TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY Season Finale Recap: ‘The Blood Line’

It’s over! Last night’s TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY brought the mystery of the Miracle to a close … kind of. As Gwen, Jack, and the rest of Team Torchwood looked for an end to the global crisis, they were met with subterfuge from the Families, some answers (finally) about the Miracle and its origin, and, with little fanfare, the comeback of death. Let’s recap…

Gwen, Jack, and Oswald were led to the Shanghai entrance of the Blessing, where they quickly encountered Jilly and Jilly’s blonde Family contact, who were in no hurry to end the Miracle — or to help Torchwood in any way. Using a bomb-strapped Oswald as their insurance against injury, they begin negotiating with the Family. Slowly but surely, our guys coaxed some answers out of the Blessing’s keepers:

No one created the Blessing, at least not that they know of. It took the Family years to discover its location, after statisticians’ tools caught up with the times. Turns out, the average life expectancy in Shanghai and Buenos Aires is precisely the same as the average life expectancy worldwide — and it’s been that way for as long as records have existed. This data eventually led the Family to this gaping hole through the earth. They acknowledge that it defies the laws of physics, as it should produce devastating volcanoes at both ends. Nevertheless, the Family isn’t interested in its physics, or the damage it could be doing to the world — they’re more interested in what they manipulated the Blessing to do.

See, they basically poured Jack’s immortal blood into the Blessing, which subsequently uploaded that immortality to a global morphic field. (Morphic field!) The ultimate goal of the Family was (dun dun dun) world domination. They’ve been preparing for the collapse of the global economy and governments throughout the world; the plan is to replace that chaos with Family-controlled order, order which changes social hierarchies and makes every day a challenge in survival of the fittest. Only problem was, after turning the world immortal, they had one Achilles heel: Jack’s now-mortal blood.

Jack figures out that if he sacrifices himself and pours all of his body’s blood into the Blessing, he will reverse the Miracle. Unfortunately, the Family laughs in his face: it only works if the blood goes in from BOTH sides of the Blessing.

And in the most painfully convenient plot twist of the entire series, it turns out that Rex has been transfusing himself with Jack’s blood. Rex agrees to sacrifice himself, as well, and the whole antipodal showdown between Torchwood and the Family takes so long, it’s a wonder that the Family doesn’t just shut down communication or, I don’t know, switch to cell phones, while Torchwood plots how to overthrow them right in front of their faces.

Finally, the Family changes the game. The Buenos Aires Family lackey shoots Esther right in the ticker, and she immediately becomes a Category One on the floor. The Family tries to reason with Torchwood: if you don’t pour your blood into the Blessing, they’ll put all of their resources into making Esther better. But Gwen knows better — this has to end, and no one should be able to decide who lives and who dies. As painful as it is, she keeps the team on mission, taking aim at Jack’s heart and pulling the trigger. It’s the ultimate conclusion to their relationship this season. Their partnership has been pushed to the limit, not just by the stress of this worldwide disaster, but by her new ties to Baby Anwen and by Jack’s new mortality.

In a disgusting display of nastiness, Jack and Rex’s open wounds explode, their mortal blood spilling from their bodies in a projectile fashion. In voice-over, Gwen explains that the resulting return of death was like a “breath,” a last gasp from the mouths of Category Ones before they succumb to their wounds.

Rhys has been offered a visitor’s pass into the Overflow Camp where Gwen’s father is awaiting burning. (Only one pass is available, and Rhys, inexplicably, is the person who uses it.) He is able to sit by his side as he takes his last breath, a sweet and peaceful ending that beats the hell out of being burned up.

What follows is a fight scene that plays more like slapstick than serious, life-or-death danger. Oswald, still wearing a bomb, clutches Frances Fisher, promising to bring her down with him as he buries this end of the Blessing. Jilly makes a quick escape in the freight elevator, with Gwen in hot pursuit. Jilly isn’t waiting, but Gwen manages to get into the elevator before it goes up. Soon, though, she sees Jack take his usual gasping breath of immortality, and she and Jilly fight over the direction of the elevator. Jilly pushes up, then Gwen pushes down, then Jilly pushes up, then Gwen pushes down. There is bitch-fighting and general ridiculousness, before Gwen finally wins and heads back down to pull Jack into the elevator. The three of them escape as Oswald sets the building ablaze, on an assured path straight to hell.

On the other side, Rex comes back to life, too, but it’s the end of the road for Esther. Her death would be sadder if she had been a more useful agent for the last nine weeks. It’s uplifting to see her sister and nieces at her funeral, who’ve obviously been able to come out of their self-induced quarantine and rejoin the living.

It seems we’re drawing to a close on the season, BUT WAIT. What about that double-crossing bitch, Charlotte Wills, the CIA agent who’s also a mole for the Family? During this whole ordeal, the CIA finally figured out they had a mole. Once they realized they were being betrayed, it was actually monumentally easy to identify the culprit. Unfortunately, Charlotte is one step ahead, as always. (She would have been a real asset to this organization if she wasn’t evil.) As the numbers of her cell phone slowly reveal themselves to her coworkers, she plants a purse bomb in the operations room and then heads into the hallway. She is just close enough to the blast to be presumed innocent, and she stands beside Rex at Esther’s funeral. I actually respect her for figuring out the many weaknesses in this CIA and taking advantage of them.

BUT WAIT. Rex has been sifting through the damage at the CIA and recovering data. The data on the mole was transferred to an agent’s mobile account, and it just so happens that this agent SHARED HIS PASSWORD with Rex, so he can still look up the information on the mole. Yes, you read that correctly. A CIA agent SHARED HIS PASSWORD with his coworkers. I mean, WHAT?! Anyway, Rex looks it up as they exit the church, and he learns the mole is Charlotte as she walks like ten paces ahead of him. He calls out her name, and she (wisely) turns around and shoots Rex in the heart. Even though she’s quickly taken down, Rex is not looking good. Torchwood kneels before him as he dies, and then is shocked and surprised when he gasps back to life, using Jack’s signature move. Yep, he’s immortal now, too.

(Why didn’t they figure this out after he walked away from a complete exsanguination?)

Also, here’s my issue.

All season, they’ve talked about how Jack’s immortality has nothing to do with his blood. Even after he figured out that the Family had been keeping his blood all these years, he wasn’t super-concerned, because his blood is not powerful. In fact, it took some pretty serious business to make Jack immortal. Here it is, from a 2006 episode of DOCTOR WHO:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxZksQh26RU[/youtube]

Rose Tyler, imbued with power after looking into the time vortex, brought Jack back from death, forever. It’s not about his blood, as reiterated multiple times this season. And yet here we are, with this entire season frustratingly coming down to Jack’s blood.

Finally, Jilly meets up with the Family’s mystery blonde man, who recruits her to continue helping the Family with Plan B, calling this whole season’s nightmare a good test run. It’s not good news, but it would be worse if the Family seemed like a real threat anymore, and not just a bunch of well-dressed people with unlimited resources and poor planning skills.

Ultimately, though, Baby Anwen is safe, and that is the true miracle of TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY. Long live Anwen.

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