced by demons, they have to tempt him, or attempt to get him to conform out of fear for his daughter's safety.

Excellent episode. SJR doesn't just play Lucy, she embodies her... (which is pretty darn creepy sometimes.) I guess getting to it in Season 3 answered my question on the Lamentation thread. It's obvious Lucy has quite a range of shapeshifting power. As to the comment that this episode states Lucy is THE Devil and not a succubus or Lillith, I don't think that is definitely the case. The serpent analogy while tied to Satan also could be a metaphor for someone falling under evil's grasp. Either way, fantastic imagery!

I'd really be interested in others replying to this thread. I just finished the episode and loved it... but there are so many questions. Lucas was Lucy which makes sense given the similarity in names... was Simon Jordan's invisible friend also Lucy? I kinda get the feeling he was. That would mean that the Dad was ok, just another victim and that Lucy was making Jordan see the demon faces on the Dad? I get the connection to Lucy's threat at the end of Antipas about getting to Frank through Jordan, it would just help if anybody had any answers.

I thought Omerta was awesome, too. I loved a Frank / Jordan centric episode and it brought up the lingering grieving for Catherine among the pair which thematically gets summed up for Jordan in Borrowed Time and for Frank in The Sound of Snow. The dangerous part of this episode is what happens if you take it seriously. I mean what would technically keep Lhasa from resurrecting Catherine the way she resurrected Eddie or the guy attacked by wolves. I know logistically there are lots of excuses(length of time since death, body full of embalming fluid, did they ever actually find Catherine's body, etc,) but Frank seems to take the fact that a resurrecting fairy could not resurrect his dead bride rather well. But if we put aside lingering questions that like that, I think Omerta is one great Christmas episode.

I just finished The Sound of Snow and I will have to update my favorites because it was definitely one of the best! As someone else suggested, I thought that Alice might be a Season 3 manifestation of the Judge in the way she behaved, but after the episode was over I know longer think that. I do think she uses sound to get people to judge themselves and the strong survive while the weak falter. Going through Season 3 for the first time, it does seem a lot as though Peter Watts sent the tape as a gift to Frank for his help in Collateral Damage. There are direct allusions in Frank's talk to Emma at the end of the episode about Peter's whole family being able to sit at the dinner table which was the last shot of Collateral Damage. I also think there was a good bit of embracing Season 2. The images Frank saw were the same as parts of the "screaming monkey" dream that Jordan had and that Lara saw when she was checking out of sanity in TTIN.

I just finished 7 episodes in a row in Season 3 and it has really been improving my feeling about the season as a whole! As to Borrowed Time, my take on it was that Sammiel was impressed by Frank's pleas and dialogues with him even though he didn't let on they were affecting him at all, and that he chose to sacrifice himself in order to not take away Jordan's borrowed time. I like the way that plays making a previously unsympathetic character the one who came through and saves lives. I would say other theories are probably equally valid, though I don't go along with the "God was holding Jordan hostage so that Frank would say the right words" line of thinking. It could be much less heavy-handed than that. Either the angel or God realized Frank had born his share of suffering and they decided to cut him a break. All in all an amazing episode...

Well the name Eric Swan gave the disease was definitely named differently than the Marburg outbreak, and the symptoms Taylor Watts showed were definitely slower acting than the Marburg plague at the end of the 2nd Season. However, the syringe with the antidote definitely was inscribed "Marburg Variant" and had the Millennium Group Symbol. It appeared to be the same vaccine that Lara gave Frank in The Time Is Now at the end of Season 2, though I have not gone back to view the shot with the syringe in that episode. The Season 2 Marburg was explained by Peter to be a Soviet experiment in bioweapons and that the group was able to design a very limited supply of vaccine. It could be that the group were also working on a Marburg variant itself and that the one they designed was slower acting than the Soviet original. But, Eric does state I believe that he found the troups the next day and they were all dead. The answer could be many things. I personally like to think that Peter knew more about the Marburg variant and kept his family safe, accordingly. The source of contamination for Catherine and probably Jordan too could have been the parrot Frank bought Jordan as a gift, since we know it succumbed to the virus. If Jordan and Catherine came in close proximity to the parrot after it became contaminated up to and after death (very possible as they both are there when Frank buries the parrot) then this could explain Catherine's exposure to the virus. The antidote was presented to Jordan so she didn't succumb. If you take the theory I posited above, then Taylor wasn't previously innoculated, the virus was a similar but slower acting version of virus outbreak in the NorthWest at the end of Season 2 and the antidote was able to take care of her virus as well. (If the MG were developing it for the Pentagon they could be playing catch up with the Soviets in its experimentation, or it could actually be an improvement over the Soviet model since it was so virulent that it burnt itself out too quickly to cause a pandemic. A caveat to this theory is that it appears that Frank alludes in The Sound of Snow that Peter and he could have gotten vaccine for their families had he agreed to join the MG and that was why he was blaming himself for Catherine's death. Of course, none of that was shown in TTIN last season. That's when Catherine reassures him that he made the right choice by choosing her... and their family.

I agree with almost everything you said in your quote. I think people go too far in thinking of Legion as a singular entity when, like you said, the overall arc of season 1 is the exploration of Evil both human, supernatural and supernaturally controlled. However, two manifestations of Legion ARE the same in Season 1. It's apparent from the script in PPTD that Alister Pepper is the same manifestation as the Judge. That's as far as I think it goes. You're also right about the group. Saying one is a consultant as proof someone is not a member doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a later fan construct to explain how the 3 seasons can be melded together for a coherent whole. I had more to say, but I was just told I could go home early for MLKII Day weekend here in the States!

The nurse was definitely Lucy but it might not have had Lucy's form given her penchant of shapeshifting. I agree it must have been the female form for Fabricant to call her "sweetie", but he never indicates during the captivity scenes that he recognizes Lucy at least at first. I know they were "penpal married" but I would think they would have exchanged pictures and such and had he recognized Lucy he would have said something of recognition \other than "Why am I on a dialysis machine?" which seems to indicate he thought he was still initially receiving hospital treatment. By the end it's obvious he knows exactly who did him in, but that same knowledge isn't apparent on camera earlier unless I missed it.

Walkabout is definitely one of the best Millennium ep's. We do see discord with the Group in the this episode as well as "foreshadowing" of future family problems, but I don't know for sure if you could count either of these as a direct jump into what transpires in Season 2. The group and family discord is due to Frank "going frelance" and disappearing, not imo based on mechanations of the MG which cause so many problems next season. What Walkabout does do, however, is bring the paranormal more into the fore just in time for Lamentation and the remainder of Season 1. Supernatural questions were voiced from the beginning on the show, but the first part of Season 1 kept these questions more in the background. Actually, from Sacrament forward the evil becomes more otherworldly and Frank and Jordan's gift becomes less talent and more at the very least instinct. I took a different read of Chris Carter's commentary on the Season 1 DVD's. I think he was stating his original conception of the character was of extreme talent not psychic ability, but as the season went on and his regular availability over the writing and production process began to diminish, other writers in Season 1 "assumed" the visual shorthand that appeared in the Pilot represented an otherwordly gift and once that cat was out of the bag there was no going back. There's no arguing that by the time of Sacrament it's definitely not just profile talent, but an inheritable instinctual and somewhat psychic gift.

Of course, there are real-life women who correspond and in some cases marry serial killers in prison, so at the least the initial MO of Lucy Butler is grounded in reality. I ran across the blog of one such woman who had done this when I was researching Discordianism and one of it's founders whom she also maintained a few web pages for. (Discordianism has a famous byline- "Is this a joke designed as a religion or a religion designed a joke". It was one of the featured players in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus Trilogy.) While I can understand the Discordian mindset, I can't understand the mindset of a woman marrying a serial killer at all. As I remember the quote in the episode, I second the opinion that Frank was using his reply "The Devil" as a jibe at Fabricant, not realizing that by the end of the episode he would have a whole new opinion of ultimate evil and the devil (although still one with dual forms if you don't count the demon one.)

I got the same vibe as the original poster when I first watched Covenant about Reilly being the person Garry had the affair with. On second viewing I had come to the conclusion that Garry had the affair with someone else. I always knew the wife was not an adulterer and that Mr. Garry was. Guess, that's what I get for watching too much Torchwood and letting it color my Millennium world!

I thought something was up about Frank's neighbor too, and so did my coworker who watches Millennium with me every day at lunch. Meredith had that whole "Mrs. Kravitz" from Bewitched vibe going for him. Still and all, there was plenty going on in Season One without anything being done with the neighbor.

I don't find LLAHF to be any more disturbing to me than Kingdom Come, the Pilot or a lot of Season 1's gorefests. I love Season 1 most of all, but there are only so many Season 1 eps that I can watch in a row without having to a break from just the overall "bleakness" of it all. Like Watts said originally, it's hard to imagine having to live that day in and day out as an actual investigator. BTW, I have a theory about the end when the fiance's /newlyweds are in the basement & Frank discovers them. The guy asks Frank about his fiancee'/bride and Frank indicates the girl is ok. I get the distinct impression the girl is actually dead & Frank is doing that to keep the guy from freaking out down in that bomb shelter under the garage. Did anybody else take that away as well?

What a great interview to land!! You guys are really working hard and getting super results!

Thanks! Oddly enough I had 45 minutes and just finished my first big letdown in Season 3 "Thirteen Years Later..." It wasn't a complete loss though... I loved the mention of the Frenchman going all the way back to the Pilot and Frank's exhortations that he would catch the killer- even if it would drive him insane... for the third time!

Interesting how threads morph! I found the Group using machine guns in Exigeses to assassinate the seers to be very jarring... even after all the things that occurred in Season Two. I think what Season 3 did was resolve the ambiguity about the Group and the producers decided to make the group evil. One could ask why? I think there are several reasons for it some contextual with the show, and some a result of real life circumstances. Contextually, I believe the decision was made to try to "simplify" the Millennium mythos... not in an attempt to "dumb it down", but rather to make it more accessible to new viewers. Most people here seem to agree it would have been impossible to continue on in the story like Season 2. The mythic properties of the Group had gotten unwieldy and even in ambiguity pointed toward a certain sinisterness. Frank's reservations about the group grew throughout Season 2 and it would have been difficult to see Frank with a "non-antagonistic" relationship toward the group in Season 3. So the decision was made to make the group the villain instead of a friend in Season 1 and an enigma in Season 2. This turned out to be good, because seeing the group from the outside as others have said, kept the MG from becoming the center of attention and returned it firmly to Frank Black. My take on Frank's active accusation in Innocents and Exegesis that the MG had killed his wife and unleashed the plague was that some of this was an exaggeration of the Group's involvement due to the extreme horror and recovery Frank had gone through during the preceding 5 months. I also think an emotional exaggeration on Frank's part is the only way to justify a theory that the plague was unleashed just to kill the remote viewers. As Eth has said, there were far more direct and easier ways of eliminating them. I have taken it to believe that the remote viewers knew and were prepared for the plague, but not necessarily that the plague was unleashed by the MG simply to silence the visionaries. I think the MG would have been greatly pleased had they perished, but since they didn't they took matters into their direct hands in the aftermath. As to real life 1013 production considerations we have to remember that as of the Season 2 DVD's Chris Carter still had not even viewed all the Morgan and Wong episodes. I don't think he could have just continued the story in Season 3 even if he had wanted to. So at least some of the elaborate theories we fans create I believe come from the facts on the ground at 1013: * Morgan and Wong had signed on only for one season. * Morgan and Wong had been instructed by Chris Carter they were to create an ending suitable for both a season end and a series end. * Chris Carter had the idea to kill off Catherine's character. * To almost everyone's surprise the show was picked back up at the last minute. * This left people with little connection and knowledge of the previous season to QUICKLY have to come up with a way to continue the show. *CC wanted to return Millennium's focus back toward its beginnings in Season 1. *Fox probably was behind the scenes telling CC "Why can't Millennium be more like X Files? You mix all these factors in a pot and you get a surprisingly good final season given that so much was done "on the hoof" as it were. I guess I take all the above into account and that's why I am able to enjoy The Innocents and Exegesis more than I expected to.

Actually, I do like Boston Legal, but I view it as farce. Millennium I take much more seriously and I guess that's why it bothered me so much. Just the judge calling out in the middle of trial, "Is there a social worker in the house?" makes me cringe. I understand why they did WWL, it gives Catherine some major screen time and gives Lance some needed relaxation. I also understand the need for a change of pace after the heavy bodycount through the first set of episodes. There are some excellently filmed portions of the episode such as the girl walking down the middle of the road in her nightgown in the dark, but most of the ep didn't grab me. FWIW I think the 2nd season Catherine (and Lara) episode Anamnesis is loads better. For me at least it seemed to catch the 2nd Season Millennium flavor excellently even w/out Frank's presence.

I thought it was absolutely brilliant! Of course I love Lara Means and I love the Patti Smith Group, so I was predisposed to enjoy it, but even having said that, I thought it was a bold artistic statement. As for loss of Mm plot time, I believe you got all the plot explanation that Morgan and Wong were going to give you. A shorter length of time for that segment might have been picked up later in more time at the Cabin for the end of Catherine's life, but I don't think M & W would ever have clarified any more of the plot with the extra time. Given that this was Lara's one and only season with the show I thought it was a good use of the time and like I said earlier, it was artistically superb.

I still haven't finished Season 3 only 4 eps in... but my least favorite so far are both from Season 1 which is a season that as a whole I really love... The Well Worn Lock and The Wild and the Innocent. WWL reminds me too much of a Lifetime movie of the week and as an attorney I just can't take the court room scene seriously. WatI reminds me too much of Natural Born Killers which was a movie I could not stand, although I like most of Tarantino's other scripts- particularly Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Also, I can't stand that harsh type of unattractive southern accent, which living in the south I get to hear all the time, so that probably added to my dislike of the episode. Several people here don't seem to like A Single Blade of Grass, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Just goes to show YMMV.

Let me second the thanks for all the hard work you all have put into this site!

Just my 2 cents... Fabricant is not part of Legion. I think Fabricant was supposed to represent the most heinous evil to be committed by the heart of man. This was in contrast to the "pure evil" of Lucy Butler which is clearly deeper and more supernatural than the worst evil man can exact. I believe that's pretty clear from the way CC wrote the episode. Take a sociopath and contrast his evil with true "absolute" evil. I thought it was and still is a very insightful investigation into the nature of evil.

I'm still making my way through the episodes for the first time and being off today I got to see from The 4th Horseman all the way through Exegesis. While the change is pretty jarring, they were hinting around at a more sinister Millennium Group through much of the last of Season 2 (at least certainly secretive... and with a somewhat dark underbelly). I enjoyed the 2 episodes I've seen so far in Season 3 though after Peter is kidnapped by the MG during The Time is Now, it's really hard to see him being a heavy- all along for the ride MG'er in Exegesis. Maybe my expectations for early season 3 have been lowered by other opinions I've read about how they had to pull something together at the last minute, but so far I'm still really enjoying it.

Interesting theory, but like others have said, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with authorial intent. Avatar appears be based on the real life Zodiac killer who murdered several people in the late 60's and early 70's in and around San Francisco. The case was never solved and it was popularized in a best-selling book by Robert Graysmith. The police had a central suspect, who worked in a hardware store, but who died without ever being officially charged or conivcted of the crime. (Several people, myself included, believe the police had the wrong suspect, because despite much circumstantial evidence, every time a piece of evidence that would firmly establish this suspect as the Zodiac Killer came up, the tests on this suspect would turn out to be negative. This did not stop Graysmith and various other amateur investigators and occasionally the police to hound this suspect mercilessly until his death.) Zodiac used to use cypher's as clues to police and one break in the case occurred when they found that to disguise his handwriting, Zodiac was using letter-tracing from a movie poster. I think the writers never intended to have Avatar caught in order to feed of the same mystique as Zodiac. However, it is a novel theory. Bill