It's been about a week since episode 30 of season 2 of Carmilla and it's impact is still being felt by the fans. I think it was one of the best episodes of the series and set the stage for the final six episodes of this season.
To set the stage, Mattie attacked Danny and as she was squeezing her bones broken, Danny grabbed the necklace around her neck and smashed it. As Laura was told by Carmilla in a earlier episode, the necklace was the one thing that could kill Mattie. So now we are caught up for the beginning of episode 30. Down Below I will review the episode and also talked about the great performance Natasha Negovanlis
We first start the episode with a flashback to when Laura and Mattie were co-anchoring news for the Silas website. After finishing, we get to see Mattie and Carm laughing about something Mattie said in the video. As Laura and Mattie talk, Mattie mentions what happened with Carmilla and Vordenberg's anchestors. It ends up that they tortured her, grave-robbed her and possibly sexual assaulted her. Natasha does a great job of switching from joking to uncomfortable in a manner of seconds. As Laura asks why she didn't mention it, Carmilla responds with a sort of joke as that is how she usually hides her feelings, with either sarcasm or jokes.The scene ends with Mattie and Carmilla playing around with each other , like a lot of family do as Laura chuckles at them.
*I am going to talk in detail about Natasha in a little bit but special recognition to Elise Bauman and Sophia Walker for their performances in this episode and the one before. They showed great emotion just with a smirk or a raise of their voice and this episode wouldn't have worked as good as it did without them being as good as they are, especially with Natasha.
We go back to real time as Mattie is dying in Carmilla's arms. She tells Carm that she did not kill the kids at the newspaper or the girls at the pit. Then as she warns her about their mother, she passes away. RIP Mattie Belmonde and that wonderful smirk of hers. Then, Carmilla , her voice breaking and her eyes filled with tears, tells Danny to run as she does not want to kill her quickly and suddenly. She wants Danny to pay for what happened.
*I can understand both sides of this. Danny does not want to die of course and she really thought Mattie killed those girls. As for Carm, you just saw your sister die. IN YOUR ARMS. One of the very few people on this earth that understood you, made you laugh, made you cry, that cared for you. There is not a one of us who wouldn't have reacted the same way. Natasha shows this in her voice and how angry her eyes looked. She looked like a woman who was going to kill and not think twice of it.
As Carmilla goes for Danny, Laura steps in the way to stop her. Then Laura reveals what Carmilla pretty much knew but had to hear from her lips : It was Laura who told Danny about the necklace (Catch-up explanation! Carmilla told Laura about the necklace in a earlier ep and Laura told Danny a few episodes before this one)
And here is when Natasha Negovanlis should win every damn award there is. With her voice getting louder, Carmilla grabs Laura and tells her about just a little of the history she and Mattie had. Then as she lets her go and Laura tries to talk with her, Carm starts mocking her with "Be good for me Carmilla. Change for me Carmilla. Burn everything you ever loved for me Carmilla!" We see that Carmilla is hurt, angry , sad and Natasha shows all this in just a span of a few minutes. Then as Laura tries to tell her she didn't want any of this, we see Carmilla use her vampiric yell for the first time ever. She then tells the group there (but mostly I think Laura) that if anyone gets near her , she will kill them.
*To me Carmilla is the most human character on the show. She is not open about her feelings but you can always tell they are there. She has been betrayed and tortured and she hides it in sarcasm and sassy comments. When she finally opens herself , she feels love again. She doesn't want o be a superhero or even a hero in general, she just want to be a lover. Laura's lover. And when her and Laura break up over this, not only is Laura heartbroken, so is Carm. We see this a couple different times when it is she who brings them up with questions like "Do you miss me?" So when she sees her sister die, one of the only two people on earth she loved pretty much because of the only other person in the world she loves, her heart is broken again. I think the only reason she sparred everyone there was that through it all, she still loves Laura. A very human emotion and reaction to me.
Natasha's performance here is one of the best I have ever seen. She had to show sadness, anger, betrayal and hurt in just a span of three minutes and she went above and beyond what I expected. Not only her words as she masterfully controlled her voice as she raised it and lowered it but also her face. Even when she was mocking Laura, her face betrayed the pain she was feeling, the hurt, the loss. She knows Carmilla so well now and it shows in every scene but it shined in this one.
*Also great work by Jordan Hall, Ellen Simpson, Spencer Maybee, Steph Ouakine and every member of the crew of Carmilla. They create the words that the actors say so well and do it in 1/5 a regular show has the time to do it in. They deserve as much love and kudos as any big-time show runners.
So what's next? We have six episodes to go and tons of questions left? Where's Perry? Is The dean possessing Perry? What's up with J.P. and the book he was looking at? What will Laura do now? I have a ton of theories but no clue what will actually happen. So I am ready to be entertain , mesmerized, and have my emotions played with by this magnificent show and the actors that perform on it.
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