hopeless romantic

Please just remember that we got confirmation, via "the Rachel" hairdo that she's referencing... something, I don't know what, but it's definitely something....

Less Than Perfect

I was going to mention that.

Every time they've thought Rachel was an ally before she's done something to screw them over. Given that she didn't really save Kira for the sake of saving Kira, I'm still not convinced that she's turned over a new leaf.

BrooklynFan

To be honest I wouldn't buy a full-on Rachel redemption at this point. She's too damaged, and too frankly horrible; it wouldn't be believable for her to do a Helena-style about face and become a true sestra. We can sympathize with her given her horrible upbringing, she can be a dubious and compromised ally of convenience, but I think that's the best that can reasonably happen with Rachel Duncan.

Aurora Cormier

^ ITA. And I was never a fan of how they changed Helena, tbh, so I'm glad that's not happening with Rachel.

hopeless romantic

I did a re-watch, and all of the scenes that planted the ideas that Rachel had always hated being under the control of Neolution were firmly planted; I just didn't notice them the first (few) time(s) through.

I just didn't notice them originally, because I didn't know that, when she was willing to cut out her own eye ("If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." Matthew 18:9), it would transfer to her being willing to turn her back on "the only man who ever really loved me."

OMG. I felt really bad for her when she was just being equivocal as a villain, but now that I feel like I can grant her a bit of mercy for being someone who always felt like she had to constantly navigate the waters between blind obedience (with a bit of picking at her cuticles) and pretending that she owned herself as the "proclone."

How horrific must it have been to have had to submit to regular gynecological exams (I certainly don't like them and could really relate to her "ordering" the doctor to leave her alone so that she could "clean herself up") with the knowledge that she wasn't just getting a Pap smear but was rather being tested to find out if she was going to get sick and die soon because of errors created while she was being cloned -- errors that intentionally prevented her from having children!!!! -- so that she was actually gestated with the plan that she would never have had any privacy in her life....

It's still hard for me to feel sympathy with Rachel, given all of the horrific things she's done, but watching her partner with Mrs. S (and, by default, all of the rest of Clone Club) against "the only man who truly loved me" meant quite a bit -- as in, maybe, the love of a man (especially one who's murderous and almost killed her after she betrayed him) is inconsequential compared to the most caring/dependable love between women and and women and men (I'm counting Donnie here, since Rachel was originally bested by Allie, but I'm also counting Fee and Art and Scottie and Hellwizard as men who have supported Clone Club without requiring sexual favors in return for allegiance -- or even an oath of loyalty, as ways of demonstrating how their behavior depicts their own humanity, so they just do the right thing, because that's how they roll).

LOL. Like I should have needed to understand that men who behave with a standard of decency that encompasses love for women are a force that can promote strength in women who have been exploited like Rachel was as being the mark of strong men, or as though I needed to understand that women can be needy enough to submit to even P.T. Westmorland's brand of "I love you, and I can see what you do through your own eye" as the mark of weak men who only ever want to subjugate women.