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Shocking, Heartbreaking Death in Latest Episode of SYFY's The Ark - What Happened?
No one saw this week’s death of [SPOILER] coming… and it just raised the Season 2 stakes for Garnet and the Ark One gang.
**SPOILER WARNING!! Huge spoilers below for The Ark Season 2, Episode 9, “Cycle of Violence”**
Wow, Season 2 of The Ark just keep lobbing us one dramatic sci-fi curveball after another. After already losing one huge Season 1 character to a fatal space attack (and then proceeding to put a couple of others through absolute hell), the hit SYFY series just handed fans its biggest bombshell yet in Season 2, Episode 9, "Cycle of Violence."
In a tragic (and frankly heartbreaking) twist, one of The Ark’s original core characters just met their untimely demise at the hands of good old-fashioned treachery, all while putting the Ark One and its crew right at the doorstep of their seemingly-inevitable date with space destiny. This week’s shocking death marks a massive story shakeup that leaves Captain Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) and the gang in complete emotional tatters... and is sure, in the bargain, to have reverberating story echoes as Season 2 wends its way toward uncharted finale territory.
What happened on The Ark Season 2, Episode 9, “Cycle of Violence”?
For weeks, fans have been teased with distant visions of the ill-omened Eastern Federation (EF), a human space faction toting a fearsome reputation for violence wherever its mysterious ships dare to roam. Bearing a hidden agenda that doesn’t jibe — like, at all — with the Global Space Administration (GSA) and its fleet of survivor ships (like the Ark One), the Eastern Federation emerged as an in-your-face threat at the end of last week’s episode, when a massive EF vessel arrived out of nowhere and trained its main cannon squarely onto the Ark One just as the end credits rolled.
This week’s episode picked up right where that one left off, with Garnet ordering the Ark One to beat a quick faster-than-light (FTL) space retreat before the menacing EF vessel and its cannon had time to fire. But things get interesting when the enemy ship manages to track the Ark One right across its FTL flight path, suggesting that there’s something (or someone) on board that’s giving away the Ark One’s vulnerable position.
With no other option than to either fight or make contact, Garnet accepts a dial-in from the enemy ship, EF-2, and begins a tense standoff with Zed Avega (Daniel Fathers), its gruff-talking captain. As it turns out, the Eastern Federation is looking for one of its AWOL crewmates, and the missing person is none other than Bojan (Vasilije Batricevic) — the recently-deceased brother of Ark One maintenance chief Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva).
As Season 2 viewers know, Eva has her own secret history with the Eastern Federation, a sketchy past that’s recently re-emerged to raise suspicion among everybody aboard the Ark One — well, everyone except for Eva's loyal boyfriend, Lt. James Brice (Richard Fleeshman). Over Brice’s angry protests, Lt. Spencer Lane (Reece Ritchie) flags Eva as the likely reason that the EF is even able to track their ship in the first place: “She’s one of them!” Lane accuses, while Brice — loyal to Eva to the bitter end — barely succeeds in keeping his flaring and protective temper under control.
Chatting on this week's After the Ark aftershow webcast, Ritchie said that playing Lane has meant channeling his more caustic actor's side at times — though Lane's standoffish nature, he confessed, comes with a certain straightforward appeal.
"I’ve been quite lucky with the writers, because they have very slowly and incrementally peeled back the layers on him," said Ritchie. "… A lot of the nicest people I’ve ever met, who I’ve got to know, have been the most abrasive when I first met them. And I always love that in people — I love honesty in people. And when someone’s willing to show you who they truly are early on [like Lane], it sort of puts me at ease, where others might kind of stand back. I lean in."
Which major character died on The Ark this week?
Oh, if only Lane could have a level head like Ian, his kinder, more laid-back GSA clone (also played by Ritchie). Sharing screen time with his genetic twin since being rescued from an irradiated space rock a few episodes back, Ian has a knack for staying circumspect in those heated situations where Lane tends to go full-throttle — and up until now, it’s all seemed like nothing more than a same-but-different brotherly character quirk.
As the tearjerking events of this week’s episode show, though, there’s way more to it than that. After EF captain Zed earns Garnet’s trust and strikes a truce that assures no one from either ship has to die, Zed’s second-in-command EF sidekick turns blindingly treacherous. The disloyal snake stabs his very own captain with a hidden smuggled blade, and just at the moment when Zed and Garnet seem to be making major diplomatic headway aboard the Ark One. The ensuing scrape mortally wounds not only Zed but Lt. Lane as well, leaving each with internal organ injuries that are guaranteed to kill them both… unless, that is, there’s a harvestable human organ or two that happens to be lying around.
As a backdrop to all the unfolding mayhem and tragedy, there’s also the enormous weight of time pressure. Zed’s EF ship is holding a pair of Ark One crew members hostage, a tit-for-tat collateral assurance that no harm will come to Captain Zed while he’s Garnet’s diplomatic guest aboard the Ark One. Now that harm actually has come to their captain — no matter whose fault it is — Zed’s EF underlings have their orders, and they’re threatening to start shooting if their captain doesn’t make it back to their ship alive.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kabir (Shalini Peiris) and Dr. Marsh (Jadran Malkovich) agree on the grim prognosis for each of their bleeding patients: Captain Zed has a fighting chance at life if he can undergo a liver transplant… but to Garnet’s absolute horror, Lane’s stab wounds are the kind he simply can’t survive. It’s a bombshell moment to learn that Lane isn’t going to make it, and the devastating news paralyzes Garnet with grief — all while her EF enemies clamor for a status update about their own captain’s health.
It’s here where Ian gently steps in to nudge Garnet toward the reluctant but inevitable choice she’s got to make. Ian and Lane are lab-bred twins, and Ian’s got a sixth sense about what Lane, his cloned “brother,” would probably want in an impossible situation like this one. Since nothing can prevent Lane from dying now, at least he can offer up one final sacrifice, donating his liver to save Captain Zed’s life, and, by extension, ending the tense standoff that already threatens the lives of everyone on both ships.
Even with Lane unconscious and unable to speak for himself, Garnet knows that Ian’s right. After all, she and Spencer Lane have been through a whole hell of a lot together at this point — whether it’s rebuilding their shattered trust after Lane’s noble but hare-brained Season 1 mutiny, or their more recent close friendship as Season 2 teases out all the ways the duo share more in common (like Garnet and Lane each being a clone) than they ever could have guessed.
At the end of the day, though, the cruel reality remains the same: This week's “Cycle of Violence” episode marks Lt. .Lane’s last living moments as a major character on The Ark.
What does The Ark’s big character death mean for the show?
There’s no way around it: It’s tough to watch one of The Ark’s most crucial and lore-steeped characters vanish from the show. But there’s also a sort of sneaky genius to the way that Season 2 has been slowly building, all this time, with the kind of story backdrop that allows Lt. Lane to at least live on in spirit.
“We were setting up a very complex storyline from the beginning,” co-showrunner and executive producer Jonathan Glassner explained of Lane’s well-planned exit this week on the After the Ark aftershow. “The one thing he [Lane] hated in Season 1 were clones. He finds out he’s a clone — that sends him spiraling. We find out that his type of clone were made to be organ donors… And, we wanted to give Reece the chance to play a different character. And so now he’s Ian for the rest of series… presumably!”
Though Lane himself is really, truly gone, Reece Ritchie — the actor who plays him — doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, and that’s definitely a huge relief. Ritchie’s distinctively different portrayal of Ian as a cast-aside clone with a survivor’s undefeated optimism has been one of the unexpected highlights of Season 2 so far… and now that Ian’s carrying the emotional weight of both the living and the dead, his story can only get more interesting from this point forward.
Ian’s also got a lot of big-picture insight about the GSA, and together with Garnet’s recent brush with some real-life EF survivors, it might be just the crack in the narrative dam that’s so far protected the GSA’s spotless reputation. The Ark One, remember, is a GSA ship and Garnet’s been functioning — even without an outside hierarchy — as its de facto GSA captain. But in light of this week’s game-changing events, the whole good-buy/bad-guy narrative that’s surrounded the GSA and its Eastern Federation enemy seems like nothing more than an easy illusion.
As the Ark One continues its colonizing journey toward the Trappist planet system, the ship’s loyalties may be completely up for grabs — especially now that Garnet has experienced the tragic firsthand fallout from the Global Space Administration’s clone breeding program (which created guys like Ian and Lane strictly to serve as universal organ fodder). With a new and uneasy alliance unfolding between the Ark One and Captain Zed’s EF contingent, what awaits both sides as they ply the space skies together, speeding toward an unknown planet they’re each meant to share as a new and fresh start for humanity?
One thing's for sure: The Ark isn’t afraid to spring some major surprises — even if it does mean saying sudden goodbyes to people and places that fans have grown to love.
Tune in to SYFY Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET to watch each new Season 2 episode of The Ark. To catch up on the full series, dial up Peacock here, where all 12 Season 1 episodes are now streaming.
