Lost Girl 4.13 “Dark Horse” Recap

After witnessing Rosette’s death and the opening of the portal, Bo tells Rainer about the Blood King being scared of her father, a hint that whenever the Pyrripus arrives, it’s going to take a lot to bring him down. Rainer pledges that he’ll fight until his last breath and brings a weakening Bo to the Dal, where he and Trick clash and Bo tells her grandfather about the white-clad cult-like group who worships a horse god they believe is her father. She then feels her father trying to cross the bridge into this world in order to bring her back to serve as queen. Meanwhile, Lauren watches as an increasingly manic Massimo digs a grave outside; ironic, since by the looks of his face, he’s lost the power of the Twig of Zamora and is no longer immortal. He’s also having difficulty digesting the power of the Papyrus Seed, but he still wants to make his mother proud by bringing her Bo’s severed head.

Back at the Dal, Trick tells Bo that he doesn’t have any leads as to the identity of her father, though he does inform her of her hybrid blood (the kindness of her mother and the manipulative nature of her father) and how he gave Aife up to the Dark to set an example of the sovereignty of the blood laws. Once she was caught, of course, she spent centuries being tortured and used by the Dark, which led to her losing her mind and any grip she had on reality. When Bo goes to leave the Dal and head to the portal, Trick stops her and tells her that she wouldn’t be safe if she did that and that she needs to get Lauren back from Massimo before tangling with her father. Dyson finds Kenzi looking for Bo at Evony’s and the Morrigan soon joins them; not only do Dyson and Kenzi find out that Evony is now human, and subject to the horrors of a changing body temperature, they learn that Massimo is her son, a factoid which nearly causes Kenzi to attack.

While Dyson, Kenzi, and Evony set off to the Dark archives, where the latter claims her son would be, Massimo arrives at the Dal and unleashes an energy blast he took from a Thunderbeast, knocking Trick and Rainer over. Bo tries to fight back, only to be tossed around the room due to the Seed’s impact being felt by Massimo, and when Rainer attempts to attack, Massimo breaks his arm before snapping his neck. Though Bo has some broken bones, she can’t let go of her desire to save her friends, lamenting that she wasn’t able to save Hale, Rainer, or anyone else important to her. Tamsin tells her to get her shit together and start acting like the chosen one, causing Bo to feed and note that Tamsin tastes differently than usual, with Dyson and Kenzi coming shortly after. Dyson gives Bo a hug, though Kenzi is reticent about showing affection to the woman she blames for Hale’s death; Tamsin tries to talk to the latter about life being too short to carry around grudges like this and confesses that she took Rainer’s soul, possibly her ticket out of Valhalla exile. Kenzi then produces a book that Rosette carried into this world with her and notes a page that said the daughter’s (Bo) heart would be enough to close the portal.

Before heading out to save Lauren, Bo rips up her Dark contract in front of Dyson, who tells her that he found his purpose in serving her. All his life, he felt like he was wandering and now he pledges his fealty to Bo, saying that he’ll be by her side forever and telling her he loves her. When she mentions that she would like him to serve with her rather than for her, Tamsin interrupts and the trio go to where the portal is. Three revenants saunter out of the portal and Bo nearly overdoses when she feeds off them, having to be pulled back by a kiss from Dyson. After taking care of the three former soldiers, the two note that it was more difficult than they expected, especially since there could be millions of revenants pouring through the portal at any moment. Bo feels great due to channeling the energy from her father’s impending arrival and she enlists Dyson to contain the portal so she can go save Lauren. He happily agrees, just as Evony gets drunk for the first time at the Dal; she flirts with Trick and informs him that he knows the one way to close the portal. They both then leave to meet Bo and save the world – reluctantly, in Evony’s case.

Bo puts on her necklace before battle and Tamsin and Kenzi come in to see her. Kenzi gives her a hug and a sword, assuring her friend that she’s going to be fine, while Massimo still has bursts of pain from the power of the Seed. He does have Rainer’s foresight now, but that doesn’t stop Bo from being able to sneak into the lair he’s holding Lauren captive. She’s in for a surprise, though, when he tells her that the Una Mens can deflect power and uses Hale’s siren song to blast her off her feet. He then trash talks the succubus, provoking her about Rainer’s death, and after Lauren assures her that everything’s going to be okay, Bo tries to feed from Massimo to no avail. She gets an assist from Evony, who appears from the shadows; Bo holds a knife to her throat and taunts an increasingly angry Massimo before feeding from Evony and saying that she tasted the contempt the Morrigan has for him. When Massimo unwittingly begins feeding from his mother’s chi, Bo tells him that she learned how to stop overly feeding due to the love from her friends and that if Massimo loves Evony, he would be able to stop and save her life. He does stop, only it’s too late – Evony collapses into a heap.

Bo bargains a life for a life with him and uses some of his chi to bring her back. However, Lauren brings out the Twig of Zamora and crushes it before Bo gets in a few blows on Massimo, dedicating the finishing one to Kenzi’s broken heart. Speaking of, Kenzi walks out into the field of revenants where Dyson, Tamsin, and Trick are battling for their own fates and the fate of the world itself. She informs Dyson that she figured out how to shut the portal – she has to walk into it, seeing as how she’s Bo’s heart. Kenzi’s okay with the thought, as it would give her a part to play in Fae society and allow her to go out the warrior that she is, even when Dyson warns her that the portal is concentrated energy and there’s no telling what it could do to her. She tells him that Rainer knew this would happen and that Tamsin has a Valhalla ticket in the form of Rainer’s soul that could help bring her back; she then pledges to wait outside Valhalla for Bo to come rescue her.

After leaving Lauren to tend to Evony, Bo feels her father’s presence at the doorway of the portal and just as she comes running in to help, she witnesses Kenzi looking back right before she walks into the portal. Once Kenzi crosses the threshold, every revenant dies and the portal itself closes, leaving her body crumpled near the entryway. As Tamsin takes Kenzi to Valhalla, Bo breaks down in tears, having lost her heart. While Tamsin returns from Valhalla and warns Dyson about the horror that could come from Bo acquiring the second Hell Shoe, Bo brings flowers to Kenzi’s grave and pledges that no one else is going to die on her watch.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“First of all, I goosed her sweet berries. Right where you’re sitting.”
-“Relax, you’re going to wear out your big boy pants.”
-“I’ve got your epi-pen right here.”
-“Yeah, it’s called the coming apocalypse, dick.”
-“Ugh, terrible. Who taught you to threaten?”
-“Kenzi Malikov. Friend. Warrior. Heart.”
-All of my tears. All of them. Life is meaningless. Love is empty. The world is sadness.
-But seriously, what kind of Buffy-circa-season-5 realness was Kenzi’s death? Even though I was spoiled on the development when this episode aired in Canada and thus was able to pick up on the clues the writers left that it would be happening, I still spilled more than a few tears as Kenzi figured out the role she was meant to play and sacrificing herself for the good of the Fae. Let’s hope that season five has at least some focus on Bo going to Valhalla to bring her back, because Lost Girl without Kenzi is not Lost Girl.
-That being said, this season has easily been the worst of the show’s first four. It still had plenty of really strong moments and episodes (the stretch from the Groundhog’s Day episode through the mermaid episode was very strong), but for the most part, it was extremely muddled and confusingly plotted, its head seemingly trapped in the ass of its mythology. Don’t get me wrong, I like shows with deep, rich worlds to explore and I think the show had done a fair job in keeping things balanced before this season, but Lost Girl is a show that works best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously and when it has the wiggle room to throw in some stand-alone episodes along with the mythology. All mythology all the time is not the show I fell in love with and when the stuff they attempt to set up falls flat (what was the point of Rainer besides reminding us how hot Kyle Schmid is?), it all just feels like a waste of time.
-So, anyone who consumes the Papyrus Seed acts like Gollum? Because the guy who played Massimo was half an inch (or centimeter, since this is Canada) from muttering a “my precious” and I’m not sure if that was a case of bad acting, bad directing, or bad both.
-Confession: I did not care about Hale dying. At all. If this were two seasons ago, absolutely, but he’s felt like such a minor part of the show for so long that it was hard to be too emotionally impacted by what happened with Massimo. Plus, it turned Kenzi (irrationally) against Bo and anything that busts up one of the best friendships on television today is not okay with me.
-Drunk Evony is the best Evony. Well, any Evony is the best Evony, but I’d like to see a show about Drunk Evony and Drunk Mellie-from-Scandal just shooting the shit. Because that would be amazing.
-Did anyone else find it a touch sad when Dyson told Bo he loved her and she didn’t say she loved him back? I know succubus monogamy blah blah blah, but this man just laid his heart out on the floor for you and pledged to spend the rest of his life by your side and you can’t even say you love him? C’mon.
-The Bo of “And this is for breaking Kenzi’s heart” is the Bo that I adore and the Bo that keeps me watching this show. The Bo of most of the rest of the season, though, wasn’t my favorite. Too much emphasis on her school girl crush on Rainer, too much of her being selfish at the expense of everyone else in her life.
-Good for Tamsin for telling Bo to get her shit together. Too often, the show can feel a little hero worship-y when it comes to Bo and it’s nice to have somebody to knock her off her pedestal now and then.
-Thank you guys for keeping up with my coverage of Lost Girl‘s fourth season. Though the season was on the whole disappointing, it was still good enough to keep up with and as long as the show can keep the mythology sleek and understandable, I have a feeling that season five will be a notable improvement.
-Take us out, Katy Perry.