The Passage Season Finale Review: Stay in the Light / Last Lesson (Season 1 Episodes 9 and 10)
“Dying is for the innocent, right?”
The season finale of The Passage does what the season has been doing all along: balancing all of the action and suspense with a more significant human story. Several significant human stories, actually.
Everything that happens on The Passage Season 1 Episode 9, “Stay in the Light,” and The Passage Season 1 Episode 10, “Last Lesson,” hinges on difficult choices and moral conflict.
If we’ve learned anything from Amy Bellafonte, it’s that she’s rarely going to listen to what other people tell her to do. She has an instinct all her own, which to be quite honest, is frustrating at times, but it’s who she is.
Her decision to press that button is the most significant so far. In most cases, she has more wisdom than the grownups that surround her. While they debate options, she takes action, for better or worse.
Pressing that button launches the emergency protocol, which will blow up 4B entirely, and ideally, wipe out the virals. It could even kill her since she’s linked to Fanning, but she takes the risk. It happens quick.
Brad gets away in time, with the cure, but Sykes stays behind and from what we know, she dies in the blast. That’s a decision of sacrifice too. Sykes stays behind so Brad will have a better chance of getting away with the cure, and so that everyone else will have a better chance of getting out.
That willingness isn’t just about doing the right thing — it’s coming from a place of guilt too. We see that later with Lear, who wants to kill himself after everything goes to hell. Everyone involved with Project Noah is watching pure hell on earth unfold around them because of what they’ve done. Let that sink in.
There’s no time to mourn Sykes, though. Not really. She does have that final conversation with Clark, and I wish we’d had a few more moments of that.
Brad gets the cure to Lila in time, and amidst the chaos, there’s some hope. But the virals don’t die in the blast, and what follows is a bloodbath.
One of the most interesting scenes comes from Richards and Babcock. Just as it looks like Richards will be one of the many casualties, Babcock comes to him, and gives him a choice. It’s similar to the choice all of the virals have had — die naturally or live forever. But Richards wouldn’t be a monster if he chose the latter. He’d just be linked to Babcock.
It’s twisted and somehow beautiful because there’s reason to root for the love between these two. It’s a bit of self-sacrifice, too, because as we see what happens after the time-jump, part of his goal is to keep Babcock under control.
He brings her people to feed on, and there’s a rhyme and a reason to who he brings. She wants this, because the fact of the matter is, she never wanted to be a monster either.
Even Fanning didn’t want to be. The opening of The Passage Season 1 Episode 9 shows Fanning asking to be killed and knowing that he’s changing. We’ve seen the human side to him and we’ve seen that side to Babcock and Carter. There’s even this flicker of remorse in Carter when he attacks Lila. He can’t help what he’s become now.
The action moves quickly on that first half of the finale. On the second half, we see how the word has already changed, and changed rapidly.
Everything now is about survival as the virals are taking over. It’s a post-apocalyptic world with entire cities being shut down in the United States.
As bleak as everything looks, there’s hope in the way Brad, Lila, and Amy have a created a family together. They’re surviving how they can and Brad is focused on teaching Amy everything he knows about survival. He’s hard on her, but he’s hard on her because he loves her, and we get the chance to see her mature even more because of it.
Brad: I just want you to be okay. Can’t you understand that?
Amy: I love you too, Agent.
It’s sad when Lila leaves, but her doing so brings Brad and Amy even closer together. One of the most touching scenes in the entire season is between just the two of them, with Brad learning to braid her hair as they talk about what she’s learning and the fact that she believes she’s seen the future (which includes her helping Fanning).
Moments like that are the standouts, and it’s important to see them because their relationship drives everything. It’s driven their choices up to now, and it drives Amy’s choice at the end.
Brad is infected, and when the others they’ve built a community with try to shoot him — knowing that’s what’s done now when someone is bitten — we see what Amy really has become. We see that she can be a monster too.
It’s a test from Fanning, and she does what she believes she has to. She attacks them to save her agent, and it’s horrifying and heartbreaking at the same time, especially as Brad watches it happen.
Amy gives him the cure, but then she runs away.
Cue the ugly crying. I’ve said it before, but it’s surprising to me how emotional this show is. The way everything connects is really beautiful, and I’m fully invested in this relationship between Brad and Amy.
Where the finale really ends, though, is with an even newer world.
Time runs out too quickly for Jonas to re-create the anti-viral, and the rest of the world is terrified that the virus will spread beyond the United States. This may be a sci-fi/fantasy story, but there’s something about this part that hits a little too close to home. The countries with nuclear weapons are chiming in, and they take action in the way they see fit to save the world: by bombing the US.
A time jump shows what happens later, with Amy on her own, protecting herself well and using the skills Brad taught her, heading to a place where she’s heard some people have managed to survive. As dark as everything is at this point, her strength feels positive, and it’s ultimately a satisfying conclusion to the season.
The layers to this entire story so are well-put together. It’s complex and it’s real. The themes are relatable even if vampires are not — though let’s be honest, it’s not entirely unbelievable that a science experiment gone wrong couldn’t cause something horrifying.
The choices everyone makes not so much to survive themselves, but in hopes of allowing mankind to survive, make the story special too, I think.
Sykes sacrifices herself, Lila insists someone shoot her, Brad insists someone shoot him, Jonas gives himself an experimental cure not knowing what might happen. It all feels bigger than personal survival. It’s something different when it’s about survival of the human race.
My one complaint about the finale, and really, the season overall, is that it all goes by too quickly. It ends on the right note, but it’s unfortunate that the season wasn’t given a few more episodes to allow us to dig deeper.
There are so many characters and relationships and important moments that could have been that much better had we been able to slow down, even just a little, and take the time to explore them.
That said, those moments, those relationships, are definitely there, and they’re definitely powerful. The relationship between Brad and Amy, above all else, has been a joy to watch — and it’s one that’s easy to be invested in, which is why it’s so powerful and heartbreaking to see Amy save Brad only to run away later. Rip my heart out, why don’t you.
Overall, it really is an incredible season finale. It’s engaging from start to finish across both episodes, it’s suspenseful, it’s heartfelt, and it’s cinematically beautiful. The finale wraps up the season well and leaves me desperately hoping for a renewal.
Other thoughts:
- Clark delivers one of the best lines of the episode: “Guilder, I will rip that mustache off your face and feed it to you if you say another word.”
- There’s a moment just after Carter attacks Lila where Amy reacts too — she looks so betrayed. It’s a small moment, but it’s gutwrenching.
- I love that Lacy returns just in time with a car, then winds up leading Jonas and setting him straight. I only wish we’d seen more of her.
What did you think of this episode of The Passage? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Ashley Bissette Sumerel
Ashley Bissette Sumerel is a television and film critic living in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is editor-in-chief of Tell-Tale TV as well as Eulalie Magazine. Ashley has also written for outlets such as Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and Insider. Ashley has been a member of the Critics Choice Association since 2017 and is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic. In addition to her work as an editor and critic, Ashley teaches Entertainment Journalism, Composition, and Literature at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.