Tonight’s Orphan Black episode deals with multiple characters’ own experiences with depression and suicide, and it’s starting to make me think this is the most emotional season of the series so far.
Orphan Black is known to deal with the heavy stuff, I mean we’re talking about the show that opened with a suicide on the train tracks. Yet, in all the time that the show has been on it hasn’t focused as much on those darker elements as it does this season.
Keeping it spoiler free, you should just know that when you tune in to watch the show tonight not one but two characters are going to be dealing heavily with the depression and guilt they’ve felt due to the events of this season. It isn’t just a sad scene or two but rather an extended period of at least 10 minutes where each character contemplates the worst. Consider this your trigger warning.
I feel like the show hasn’t really had to have a trigger warning prior to the episodes airing, but this one does and it makes me realize just how emotional the entire season has been.
To begin with, we saw the Sara and Kira relationship being strained more than ever. We’ve had a ton of Kira drama before but it wasn’t ever emotionally draining like this season’s arc is. She’s been hit by a car and she’s been kidnapped but her relationship with her mother the entire time has seemed fine – distant but still strong when they were together. This season it’s evident that Kira’s relationship with Sarah has been rocky, what with Sarah being away from Kira so often and not being able to spend time with her. That in combination with the fact that Kira has these “feelings” about Sarah and her aunts is giving Kira’s entire arc a way bigger emotional stake than she’s had before.
Staying in the realm of the Manning family, Felix’s arc is also increasingly emotional this season. He hasn’t been a part of the main story arc of the show since it began, but his involvement with Sarah and Mrs. S. grew exponentially in season 4. Felix went searching for his birth family, which is a totally natural thing for adopted people to do, and in that search his relationship with Sarah was also strained. Sarah’s relationships with her entire family is strained, really.
And then you have Cosima, who’s dealing with the death of Delphine. The last she was told Delphine was dead and she’s finding herself in a very difficult place because of the guilt and loneliness she feels.
Really, almost all of the characters on the show this season have a lot to deal with emotionally and it looks like for some of them it gets to the point where it’s almost too much. Given that the show takes place in a world where people die all the time and they’re literally being hunted down, I think it’s reasonable that the characters are not only physically affected by their circumstances but also emotionally as well.
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