Carnival Row Season 2 Episode 9 Review: 'Battle Lines' Explained

Carnival Row season 2 episode 9 explained: what "Battle Lines" sets up

Carnival Row season 2 episode 9 was directed by Julian Holmes and written by Amanda Krader and Tania Lotia, and it was released together with the series finale, episode 10, on March 17, 2023. Season 2 had premiered on February 17, 2023, with new episodes in batches of two over five weeks, and Amazon had announced in November 2022 that this would be the last season. The series ends with 18 episodes in total.

The review opens with an argument about revolutions. They need something to rise against, the way the Empire serves in Star Wars and Kang the Conqueror in Quantumania, and in Carnival Row that target is the Burgue and its Parliament, an institution meant to evoke the UK and its legacy of colonization. The show was pitched as a story about the people of Carnival Row, immigrants and refugees who fled to the Row after losing their homes to the very cultures they were running from, and the murder investigations were a lens into the Fae underworld. The Fae are meant to read as a minority, and the abuse they suffer is a device to remind viewers how cruelly people treat each other.

That framing explains why a Carnival Row season 2 episode about a battle should have been the payoff for the whole series. By episode 9, the show has a Parliament that lost most of its leaders at the midseason point, a Fae movement that has sunk the ships meant to send people home and a couple, Agreus and Imogen, who have split up and are pulled into the middle of it. The review's concern is that the cast members who have carried the show since season 1, Philo, Vignette and Tourmaline, spend their time on side missions while the real conflict forms around them. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of the recap.

The review's complaint: the show lost itself in romance

The problem, the review argues, is that somewhere along the way Carnival Row got lost in its romance, the plot repeated itself and a lot of the series leaned on the Game of Thrones playbook of shock and horror. That playbook worked in the last decade, but the review contends audiences have less appetite for it after the pandemic. If a creator is going to feature deaths and disturbing moments, the intent has to stay clear, which means showing how the Fae minority gains power and wins the audience. In the review's view, episode 9 does not do that. The sense is that the show is in its final stretch without having delivered on its own premise.

Tourmaline, Vignette and Philo

Tourmaline's magical abilities finally serve a purpose again, as she uses her foresight for one last case with Philo. For several episodes the gift had stopped being an investigative tool and become a warning of her own death, an omen she is trying to avoid even though the audience expects it. The review thinks it was a bad idea to drag Vignette along. It argues that Vignette has lost her point in the story and is suddenly caring for her best friend out of nowhere, after spending the series ignoring Philo. The review wants to root for the pairing, but says the development to get there is almost nonexistent, and Vignette's arc has her nearly lead a rebellion only to give it up for love, again.

The show then tugs Vignette in two directions. Her old friends the Black Ravens call her to rejoin and link up with the New Dawn, whose efforts had recently sunk all the ships meant to carry units and Fae back to their homeland. The review calls the war between Fae and humans a storyline that took too long to develop and that everyone knew was coming, especially after most of the government leaders were killed at the midseason point.

Imogen, Agreus and the Sparas

Agreus and Imogen finally contribute to the main story's resolution as indirect and reluctant agents for the New Dawn. The review objects to how the show handles Imogen: after her brother Ezra's death she does a 180, which makes no sense to the reviewer because she was the one who killed him. She also blames Agreus for his past even though he has been open about it all along, and he is stuck serving her whims, since breaking away risks his life on a Row that has become dangerous for Fae. Her sudden empowerment, which makes her a movement leader, feels to the review as realistic as Daenerys's final season arc. For the character-level story, see the review of episode 8.

The reviewer is blunt about the two reveals. Leonora is written as a caricature of a Russian communist revolutionary, and the identity of the Sparas, who per the episode guide is Major Vir, was so underwhelming that the reviewer had to look the character up. The reviewer had been betting on Mr. Millworthy. The best part of the hour is the small exchanges between Agreus and Vignette, one a voice of reason and modern capitalism, the other a voice of Gen Z outrage.

Carnival Row season 2 episode 9 at a glance

Carnival Row season 2 episode 9 review: the take

The review ends on a hedge it is rare for it to make: with one episode to go, it partially agrees with the negative criticisms others have made. When Carnival Row addresses politics, it works, and the reviewer is even a fan of the revolution. Whenever the show returns to its main cast, in particular Philo, Vignette and, increasingly, Imogen, the reviewer gets a headache.

Part of why the review lands so hard on the leads is the weight of the comparison it keeps drawing. By the time of Carnival Row season 2 episode 9, the review has measured the show against Game of Thrones for the shock value of its deaths, against Star Wars and Quantumania for what a revolution needs, and against Daenerys's last season for Imogen's rise. Those comparisons set a bar that a ten-episode final season could not clear, and the review is honest that it is starting to agree with the critics who said so. The review's last line, about getting a headache, is a fair summary of the main cast's storylines in this stretch.

Rough Cut Review follows that structure. Judged as a political fantasy about an uprising, "Battle Lines" does what it needs to do: it brings the New Dawn from the margins to the center, and the episode guide shows what happens next, with Tourmaline drawing the Sparas into a trap, a death protecting her, Philo killing the Sparas and then addressing Parliament, where he declines the chancellorship in favor of a full Fae chancellor. Judged as a character story, it is a hurried hour. The most useful viewing advice is to treat episodes 9 and 10 as a single movement, since they were released together.

Carnival Row ended after two seasons, 18 episodes and a final epilogue that, according to the episode guide, marries Imogen and Agreus, has Vignette and Tourmaline marry in Tirnanoc and makes Dombey in an inspector's job. How the series closes is covered in the review of the finale.

Sources

• Carnival Row, Wikipedia — Release dates, season 2 episode guide, cast and cancellation
• Tamzin Merchant, Wikipedia — Her role as Imogen Spurnrose