The Strain Season 2

[Margaret Sigars]

TheStrain is an American horror drama television series that premiered on FX on July 13, 2014.[1] It was created by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, based on their novel trilogy of the same name. Carlton Cuse served as executive producer and showrunner. During the course of the series, 46 episodes of The Strain aired over four seasons, between July 13, 2014, and September 17, 2017.

Quinlan, Fet, and company celebrate a minor victory this week as they indeed secure the nuclear weapon. Unfortunately, the weapon is missing a vital component and now our heroes will have to take the fight with the strigoi to complete their mission and finish the weapon. So we have a nuclear McGuffin as Fet will have to plan a raid on the strigoi, a raid that might expose him and his crew in the same way the Eph was exposed.

As I said, no Dutch, Gus, Setrakian this week, but I guess we have some powerful stuff coming with Setrakian as he is now being held in a strigoi prison camp. This will, no doubt, bring back memories of his time is a Nazi concentration camp under Eichhorst, and one has to wonder if the ever weakening Setrakian can survive being locked away once again. We will have to wait to find out, as even though Eph and Fet provide a ray of hope this week, things are getting bleaker and bleaker as the final season of The Strain continues to unfold.

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As Promised!!! From last night's The Strain season finale, here is a behind the scenes shot of me in the make-up trailer as "Ancient #1" (I was in the middle of the 3 in those final minutes of the show). The green nose is so they could digitally paint on the flattened design in post production. As you heard in the dialogue, we're meant to return, so let's HOPE I can do that with my Falling Skies schedule this next season. Photo by the precious Adrian Stansfield from the make-up team, headed up by the brilliant Steve Newburn!!

After the ending of the first season the second one only had one place to go, more battles with vampires and more confrontations with The Master and Eichorst. The story is once again pretty damn good throughout, we get more information about every character in the show apart from maybe Norah who I felt was a bit neglected at times.

We start off seeing Eph and Norah develop a biological weapon that they can fight against the vampire infections with. This leads Eph to go gallivanting around the country as he searches for the resources he needs to make the biological weapon and get it into mass production. We get to see how Eph has become an even bigger arsehole than he was in the first season with his complete lack of regard for anyone other than himself and on occasion his son, although he is willing to dump his son with anyone at various points through the season. His journey to get the weapon mass produced is a well written storyline if a bit predictable with an occasional splash of convenience thrown in here and there.

Setrakian along with Fet spends a great deal of time hunting down an ancient text that he believes could lead him to defeating the master and the strigoi. I loved this story it saw a character that we met in the first season return and it meant we got a lot of interactions between Eichorst and Setrakian. It also led to a a big event in the last couple of episodes that could end up turning one of the villains onto the good side of things or maybe not.

Gus is also back and as much as I like his character and big aspects of his storyline some of his scenes felt as if they were just put in to give him something to do. There is a brilliant episode which starts with an old black and white movie showing a wrestler fighting vampires, Gus then tracks down the man who played the wrestler. Gus then happens to fall for a girl that is working where the ex actor/wrestler/vampire hunter works and that leads to his romance story for the rest of the season.

There are some season finales that require threads to be tied up, because there are clear arcs that need to be completed before moving forward. Others spend most of their time dealing with either the fallout from a climactic penultimate episode, and/or setting things up for the next season. Very few essentially act just as a regular episode that then introduces a lot of new items to be addressed next year; and often when they do, things feel unfinished. In the case of "The Master," though, it was perfect.

The Strain's entire first season has felt like a prologue, setting up this strigori-ridden world, building up the mythology of the vampires, and assembling our band of heroes to help fight them. Because of that, "The Master" did exactly what it needed to do to make viewers want to return for the next chapter, without feeling like we wasted time on the first. Hit the jump if you are planning on eating Mexican tonight.

Those who have been following my recaps since the start of the season know that when it comes to the monsters and mythology, I have no complaints with The Strain. Everything else can feel off, and often downright campy, but the monsters work.

The Strain has done a great job all season of slowly revealing a variety of aspects about the rise of the strigori. For the most part, we followed Ephraim's journey of seeing the first affected, all the way up to the revelation of the Master. Along the way, Abraham has provided key information that has helped his rag-tag bunch try and not only exterminate as many strigori as they can, but also taught them the all-important premise that by killing the Master, the strain will be stopped.

All of this played into what is commonly known in vampire lore. Though The Strain's strigori seemed more like zombies than vamps most of the time, they do share most of those well-known traits: a fear of silver, an aversion to sunlight, a need to feed on blood, etc. They gained a forked projectile, but other than that, they seemed within the bounds of general understanding. And then, "The Master" changed the game.

Eldritch playing with the silver dagger was the first suggestion that perhaps the strigori are not as easily categorized as first considered. "How quaint," he mutters with dripping sarcasm. But, that leads Eichhorst to tell Eldritch that he can handle the silver because he has not been changed, just rejuvenated. Later, however, the Master himself stunned Abraham and the others when he scurried out of the sunlight down into the ground. He was wounded by it, sure, but he wasn't destroyed by it. (And had Abraham wielded that sword a little more quickly, the whole thing might be over with). He escaped, but there's more to it than that.

Gus, who has been operating on the fringes of the story from the start -- being an integral part of bringing the Master to Manhattan, but also crossing paths with some of the other major characters -- was picked up by a vampire-looking creature we saw earlier in the season: a killer other vampires and those infected. Gus comes to find that this guy is the spokesman for some very old vampires, who are asleep on bloody thrones. There is talk of an ancient truce that has been breached, and that an act of war has been declared. Or as Gus put it, "you're saying there's a vampire turf war." Things just got very interesting.

"The Master" solidified its crew by bringing Dutch back into the fold, and having Ephraim recognizing that Zack needs to be a part of things, too (one of the best scenes of this season was Zack being given his sword, and Eph teaching him how to use it while tempering Abraham's enthusiasm). The battle at Bolivar's was an excellent, super creepy scene that got a great setup with Vasiliy's bombing of the baby vamps. And while it felt like the climax to a typical monster movie, the introduction of the other vampires, as well as the Master's unique powers, imbued the story with something fresh, and not at all disappointing when the Master escaped their clutches (and recalled his minions).

While The Strain may have been iffy when it came to character development and dialogue (the less, the better), no one does beheadings better (not even Game of Thrones). The monsters and mayhem of The Strain have been a joy, and despite its unevenness from episode to episode, the bottom line is that week after week, it's been a fun, and very different kind of show. "The Master" has also set up some very intriguing possibilities for its second season. Get your cane swords ready.

-- One of my main complaints all season has been the lack of movement regarding, say, a quarantine or bringing in the National Guard, and finally this was addressed in "The Master." As the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the head of the CDC agreed, it was time to do something. But Abraham warned many episodes ago about how the Master is a master of manipulation. Eldritch, with Eichhorst's help, set those two straight on what the future plan will be (which is, to do nothing). It's clear why the Master chose Eldritch as an ally, but it's also clear to everyone (but him) why he hasn't yet been transformed; he's powerful, and not at all subservient. Eichhorst lives to serve at the pleasure of the Master. Eldritch is only interested in himself.

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