In the 7th episode of The Institute, Chief Ashworth was killed by Drew because he was about to go all the way to Portland with Maureen’s flash drive, which held incriminating evidence about what was going on in the facility. Drew also captured Tim and Luke and tried to keep them at the station until Sigsby arrived. But in the time it took for Sigsby to actually get there, Luke and Tim escaped and eventually made their way to Wendy’s house. Sigsby and Drew somehow figured out that that’s where the dynamic duo had gone, leading to a standoff between Tim, Luke, Wendy, Sigsby, and Drew. Tim killed Luke, and Sigsby, realizing that she had been overpowered, gave up. Tim and Luke forced Sigsby to spill the beans on the endgame of the facility. She claimed that they were saving the world. To be a little more specific, the facility was targeting only those people who might trigger Armageddon sometime in the next few decades. Now, while Tim, Luke, and Wendy contemplated whether or not Sigsby was telling the truth, back at the facility, Stackhouse and Hendricks started their mission to find a replacement for Luke, which involved putting Avery through some grueling tests. How were these plot threads resolved in the finale of The Institute? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Tony Is Dead
Episode 8 of The Institute opens with Wendy putting the cuffs on Sigsby and Tim telling her that they are going to take her to the real FBI (because, so far, Sigsby had been pretending to be an FBI officer) and see her try to convince them about the facility’s child-torturing method of saving the world. But all of them are distracted by Luke having some kind of seizure because his mind has connected with that of Avery, who has been taken to the back-half to lead an assassination mission. Hendricks has tasked Avery with conducting the operation, which involves driving the car the target is in off a cliff, but instead of doing so, Avery asks all the back-half kids to form a circle as he intends to use their telepathic and telekinetic powers to spring them out of the facility. Tony thinks that they should abort the mission and subdue the kids by tasering them, but Hendricks prevents him from doing so, because he is under the impression that he can still get Avery to do what he wants him to do. Or maybe he is just desperate because if he fails to prove to Stackhouse that they have found a replacement for Luke, their whole plan of leaving the facility will fall apart. For a change, Tony’s assessment was right, because the kids in the back-half, as well as those in the Recovery Room that are powering the Hum, unite their powers to destroy the tech that’s used to conduct these evidence-free assassination missions. In addition to that, I think they accidentally connect Luke’s mind to the minds of all the back-half kids in various parts of the world.
I’m not a linguistic expert, but I am pretty sure there are branches of the Institute in Asia and Scandinavia, and since they seem to have learned that there are kids like them, maybe they will try to break out of their confines too. Going back to the one in Dennison River Bend, Hendricks finally tells Tony to incapacitate Avery and bring this rebellion to an end. However, it’s too late, because the kids are currently functioning at the peak of their powers, and hence they force Tony to taser himself to death. Honestly, this is a pretty satisfying death. This man has gleefully tortured all these kids just because he can. The fact this guy exists is why I don’t believe in the “saving the world from Armageddon” spiel, because why is the facility allowing people to bully the kids who are helping them avert an extinction-level event? Anyway, I am glad that Tony gets an on-screen death; meanwhile, the lady who serves food to the back-half kids and monitors the ones in the Recover Room gets an off-screen one. I mean, she gets torn limb from limb after being rude to helpless kids. Don’t you think she deserved to die on-screen? The SFX team did build prosthetic limbs. So, I don’t think this is a budget issue. This is the finale; hence, runtime shouldn’t have been a factor. Then what was it? I don’t know.
Hendricks Bails
Seeing the aforementioned carnage, Hendricks rushes to Stackhouse, who is busy ordering security to commence a full lockdown of the facility. Avery takes Tony’s keycard so they can make their way to the exit door. Stackhouse sees that and tells security to shut down power to the back-half so that the doors don’t respond to the keycard. While the kids struggle to get out of the hallway they are stuck in, Stackhouse, with the help of the security guards, plans to use chlorine gas to knock them out. Stackhouse says that the term “final solution” is unjustly vilified. Yeah, of course, the guy who is running an Auschwitz-style concentration camp and is about to gas a bunch of kids thinks that the term “final solution” is “unjustly vilified.” When the connection between Luke, Avery, and the rest of the back-half kids gets severed, he crashes back into reality and informs Tim, Wendy, and Sigsby that the facility was conducting missions. He also tells everyone that there are other institutes spread all across the world where several kids are being tortured. And the smugness and arrogance with which Sigsby responds that the world can’t be saved when one feels it’s convenient makes me all the more confident that this X-Men-esque superhero nonsense is a big hoax, and the facility is just serving the highest bidder. If it’s an act, she does a great job of selling the role she’s playing, because she tries to convince Tim that by having her arrested, he is essentially signing humanity’s death warrant.
Tim isn’t in the mood to listen to her nonsense, though, and shoves her into the backseat of the patrol vehicle. Wendy and Luke join them too, but they are forced to abort their plan to go to the real FBI because Luke gets a telepathic message from Avery that they are stuck in the hallway of the facility and need his help. Luke says that they need to go to the facility, or else his friends are going to die. So, with some help from Wendy, Tim and Luke create a ruse that Stackhouse will get Luke if he lets go of the kids. When the protagonists reach the doorstep of the facility, Stackhouse, Hendricks, and the security team get busy apprehending “Luke” (who is just Wendy in disguise) and Tim and rescuing Sigsby from their clutches. By the time Stackhouse realizes that he has been duped, the real Luke enters the facility and gets to Avery, Nicky, Kalisha, and the rest of the kids. Hendricks warns Stackhouse and Sigsby that if Luke has become powerful enough to connect with the kids in the American facility, as well as the kids in facilities scattered all across the planet, then he might trigger “conduct” for all of them to escape. Since the higher-ups, especially the Man on the Phone, are aware of the fact that the Dennison River Bend branch of the Institute is facing so many complications, Sigsby, Hendricks, Stackhouse, and the rest of the staff will be killed for making such a mess of things. Well, as per Sigsby, Stackhouse will put the blame on Hendricks and walk out of this unscathed. Hearing that, Hendricks decides to bolt and hide somewhere the people associated with the facility can’t find him.
The Institute Is Destroyed
Sigsby, Stackhouse, and the security team go to the main building to get ahold of Luke and the kids. Luke telepathically connects with Avery with the aim of using the powers of all the kids in there to literally bring down the barriers keeping them from tasting freedom. We get a brief scene where we see Sigsby make a call to her father’s caretaker to inform them that she’ll be unavailable for some time, and she advises them to keep her father away from the news, because he might end up hearing some unsavory stuff about his daughter. And then the focus of the episode returns to the kids, who, BTW, have connected their minds with some of the back-half kids around the world so that they can open the door that’s keeping Luke from reaching Avery and his friends. But, from what I am getting, Avery and the rest go a little overboard with their display of power, which causes the building to start collapsing. Now, while Luke manages to escape with Kalisha and Nicky, Avery decides to hang back with the rest, because he is the only one who can maintain the “connection,” seal the tunnel, and punish the people who were running the establishment. This part’s a little confusing to me, because I don’t understand what was stopping Avery from doing the same after exiting the building. If he lost the connection, couldn’t he have reestablished it with Luke’s help? Or did the writers sacrifice Avery and the rest of the kids just to manipulate the viewers into feeling emotional?
I think the makers of the show could’ve pulled this off a little more convincingly by letting Avery make this decision when the situation was a little more dire. You have chlorine gas coming out the pipes, and you are not just punishing the staff of the facility, but the kids who have suffered so much as well? I guess hardcore viewers will, as always, rationalize this, but this just seemed nonsensical to me. Anyway, on their way out of the building, Luke, Nicky, and Kalisha take George along with them, who, for some reason, has been standing in the cafeteria all throughout the episode? Stackhouse, while trying to escape, dies because the floor beneath his feet gives way. Sigsby, who seems to be admiring her with her father, finally realizes that the building is collapsing and decides to make a run for it. After making it to the outer periphery of the Institute, Luke turns up his powers to eleven and destroys the Dennison River Bend branch of the Institute, supposedly killing all the kids and any other member of the staff that was in there. The Man on the Phone calls for a “burn team” to destroy every piece of evidence associated with that facility before going out to play with his grandchildren. Tim and Wendy meet with Luke, Nicky, Kalisha, and George and start planning their next move. Sigsby hitches a ride to an unknown destination with what looks like the flash drive that Maureen gave to Luke and was in Ashworth’s pocket. What does she intend to do with it? Well, we’ll have to wait for the second season of The Institute, which has been greenlit, to arrive to know what the writers have in store for the characters who have survived this ordeal.
