Wow, ep 4x03 was quite the hell of a ride!
To be honest, even after having watched episode 4x03 already a second time, I'm still pretty much blown away by Lucas's death.
The shadow of this makes it kind of difficult to concentrate appropriately on the other important points of the episode, and there are plenty, as we are used to with Continuum.
It's impressing, how much I cared for that character Lucas by now. I always liked him and kudos to Omari for playing him that convincing, but he really got to shine in those last episodes, when he finally teamed up with Alec, Jason, Julian and Kiera. He had some great lines like when he told Julian and Alec to "man up" and take their destiny into their own hands and finally he himself lived up to it by going in and saving Kiera's and Garza's lives, despite he clearly actually never was the frontline soldier.
The problem is, despite what Travis was saying, that Kiera could indeed blame herself to quite some extent for Lucas getting killed. As if going again after the Time Marines (after almost having been killed two times already) without telling Carlos and having the VPD as potential backup wasn't enough, she also changed the mission goal on the fly from "only recon" to "destroy", then to "destroy, but don't kill anybody" and finally to "abort", because she (and Alec!) got excited about the potential anti-matter technology, which might come in handy for her and Alecs plans to send her back to her future. Right now I'm really tempted to agree to Garza, who asked Kiera, if she didn't realize, that she was the only one who wants to go back to that shitty 2077 future, and who called her a "selfish bitch". And what did Kiera say in her conversation with Travis ... "I want to do right by everyone without sacrificing what I need." Her answer to Travis's question "What do you need?"
was "It doesn't matter." Well, Kiera, why not act accordingly then? Ok, maybe she got to that point only after Lucas's death, but the price was pretty high I'd say ...
Now some words on Brad. My first reaction actually was like Kiera's ... "How could he??" But after having rewatched the scene, I actually believe that Brad acted more out of a reflex. His old soldier mate got shot into the head and Brad just turned around and fired his UZI without checking whoever was the shooter first, probably as he was trained and used to in his war future. So despite I blame Brad for still trying to play this "embedded thing", which he already should have given up, after they had thrown Kiera off the roof, because that was proof enough that it was a failure, it's a bit too simple for Kiera to just blame Brad ...
As it seems, there are trust issues all over again. Instead of cooperating truely, everyone tries to be ahead of each other for whatever "good reasons", even between the actually important allies like Carlos and Kiera. For sure this will cause quite some trouble and pain in the last three episodes.
After all ep 4x03 was excellent and probably the best of season 4 so far, just to mention a few highlights like the conversations with Travis, the talks between Alec and Julian and - very positively surprising - the appearance of Curtis at young Kagame's home and his conversation with Julian, which sounded absolutely reasonable and made me think that Curtis actually might not be a really bad guy. With ep 4x03 they clearly showed, that all the great moral, philosopical and political questions, which made Continuum that special, are not forgotten and are still adressed, which is quite important for me. After all it would have been kind of sad, if all that important "bigger picture stuff" had taken a backseat for just some "uniting Kiera's family" plot. But ok, it looks like I really shouldn't have doubted Simon Barry and his team at all.
Oh, and how nice was it to look at Garza, when she was testing the CPS suit and was smiling like a little kid, who just had gotten a new toy? Or when she saw the super suits of the Time Marines ... "Mommy likes"? ;-)
Wow again, only three episodes left!! Can't believe it ...