We cut to a gloomy day in a funeral. A few people are gathered around a grave, paying their final respects to Mrs. Ives. Vanessa, normal again and dressed in black, is among them. Her features are rather inscrutable in this scene – Vanessa clearly loved her mother but also detested her for having an affair with Malcolm. She decides to take a walk down the beach, now cold and brittle, not at all like the warm and sunny place she played as a child. Up ahead, there’s Mina, wearing a white dress. They come face to face, Vanessa’s black perfectly complementing Mina’s white. After all, Vanessa is the evil sister, the one who seduced Mina’s bride, gave her body to the devil itself and perhaps intentionally caused her mother’s death. The black suits her well.
Mina, oddly, hasn’t held onto her resentment. All she wants to put their troubles behind them. “I do not blame you,” she begins. “Whatever sin, it has been forgiven in your suffering.” Vanessa admits that it’s more than she deserves but still blames herself. Her guilt has damned her long beyond her time on Earth. Mina moves the conversation along. She’s married now, to Jonathan Harker (sadly, no mustache, but he’s “a good man”). Peter, though, has died, as we knew he would. Vanessa lowers her eyes.
“If only you’d run after him that day in the maze,” says Mina. What? Vanessa looks up, chilled, as Mina continues, “And held him tight and told him not to go and that you loved him for his weakness.” Vanessa looks at her old friend, finally sensing that something’s amiss. “How do you know about that?” She asks meekly.
A stormcloud gathers over Mina’s features, and her eyes change. It appears Vanessa is not the only one who has become entangled with the supernatural. “I know many things now, Vanessa,” she spits. “The master has taught me much.” Then, just as quickly, Mina regains possession of herself. “Things no one should ever know,” she cries, her voice breaking. “Help me.” She grabs Vanessa’s hands. “Save me from him, please.” With a scream, she’s ripped away from the beach by some unseen force, disappearing in the air. Vanessa can only fall to her knees and stare at the empty space in horror.
Now, we’re all caught up. Malcolm finds Vanessa on his doorstep, soaked. “Mina needs our help,” she says. “Will you let me in?” Finally, these two, despite their differences, are on the same team. Their exchanges are still tense. Malcolm threatens Vanessa, saying that a time still may come when he’ll gladly kill her, as he has many others (and has walked over their corpses, or so he claims). He mocks her, asking if she’s come for forgiveness, which he promises she’ll find none of.
She takes it in and stays silent for a moment. Then, she fires back, “Have you imagined, for one moment, what this has been for me? An unforgivable transgression that has marked me for life.” She brings Malcolm up on his attitude, saying, “Spread corpses from here to the horizon and I have walked further. How dare you presume to speak to me of death.” Malcolm sees her point and agrees that they’ll work together, if only for Mina’s sake. And, Malcolm asks, what happens after they are done? “You will be done, I will walk on,” she snarls levelly. A possible teaser for a Penny Dreadful centered exclusively on Vanessa? Who knows.
“Closer Than Sisters” largely worked to fill in the blanks for us, and it did an admirable job. Now, we know everything we could possibly want to know (and probably more) about Malcolm and Vanessa’s purpose. She has devoted the rest of her existence to finding and rescuing her long-lost sister. Back in the present, Vanessa signs the paper, addresses an envelope to Mrs. Jonathan Harker, seals it, and slots it into a compartment containing a box filled with hundreds of similar letters.
Out loud, she composes a post-script. Though she admits that Malcolm loves Mina very much, and would give everything for her, Vanessa loves her “in a different way.” As we watch the younger Vanessa, Mina and Peter run happily down the beach, towards a future filled with darkness they wouldn’t even be able to fathom, she confesses, “I love you enough to kill you.”
That’s it for this week on Penny Dreadful. I really enjoyed “Closer Than Sisters,” though it took the bold move of slowing the pace down tremendously from last week’s “Demimonde.” It’s not without its flaws – Vanessa’s meeting with Malcolm at the end felt particularly rushed – but, by and large, this is another great, atmospheric installment. It’s clear to me that Eva Green is this show’s life force, and her performance in this episode is strong enough to make me wonder whether “Closer Than Sisters” could replace “Séance” as her submission for awards consideration. That’s the Penny Dreadful team’s problem, though. As the audience, we’ve lucked out – we get to see Emmy-caliber performances from Green week after week. In this episode, Vanessa is really put through the mill, and Green plays every scene perfectly.
Moreover, I’m impressed with how showrunner John Logan set up this episode, neatly fleshing out multiple backstories in a believable and engrossing manner. I was first worried when I realized just how much of a flashback episode “Closer Than Sisters” would be, given that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the exposition dump in “Resurrection,” but this one is handled with much more grace and style.
Though the episode is mostly self-contained, it does raise some exciting possibilities for the future. The chances of Mina getting out from under the Master’s thumb alive were slim from the get-go, but now the seed has been planted for Vanessa to be the one to stake Mina and put her out of her misery. Of course, that would blow up the just-forming show dynamic, seeing as Malcolm would probably murder Vanessa on the spot for killing Mina, but it’s too deliciously dramatic a road for the show not to go down.
Next week’s episode is titled “What Death Can Join Together.” Of course, that could be referring to the world-ending union between Amunet and Amun-Ra, but I’m hopeful that it’s also an indicator that Victor’s search for a bride for his monster will yield results (psst, Victor – Brona’s still collapsed in that alleyway, just bring out some surgical tools and you’re probably good to go). And after this Vanessa-centric episode, I’m more than ready for Penny Dreadful to turn the focus back to Frankenstein, not to mention some ghoulish, psychosexual fun with everyone’s favorite new couple: Dorian Gray and Ethan Chandler (or are they Chanday now?).