Philo knew very well how it felt to lose someone, but when his friend Berwick died in the previous episode of “Carnival Row” Season 2, he had to live through those traumas once again. Every time he tried to do some good, something bad happened, and he ran out of ways to protect his people. But contrary to what he thought, the Sparas was not the only concern that he had to cater to, as the leader of the New Dawn revolution had a different game plan in mind altogether. So, let’s find out what happened in the eighth episode of “Carnival Row” and if Philo is able to ascertain what exactly was happening behind the curtains.
Spoilers Ahead
Leonora Makes An Offer To Imogen And Agreus.
After the Pact attacked Ragusa in Episode 7 of “Carnival Row”, Agreus and Imogen were not able to escape by the sea as they had planned. Together with Ezra, they escaped on foot, though they didn’t know how long they would be able to walk. Ezra clearly had a lot of things that he wanted to say and do, and he had never been insulted like that in his entire life. He told Agreus that his sister, Imogen, was not what she was pretending to be. He said that Agreus might think that she was a paragon of virtue, but there was a devil inside her. Agreus warned him to mind his tongue, but Ezra kept going. Ezra went on to say that whenever he found a girl with whom he started imagining his life, Imogen did something to poison his relationship and made sure that the girl ran away. Agreus was a bit taken aback when he heard what Ezra had to say, and he would have shrugged it off as lies if he hadn’t noticed a kind of nervousness on Imogen’s face.
Agreus realized that whatever Ezra was saying wasn’t entirely false. Ezra said that Imogen had a huge role to play in people thinking of him as a monster who abused the innocent women in his life. It was a never-ending chain, and Ezra had finally accepted that he wouldn’t be allowed to stay with any woman as long as Imogen was in his life. Imogen probably thought that nobody would come to know this side of her, but word finally got out, and people started seeing her as a venomous snake. Ezra urged Agreus to not believe him if he didn’t want to, but to at least try to be logical in his approach and see the truth that lay in front of him. Ezra told Agreus that Imogen belonged to a successful and respected family; she was beautiful, but she was still single, which raised a lot of questions about her. Ezra said that the day Agreus arrived in their neighborhood was the luckiest day of his sister’s life. Agreus didn’t know a thing about Imogen’s tainted reputation, and additionally he was desperate to get validation from her, which gave Imogen an opportunity to hide the truth and deceive him.
Imogen talked to Agreus later and told him that she was sorry for the fact that he had to learn about the truth in such a manner. She assured him that she was a very different person now, and that’s when Agreus opened up and said that he was not in a position to judge her because even he hadn’t been righteous in his past. Agreus told them that he had spent five years in the hold of a cargo ship when, one night, an opportunity came knocking at his door. Some of his colleagues had run away, and the foreman was searching for them. Agreus, without even thinking, agreed to help the foreman, as he was given 200 gold coins and his freedom in return.
Agreus said that this wasn’t it, and he was hired permanently as a skipjack to catch the Fae fugitives. Imogen couldn’t believe what she heard, as he had always thought Agreus to be a man of virtue who was not capable of hurting anyone. Ezra burst out laughing, and said that he was wrong in assuming that Imogen would be the evil one in the relationship as clearly, they were made for each other. Suddenly they saw the Pact soldiers passing through, and it felt like they had been defeated by the New Dawn. Ezra tried to shout and call for help, as he had hoped that the Pact would accept them since they were from Burgue. Agreus took him down, and Imogen gauged him so hard that he died.
Imogen was shaken by the death of her brother, and she didn’t know what to say or feel. Agreus kept telling her that it was not her fault, but Imogen lost her temper as she thought that, just like the other men in her life, Agreus was just trying to control her and make her act according to his will. Imogen had a lot buried inside her. She was emotionally damaged, and events of the past had left a scar on her. The moment she saw a male Alpha figure who wanted to control her, she got agitated. She told Agreus that no one had any power over her, and she was free to live her life the way she deemed fit. Just then, out of nowhere, Kastor arrived with his men, as he had been following their trail for quite some time. Imogen and Agreus were taken back by Kastor, but on the way, something unexpected happened. They met Leonora, who told them that the Pact armies were defeated, but they didn’t accept it as Burgue was still their ally. She gave Imogen and Agreus an offer to be the emissaries of the New Dawn and go to the Burgue and offer peace. Not accepting that offer meant they had to embrace death, and so Imogen and Agreus reached the Burgue once again, and everybody, including their friends and the ministers of the parliament, was shocked to see them come back.
Season 2, Episode 8: Ending Explained – What Was Leonora’s Real Plan?
Dombey was very angry at Philo, and he told him that the one man who trusted him more than his life had to die because Philo chose to play his own games. Berwick had been massacred, and a man as good as him didn’t deserve such an end. Philo told Dombey that the Sparas that was attacking them was a male and that it could only shapeshift into a male of any other species. Philo knew that because he had encountered a female Sparas long ago when he was fighting for the Burguish army. He noticed that there was a difference in the way in which a female and a male attacked. He also told Dombey that the males had teeth along their spines. They were having this conversation when once again, something unexpected happened. Dead bodies of the soldiers from the Burguish marines were found in the sea, and Philo immediately realized that Balefire was sending troops to Tirnanoc, and they had no intention of giving the Fae their freedom. In reality, they wanted to capture Tirnanoc once again to expand their territory, and now that the Pact had left the place, it wasn’t going to be such a difficult job.
An agitated Philo, who had lost a dear friend due to the deception of the Burgue, went to meet Millworthy and tell him that he held him responsible for his loss. Philo told him that stealing the Pix homeland was the most treacherous thing that he could ever do. But Millworthy stood his ground, and he said that it was not an easy task to convince the parliament to arrange the ships. He said that by giving them the incentive of taking back an old colony, they had the opportunity to at least buy freedom for those who were stuck in the deplorable conditions of Carnival Row. Millworthy told him that he had to make a lot of deals with men, the sight of whose faces made him feel disgusted. He said that they aimed only for world dominance and establishing their supremacy and that it didn’t matter to them at what cost it all came. He said that making the Fae escape the Row was the only thing he could have done, and he was not going to let the opportunity go, even if it meant the military taking over Tirnanoc once again.
Vignette, on the other hand, falsely believed that the Black Raven had gone rogue and sided with the enemy. She believed that vengeance had made them blind, and they had forgotten the cause for which they were all once ready to give their lives. She left signs so that Kaine and others noticed it and came to meet her. When Kaine came, he told Vignette that things were not as they seemed to be. He was about to tell why he and the other ravens had attacked the ships, but Vignette attacked him, and he had no option but to take her into captivity. Vignette was told that she was just moving from one prison to another as the Burgish regime had no plans of giving them their freedom. Kaine told her that they had not stooped so low that they would be ready to hurt their own kind for ulterior motives. Kaine told Vignette that they had new friends who would help them in their cause. Leonora had approached the Black Raven to combine their forces and wage war against every oppressive regime that stood in their way. Though the Pact had not surrendered yet, they were going to do so very soon, and it gave a lot of confidence to Leonora that she could wage a war against the Burgue too. Though Leonora had sent Agreus and Imogen as peace emissaries, she never wanted peace, and she had similar desires as those sitting in the Burguish parliament. In the name of the revolution, Leonora wanted to expand the territory of the New Dawn and become the uncrowned empress of the entire land while pretending and living the lie that it was not power that she craved. Leonora asked Vignette to lead the Black Raven and bring down the Burgish government, together with the support of the New Dawn forces.
Millworthy and Philo both knew what was going on inside the mind of the New Dawn leader. They prepared themselves for the worst, and they knew that what they were thinking of as the apocalypse was only the calm before the storm hit and the worst was yet to come with the leader of a rebellion harboring desires to make the entire setup collapse. Though they ascertained the intentions of the humans and Fae, they were not able to understand what the Sparas was up to until the end of the eighth episode of “Carnival Row” Season 2. They didn’t understand why it was pitting them against each other and what it wanted. The world stood at the threshold of a big change, and Philo, more than anybody, knew that widespread destruction was inevitable.
