Does The Ark Season 3 Episode 4 Take Us Into The Matrix?

Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

4.5

After two episodes of Eva taking us down the rabbit hole of Brice potentially being alive, The Ark Season 3 Episode 4 brings us answers.

Well, sort of. It also brings a lot more questions, which isn’t all that unusual for the show right now.

What happened to Brice isn’t even the only question that comes up. 

Just as we get a few answers about Sharon being “The One” and where Angus and Kelly have been kept, more questions come up.

The Ark Season 3 has certainly taken a turn in its storytelling.

After focusing on the missions of the week from the beginning, we’re getting multiple season-long arcs that make us need the next episode right away.

Is Brice in The Matrix?

When Eva said that Brice’s body had just disappeared from the recording during The Ark Season 3 Episode 2, we knew that it had to mean something.

He wasn’t dragged, so that suggested that he had to get up and walk, right?

Well, The Ark Season 3 Episode 4 seems to debunk that, as Brice wakes up covered in blood with a seemingly well-healed Doc right next to him.

She’s the one who dragged Brice’s body into the collapsing Ark, and I have to question everything about that statement.

As a group of raiders comes rushing in — who are apparently worse than the giant spiders that can’t be killed — Doc seems completely off.

At first, I started to wonder if she was some sort of hallucination. Had Brice walked away from the spiders and passed out?

I quickly ruled that out based on how Brice’s wounds were stitched up. Someone with medical training had to do that.

It still didn’t quite explain Doc’s seemingly well-healed appearance. Where had the clean clothes come from? 

What happened to the wounds she sustained when the spiders came at her during The Ark Season 3 Premiere?

I spent the entire hour trying to figure out what was off, and then the answers came at the very end.

After Doc is shot through the door, and she’s miraculously holding it closed against a much larger and much stronger man trying to get into the comms room, she disappears.

Literally, disappears, as if she were never there.

Everything else around Brice does as well, and we leave him in a dark room, which suggests he’s in some sort of simulation.

What in The Matrix was that?

I’m not complaining that Brice seems to be alive, but I have a lot of questions about how this simulation works and what it’s all about.

My biggest theory is that he will go through a loop, and to end that loop, he needs to save Doc. 

She said at the end, “You have to save me,” and while that was a repeat of a line earlier when he had to sew up a wound on her back, I think it’s much deeper than that.

He has to save her to complete some sort of mission, but who has put him in this simulation, and why?

This arc has just gotten juicier.

A Stone That Doesn’t Lead Through Time — But It Does Open a “Portal”

It wasn’t just The Matrix that I felt like I was watching during this installment of The Ark Season 3. For a moment, I also felt like I was watching Outlander.

After discovering that the man destroying the generators was wearing Angus’ clothing, the mystery surrounding him deepens.

He has extra cochleae and more vocal cords than a human does, suggesting that Homebase-1 has encountered an alien race.

Look, anyone who lands on a planet and doesn’t think they’re going to come in contact with some sort of indigenous race is, quite frankly, dumb.

We cannot be the only living, breathing creatures in the entire universe, and The Ark is making that clear.

With Ark One back at Homebase-1, it doesn’t take long for more people to focus on finding Angus and Kelly, and that means Sharon proves she is the smartest person in the room.

Since the guy isn’t on a GSA or EF manifest, he must come from the planet, and if he’s wearing Angus’ clothes, he must know where Angus is.

Thank you for giving someone some brains to work that out!

Sure, maybe Felix would have had that idea if Sharon hadn’t returned just as all this was playing out, but he wouldn’t have had the team support to go through with said plan.

Sharon has the support of her people, and now Angus has the one person who loves him searching for him — Alicia. The two of them working together was always going to lead to Angus and Kelly being saved.

However, we don’t just see them being saved. This is a chance for all the information they’ve been told about cochlears and vocal cords to come up, with clues along the way to help figure this out.

The generators have a high-pitched frequency that hurts these people, so it’s no wonder they destroyed them.

Their higher-frequency hearing lets them hear sounds humans can’t, which leads to the Outlander moment.

There happens to be a stone in the middle of the woods that absolutely nobody has found before.

This stone doesn’t take anyone to the past, but it does open an underground bunker that has been hiding in plain sight the whole time.

At this point, I felt like we were back in one of the first-season episodes of The Ark, and not in a bad way.

I loved how Alicia quickly figured out the solution, and how Angus and Kelly were saved right after.

Having Eva and Ian work on lowering the generators’ frequency was also a beautiful touch, showing that they want to live on this planet in harmony with indigenous species.

Of course, that’s not the way it will all play out, but it won’t be because of Sharon’s crew’s efforts.

Hammond Isn’t the Big Bad After All

Out of everyone, it’s going to be Ves who destroys the chance to live in peace with this superior race.

We’ve known from the start of The Ark Season 3 that she’s been up to something, but I thought it was more to just hide the fact that she knew there was some sort of group already living on the planet.

Now, it looks like she’s up to something much bigger.

Hammond immediately recognizes her, but he can’t place her at first. It’s only as he realizes that she was in GSA command that he gets to the bottom of it.

She can say she’s never been in the military all she wants, but Hammond is a guy with a bone.

Now, if only he’d told someone else about her.

When are people going to learn that you don’t go up against dangerous people without someone knowing what you’re planning and having access to the information?

Hammond made such a tiresome Game of Thrones move, going to Ves with the information his admiral bypass codes unlocked.

I’ve spent two episodes excited to see the type of villain Hammond could turn out to be, and I feel like that excitement is pretty wasted at the moment.

At the same time, I’m ready to learn more about Ves, and I can’t wait for people to finally see through her.

However, I’m not as excited about that as I am about the Kabir and Sharon storyline that is about to happen.

As Sharon learns that she’s a G3 clone, the full truth comes out.

I feel bad for Kabir being sworn to secrecy, but she was definitely wrong to keep all the information to herself after her boss’s death.

At first, I could understand it, but as she got to know Sharon more, Kabir should have said something.

But as Sharon said, it’s impossible to remain mad at her, especially when there’s a great plan in the works.

What started off as unethical experiments is about to turn positive. Kabir and Sharon get to work together to find out why she’s “The One” who will solve all of Drake’s problems.

Why couldn’t the cure work on other G3s, and what’s so special about Sharon? I’m here to keep seeing women work together to get answers.

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