Reign - Midseason Finale - Recap: What the King Doesn't Know Won't Hurt Him

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"Fated" sets up its stakes right from the start. Mary Tudor, the Queen of England, has taken ill and Mary (Adelaide Kane) is the next best claimant to the throne. So Henry (Alan Van Sprang) decides that the time has come for Mary and Francis (Toby Regbo) to wed, as France is now likely to be gaining an alliance with two countries instead of one. Mary and Francis, still high on the post-coital afterglow, are all too happy to oblige...but their lovey-dovey excitement quickly sours, and it's all thanks to the grim pair of Catherine (Megan Follows) and Nostradamus (Rossif Sutherland). Catherine is desperate to dissuade Mary from wedding Francis, but she's pretty much out of options, at least until Nostradamus suggests actually telling Mary about his visions of Francis' death in order to prompt a paranoid Mary to bail on the marriage. It's a desperate, Hail Mary pass (no pun intended), but it actually works.

Catherine confronts Mary and reveals to her that her marriage to Francis will inevitably lead to his death, according to Nostradamus. Mary initially refuses to believe the prophecy until she's reminded of how he correctly predicted the clash between the Lion and the Dragon on "a field of poppies," which came to pass in the battle between Bash and Tomas. And so Mary, unsettled, decides to confront Nostradamus to see if fate can be changed. However, he reveals two troubling pieces of information: 1) Francis' fate cannot be changed unless Mary foregoes their marriage, and 2) most disturbingly, one of her ladies-in-waiting will die, though he doesn't know whom. It horrifies Kenna (Caitlin Stasey), who overhears the conversation. She's pretty much been through hell as it is, with Henry threatening to end things with her unless she stops asking him to choose between her and Diane (Anna Walton), since he'll always choose Diane. Kenna is miffed, but she gets the chance to have a tiny slice of revenge: when she's initially mistaken for Diane, she ends up learning of the plot to have Bash (Torrance Coombs) legitimized, which would change the line of succession. Kenna decides to give this information to Catherine to destroy Diane, and suddenly, it looks like Kenna's storyline is actually about to bear fruit for the first time since Reign premiered.

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Catherine, possessing a particularly keen mind, decides to take the information Kenna hands her and use it to kill two birds with one stone: she surprises Diane in bed after she's slept with Henry, and threatens her into not only leaving court forever but also into poisoning Kenna on her way out, since Catherine can't abide "betrayal and stupidity," two qualities which Kenna apparently possesses in spades. This confrontation is instantly one of my favorite scenes of the entire series, as Megan Follows savors every threatening line Catherine delivers to Diane, relishing in presenting Diane with the sage-infused poison she'll be forced to use against Kenna, and detailing how her plan to put Bash on the throne is destined to fail due to her crummy timing. Follows is just nailing this role, and the writing is rising to match her, as there's a terrific little scene after, in which Kenna receives the poisoned tea, and the cup is then passed around between the other ladies-in-waiting. It's a remarkably effective bit of staging, building drama by placing the audience in a position of power: we know the poison is in the cup, but the girls don't. And so while the cup passes from Kenna to Aylee (Jenessa Grant) to Greer (Celina Sinden), with Lola (Anna Popplewell) excepted since the vision reveals she's definitely not the one who dies, the show keeps the mystery in suspense, particularly once we cut away from the season without actually seeing who drinks the tea.

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However, we soon get the answer to the question of which lady-in-waiting is the poisoned victim, and if there's one misstep in the episode, it's that the narrative makes it fairly obvious before the reveal. We've learned virtually nothing about Aylee all season, so the show suddenly deciding to give us a bunch of background info on her (her family virtually owns the lower part of Scotland, but awww, the wealth hasn't gone to her head!) is a warning that she's about to bite the dust, since we need to feel some measure of emotional impact over her death. I'm not sure it entirely works, but her death scene is still pretty chilling by itself, as we see her stumbling down the hallway in her poisoned state, with Clarissa stalking behind her. As if the sight of a cloth-sack-headed girl isn't creepy enough, Clarissa then pushes Aylee down a set of stairs to finish the job. Mary arrives on the scene just in time to see that Nostradamus' prophecy has been fulfilled, leading her to condemn the sightseer as an agent of Hell itself, despite his constant insistences that he has no control over his visions. Aylee dies, everyone is sad, and it quickly becomes obvious that the girl was poisoned. And we quickly learn that Diane wasn't the person responsible.

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Diane is eager to see Bash safely away from court, and so she pleads with him to runaway while she works on smoothing things over with Henry and winning their way back into his good graces, since he's obviously going to be furious once he catches wind that she had planned on placing Bash on the French throne. Bash begrudgingly agrees to flee, and it's here that we learn that Diane didn't actually go through with poisoning Kenna. As it turns out, Clarissa was the one to do the deed, having stolen the poison from Nostradamus' cabinet. When Nostradamus catches her and forces her to confess, Clarissa claims she killed Aylee for Mary's sake, believing that if Nostradamus' prophecy about the ladies-in-waiting came true, she'd be more likely to believe his prophecy about Francis, which would prompt her to end the engagement -- an act that would save her own life, as Catherine would likely have Mary killed if Francis died as a result of their union.

However, Nostradamus is quick to remind Clarissa that she and Mary, while both outsiders in a strange place, aren't actually similar in any meaningful way. He makes this point in abusive fashion, grabbing her by the back of the neck and forcing her head down to look directly into the face of the cold, dead Aylee to see what she's done. He even rips the sack mask off of her head, revealing a patchy scalp of thinning red hair. Although we don't see her face, we hear her screams, and if it wasn't already easy enough to imagine Clarissa as a tortured soul, "Fated" goes the extra mile and makes her downright pitiful. There's sadness in this moment, even though we don't really know anything about why Clarissa is the way she is, and even though she's responsible for the death of Mary's sweetest lady-in-waiting. (Of course, knowing hardly anything about Aylee makes it harder to feel as bad about her death beyond what it means to the other characters.)

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And so it all circles back around to Mary, who is positively spooked by Nostradamus' prophecies coming to pass. She decides to run off immediately, and has no intention of telling Francis why she's ending things. The girls opt to stay behind to allow her a better chance of getting away safely, though Mary says she'll send for them once they can safely return to Scotland. Francis is utterly floored by her decision when she announces her intention to leave, and tries to dissuade her from running off. Mary lies about her lack of faith in their relationship, throwing Francis' own words (about how love doesn't concern rulers like them) back in his face. However, Francis is adamant about his love for Mary, and she inevitably softens, admitting that she still loves him too. He leaves her alone for a moment to meet with Henry and calm him down, and Mary takes the opportunity to flee anyway, given that her love is the whole reason she's ending things in the first place.

Of course, this all begs one major question: so Nostradamus' prophecy suggests that Francis will die if he weds Mary, but who's to say he won't die even if he doesn't? Earlier in the episode, Nostradamus terrifies Mary by relating exactly what he sees in his visions of her marriage: Mary will become pregnant and inevitably lose the child, while her marriage to Francis grows cold and distant. But there's no indication that he won't eventually die young anyway, and it seems strange that no one considers this. Sure, it's a grim thing to have to consider, but even someone like Nostradamus should at least wonder if perhaps Francis isn't someone earmarked for death regardless of what he does (as depressingly deterministic as that idea is). I kind of hope this comes up at some point, as the characters seem to only be considering one possibility, and it's limiting the potential paths the story could take. With that said, the path the story on now is certainly a compelling one, as Mary encounters Bash in the stables, and they decide, since they're both running away anyhow, to runaway together. It's more of a pragmatic decision than any kind of romantic one, but it leads to a fittingly dramatic closing scene, as Francis chases after Mary, who is riding away on horseback alongside Bash. For Francis, there's nothing left to do but to get the wrong idea. To him, it looks like Mary has left him for Bash, and it's going to look even worse once the succession plot comes to light, as it'll look like Bash is attempting to steal his brother's throne. It's more soap opera than history, but this was never really a serious trip into textbooks, so I don't mind a bit of soap opera theatrics over strict history if it means compelling drama. And that's mostly what Reign delivers.

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"Fated" is the best Reign of the season so far, simply for how it keeps all of the various storyline interwoven without sacrificing narrative or pacing. There's a lot going on in this show, but it never feels like Reign is taking on more than a single episode can handle. In addition, the actors are really growing into their roles, which elevates the material on the page significantly. Reign can occasionally descend into iffier moments of camp, but it's largely engrossing as a primetime soap opera. I'm already looking forward to the return of Reign at midseason, as this finale serves as an interesting table-setting episode for what's to come.