'The Bastard Executioner' Recap: Broken Things
The truth continued to pour out in this week’s episode of The Bastard Executioner, with Lady Love admitting to Wilkin that she’s not pregnant and Jessamy discovering Love and Wilkin kissing. Annora also opened up to Father Ruskin, and then he and Lucca got kidnapped by the Archdeacon’s men. Where was Wilkin? Off with Toran and Milus to find banished Gaveston, who’s hiding in Wales. Let’s break it down.
Poor Jessamy: We all know Wilkin only slept with her because he wanted to be nice and thought he’d never see her again, but Jessamy doesn’t. She began the hour expressing both her devotion to Wilkin’s abs and her wish that he’d be happier since they “laid together.” He assured her he was satisfied, but later, when she saw him receive a note from Love, she somehow found her way to Love’s family crypt and busted them sharing the series’ hottest kiss (gasp No. 1). Jessamy lunged at Love, and Wilkin grabbed her. Her dress was torn in the scuffle, and we saw Jessamy’s scarred back (gasp No. 2.). The marks of her “service” and “penance” weren’t as severe as Jamie’s in Outlander, but they were disturbing enough to stop Wilkin, Love, and viewers in their tracks: Jessamy kept repeating that she deserves him. Talking to actress Sarah Sweeney in our last postmortem, she said one of the ideas she has is that perhaps Jessamy’s commitment to the lie is less about how wonderful Wilkin is and more about her missing her husband — meaning, perhaps the “pain” she spoke of wasn’t her saying she suffered Maddy’s abuse and therefore deserves Wilkin, who treats her nicely, but that she had learned to live with abusive Maddy and had made a life with that man. When that life was taken away, another man offered to fill the void and she put herself and her children’s lives at risk when she agreed to lie for him. In her mind, she deserves to have that husband, and if she can’t have the man she grieves, she wants the one who took his place. No matter what Jessamy’s motivation, it’s heartbreaking.
Related: ‘The Bastard Executioner’ Postmortem: Sarah Sweeney Talks Jessamy’s State of Mind
Jessamy was taken to Isabel’s quarters, and Father Ruskin gave her something to sleep. It’s nice that in this brutal time period, they see her as broken and not simply crazy. Love, who also didn’t have the first marriage she dreamed of, tucked Jessamy in before Isabel asked the baroness if she loved the punisher. Perhaps, Love said. With both Isabel and Milus raising concerns to Love this hour about the amount of time she, a royal, spends with Wilkin, Love needs to decide if the potential relationship/scandal is worth it. She’s scared, but then feels safe when she’s with Wilkin; Wilkin’s mind is always racing, but it quiets when he’s with her. They can’t quit each other.
The real questions are: how long they can keep Jessamy sedated for? How did she find Wilkin in that crypt in the first place? She wasn’t right on his tail, so it’s not like she followed him. Did she get lucky exploring the castle, or did someone provide her with directions? And do Isabel and Love really think they can get away with padding Love’s belly for the next six months? You want them to be worrying about actually producing a baby, but considering this season has covered only three months, there is no rush. Also, maybe Love won’t need to have that (fake) baby after all…
The Gaveston opportunity: Some of the Ordainers — who, according to history, were a committee of eight earls, seven bishops, and six barons who prepared ordinances for reforming Edward II’s government — visited Castle Ventris to ask for Love’s military support and access to the sea in exchange for a seat at the table and a promise that parliament will never give Ventrishire to anyone else. Also, since Edward had allowed exiled Gaveston, who in the Ordainers’ minds had led the King astray, to take refuge in Wales, they wanted information that may lead to his capture. Love did them one better: She said her men would deliver Gaveston if they’d promise to let her handle the rebellion in Wales. They agreed, Milus gave her an approving nod, and for one moment, it was good to be Love.
This story may revolve around Wilkin and Love, but it’s Milus and Love who are often most fun to watch. It’s great to see them on the same side and to believe him when he admires her negotiation skills, her strength and bravery, and the challenges she issues. They have a real chance to win Ventrishire, so he’s right: “It would be the devil’s best work to have scandal take that away,” if a relationship with Wilkin were to become fodder for the court.
Before Love could summon Wilkin to the crypt to tell him she wasn’t pregnant and needed him to work with Milus to find Gaveston, Milus had to get a lead on Gaveston’s whereabouts. Since Wilkin and Toran had gone to see Annora (more on that later), Milus made Leon sub as punisher after the giggle wenches were tricked into revealing that they knew where their half brother was. Milus told Leon to use the Judas Cradle, a real device (like the pear of anguish). After reaching under one twin’s dress to molest her, he told Leon and Locke to have the other one placed on top of the pyramid-like seat because “her treacherous slat already droops like wet clay.” Read that link above for Judas Cradle, and you’ll understand why the remaining twin eventually went catatonic after witnessing what they did to get information — Gaveston was being hidden in a monastery — out of her sister.
At episode’s end, Milus, Wilkin, Toran, and the knights road off toward the marshes with the living twin in tow as a hostage. Leon does not appreciate Milus having more trust in the punisher than him and his men. Do we think Leon has told Milus off-camera what happened last episode when Wilkin tried to kill him? Would Leon dare turn on Milus, or would he just strike out at Wilkin? Could Leon have sent Jessamy to find Love and Wilkin kissing? That man is always walking the halls.
• Annora does some exposition: We picked up with Father Ruskin visiting Annora. Perhaps him saying that he’d read the book she handed him last episode three times should have been a clue that time had passed. When the archdeacon and his men went to Annora’s cave, all they found was it booby trapped like a scene from a medieval First Blood. Annora and the Dark Mute had moved to a new cave by the sea, which is where she told Father Ruskin that there are nine scriptures like the one she had — one (new) testament, one author. They were handscribed by the Nazarene. Father Ruskin said if the words are true, the foundation of all he believes is shattered. Which is why Robinus pursues the Seraphim, the ones chosen to carry and protect the words of the Nazarene.
The Rosula, aka knights like Absolon and Ed Sheeran’s Cormac (who will return), are descendants of the soldiers who killed Jesus. They believe he rose from the dead, walked out of the tomb, pardoned their sins, and appointed them keepers of his sacred history — granting them divine impunity and the power of the church to destroy anything and anyone that might prove a threat to the story. Annora wants Father Ruskin in her corner because she can sense he is a warrior. If only she could have foreseen that at episode’s end, Absolon was going to kidnap Ruskin along with Lucca (who was supposed to stay with Ruskin while Wilkin was away and Jessamy was recovering from medieval “exhaustion”).
Before that kidnapping twist, Father Ruskin was, of course, able to give Wilkin the message that Annora had changed locations. He and Toran road out to see her and multiple things happened — staring with the guys finally getting to see the Dark Mute’s face. Annora told them he had been burned in a fire set by the very men he’d taken a sworn oath to protect and honor. For anyone who wants to know what that means, the Dark Mute was a templar knight. (According to Wikipedia, their stated mission, at least initially, was to “protect pilgrims on their journey to visit the Holy Places.”)
Related: 'The Bastard Executioner’ Recap: The Truth Is Out There
Wilkin asked if Annora always knew his fate would be to stay at Castle Ventris when she suggested he assume the punisher’s identity, and she said she senses people’s journey by what she feels when she’s close to them. He has this gift as well. They shared a vision of a nun attempting to drown a baby in front of its mother (another nun), before the nun was killed with a sword by a templar knight.
Wilkin’s interpretation: HE was the baby in this vision and the one he’s had before, and he was the son of a nun and a swordsman. A forbidden love, Annora said. So history is repeating itself in that respect. Annora told him that the greater two people fight for the love they deserve, the stronger the love between them — she wanted him and Love to share more truths. Annora has told Wilkin that his mother is gone, but are we sure Annora and the Dark Mute aren’t his parents? That they didn’t, in this lifetime, magically procreate to have a son to fulfill some destiny? Or is it just a coincidence that the Dark Mute was a monk/warrior watching Wilkin train when he was younger in a vision earlier in the season?
In a case of world’s worst timing, nomads chose this moment to attack and presumably avenge the deaths of those other nomads. It’s a templar knight thing to not retreat, hence the Dark Mute taking on a second wave of men himself and somehow decimating them. Maybe showing that fight would have felt a little too Game of Thrones, and that’s why we just cut back to the Dark Mute kneeling in a circle of bodies? “Bury them in the soft sand,” he told Wilkin and Toran as he walked past them. Yes, Toran, he speaks!
• Berber the Moor made a friend: Well, less of an enemy. The scribe above him, who’d told the archdeacon what he’d overheard about Annora last episode, appreciated Berber’s religious tolerance enough to gift him a medieval magnifying glass. Will they become allies as it hits the fan with just two episodes left in the season? Or is that guy just trying to get closer to Berber so he can feed the archdeacon more information?
The Bastard Executioner airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.
