Colony Recap: Season 2 Premiere “Eleven Thirteen”

USA’s Colony starts its sophomore season with a flashback episode. What it lacks in momentum it makes up for in visual ingenuity and emotional power.

Much has happened since Colony aired its season one finale in March 2016. From the beginning, the science-fiction series created by Carlton Cuse and Ryan Condal was surprisingly trenchant in its portrayal of a society under authoritarian rule, eschewing sensationalism and clear-cut moral dichotomies in favor of something more realistic and nuanced. In essence, the world inhabited by Will and Katie Bowman operated like ours – just, you know, with aliens.

Yet, with a fascist demagogue mere weeks away from holding the most powerful political office in the United States (if not the world), Colony has suddenly gone from eerie to downright scary. Coming into season two, I was eager to see not only whether Cuse and Condal could build on the promise of the first season, but also whether real-life events would affect the show for better or worse. Would its vision of oppression now feel shallow? Or would it acquire newfound urgency?

As it turns out, we might have to wait another week to form a solid conclusion.

“Eleven Thirteen” opens with a familiar sound: an egg being cracked. Katie is making breakfast, just like Will was in the first scene of the series premiere. Cheerful music plays on an unseen radio. Quickly, though, differences become apparent, both subtle (Katie and Will are dressed formally, her in a black floral dress and him in a pressed suit) and glaring (there are three kids in the room; Charlie, missing for all of last season, sits at the island counter, a baseball cap on his head).

This, we realize, is a flashback, from before the Arrival. When Will leaves for work, the camera draws back in a chilling wide shot that reveals the Wall has disappeared – another parallel to the pilot. It’s interesting how, after being immersed in a dystopia for 10 episodes, we find normalcy jarring.

So, what were our heroes up to before aliens disrupted the world as they knew it?

Will is still an FBI agent, and he has a partner named Devon, who seems cool. (“Ready to catch some bad guys today?” Charlie asks when Devon stops by the Bowman residence. “Only if your dad doesn’t slow me down,” she says.) But they’re going through a rough patch right now. Will confides in Katie that he suspects Devon “got her hands dirty” while working on a case, and he’s debating whether to inform his boss or to transfer out of the task force.

Katie wants to know, “Will any of it blow back on you?” Already, the Bowmans are armed with self-preservation instincts. Of course, this is just a taste of the loyalty and trust issues that they’ll be dealing with later.

Sarah Wayne Callies in Colony season 2 premiere, image courtesy of USA

For now, Will has a job to do. Seven V.I.Ps in the Los Angeles area went missing overnight, all high-ranking government and military officials. No one has a clue as to what happened, though Will’s assumption is some kind of planned terrorist attack. For now, his supervisor cautions, the search should stay as quiet as possible to avoid causing panic or embarrassing the FBI. He and Devon are assigned to look for Tim Lawes, a chief engineer for Lockheed Martin who makes enough money to own a mansion.

They arrive to find the front door cracked and the house empty except for a woman lying in the foyer, fatally shot. Upstairs, Will notices a security camera, which instantly triggers our paranoia. But no, the aliens aren’t here yet. Instead, Lawes himself is watching the FBI agents, having hidden in a panic room when the intruders broke in and searched the house. The dead woman is Maria, his housekeeper.

“I’m not supposed to talk about this, but I’m on a list,” Lawes explains when Devon asks about the panic room. “There are about 1,200 people here in the U.S. In event of an emergency – nuclear war, terrorism, a natural disaster – we all get sequestered. If society ends, we’re the ones who are responsible for rebooting it.” So, he and a bunch of other people knew about the aliens’ impending takeover and did nothing. It’s sadly believable.

Another person on the list, as we know from season one, is Alan Snyder, future proxy of the L.A. bloc. In his office (it appears to be a college, but not Stanford), he meets two men in suits. They claim that they’re recruiters from a place called the Institute for Global Advancement, and he has been selected for a special job.

They appeal to Snyder using a couple of strategies. First, there’s flattery – the suggestion that his current job is a waste of his talent. Then, they offer a chance for redemption. Snyder, apparently, has been paying for alimony, his daughter’s private school, and other expenses by diverting money into the account of a deceased uncle also named Alan Snyder. “Even great men make two or three critical mistakes in their lives,” one of the recruiters intones. “It’s the choices you make today that will determine your future.”

When we next see Snyder, he has been whisked away to a quarantined area. Men wearing armor and masks give him headphones and usher him into a metal tunnel, closing the door behind him. He waits, his breath visible in the cold, until a figure appears at the end of the tunnel, silhouetted by bright light. This is the closest we’ve gotten to seeing an alien alive, though it’s covered in armor so we still don’t know what they look like.

Meanwhile, Broussard is returning from a military tour overseas. He visits his mother, who has kidney failure, bedridden except for when a caretaker accompanies her to dialysis and on errands (even in the most dire of circumstances, people cling to routine). Afterwards, he has a chat with Katie at the Yonk. They speak like friends, or at least old acquaintances, though Broussard hasn’t been around much lately.

Tory Kittles in Colony season 2 premiere, image courtesy of USA

Both of them are looking for a sense of direction. Katie hoped the bar would give her an identity aside from being a wife and mother, and Broussard hoped that joining the Marines would be an opportunity to “bring justice to a place that needed it.” When that failed to satisfy him, he moved to the private sector, becoming a military contractor, but there “weren’t any answers there either.” It isn’t hard to see how they end up not only joining the resistance, but also working with each other; whereas Will can be content doing what he’s supposed to, Katie and Broussard have an independent streak that, ironically, bonds them together.

If this sounds mundane, it is, a little. By nature, flashbacks lack forward momentum, and unlike many episodes of its kind, “Eleven Thirteen” serves less to show how the characters are different than to show how they’ve stayed the same. When the attack inevitably hits, though, it’s suitably gripping. First, the electricity cuts out, bringing traffic to a halt. “Is this like 9/11 or something?” Maddie asks when Katie urges her to meet at the Yonk. Then, drones start to blast buildings, and anxiety blossoms into full-on terror. Director Juan José Campanella hauntingly juxtaposes the chaos on the streets, where Will looks for Charlie, with Katie in the Yonk, surrounded by candles and singing to Gracie.

After the Wall is lowered, we jump back to the present. Will is in Santa Monica, still looking for Charlie. The locals he meets don’t prove helpful at all, beating him up in a robbery attempt (they conclude he doesn’t have anything valuable). So, he turns to a familiar face: Devon, still living in the house she told him about before the Arrival.

Back in L.A., Katie visits Bram in prison, where he was taken after being caught under the Wall. They talk, but the dialogue here matters less than the visuals, which tell us everything we need to know. The scene unfolds in a series of shot reverse shots, the camera positioned so neither Katie nor Bram ever occupies the center of the screen. But at the end, defying the prison guard’s order, they reach across the table so their fingers touch, connecting – just for a moment.

Colony airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. EST on USA Network.

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