There’s not a ton of character development. Most of the characters scattered throughout the episode are pretty familiar, though Tina De La Torre’s script does sprinkle in quite a few funny comedy moments in with all the chaos and preparations for violence. There’s nothing funny about Kevin (Tom Lipinski) torturing Strong Boy and the other Tailies who try to launch a distraction action against Wilford from within, but the punchline to the scene, where LJ (Annalise Basso) decides that it’s time to be on the right side of history with a well-placed shank to the throat and a Black power salute to the revolution is both a deft examination of the insulation LJ still has from the struggles of the poor to a comment on clueless allies attempting to help a movement by co-opting it from the outside.
LJ doesn’t care about the Tail, and no one who witnesses her announcement will believe it, but she does the thing and says the words in the hopes that someone will buy it and put in a good word for her and Oz (Sam Otto) with the new regime. Throughout her role in the Loyal Wedding and through to Layton’s takeover of Snowpiercer, she’s told herself whatever she needs to make excuses for her actions. It’s for the good of the train and Mr. Wilford, they’re not torturing anyone, just providing a venue, and so on. She has a basket full of excuses for her behavior that all ring hollow, and there’s no denying the glee in her eye as she watches Kevin’s blood spray all over the Night Car’s dance floor; it’s a brilliant bit of facial acting from Annalise Basso, who makes the most of every morsel of script she gets.
It goes without saying that Sean Bean is excellent as Wilford, who takes almost as much glee in preparing for combat as LJ does in drawing blood. He’s in full throated fury here, dashing around, yelling at everyone, and trying to outmaneuver the slippery team in Snowpiercer into forcing them to fight on his terms, using every weapon at his disposal. Unfortunately for him, he’s outsmarted with one of his own moves. The resulting fight, such as it is, between Bean and Daveed Diggs is excellently grungy, a really visceral, unpleasant thing, restrained only by the need to avoid expensive dental prosthetics to replicate missing teeth smashed out on the top of an ornate bar. It’s brutal and nasty, almost as nasty as the torture scenes involving Strong Boy and Kevin. There’s been a surprisingly rich vein of body horror on Snowpiercer since the very beginning, and when it’s time to smash faces and fingers, the show tends not to pull any punches.
Director Erica Watson does a solid job with the actors, and a better job of managing an episode with a lot of moving parts. No part weighs down the proceedings, and while there action moves from train to train and car to car quite a bit, it’s easy enough to follow and a testament to the editing team that it doesn’t get confusing when people start sneaking around and hopping trains. The confrontation between the two engines feels weighty, and there’s good back and forth action with no side taking the upper hand until Layton firmly takes control of the situation.