Snowpiercer Review: A Beacon for Us All (Season 3 Episode 9)

Melanie returns from the cold on Snowpiercer Season 3 Episode 9, “A Beacon for Us All,” as the train prepares for a life in New Eden.

It’s difficult to dislike this episode too much because, after spending so much of this season, feeling the show has been holding itself back. After all, this is the point that they always wanted to get to. It’s also the reason why they spent so much of this season pretending as if Melanie had died.

The series wanted this big break for Melanie on the train so that when she came back on she would be able to act as this little dose of chaos and blow up everyone’s spot. That part of this makes sense, at least to a certain degree. It tracks for Melanie, who has always been much more intelligent than anyone else, to almost instantly clock that Layton is selling a bill of goods. 

Melanie is someone who can understand and even sympathize with parading a grandiose lie. She can get it but not only entirely like it, much in the same way that she didn’t necessarily like telling this lie about Wilford on the train for years. She’s pragmatic and can do what has to be done.

That part of it is in keeping with her character. The problem is that it takes a smart Melanie moment and then pairs it with a dumb one. Melanie should be savvy enough to know that she is being gassed up by Wilford. He is attempting to plant seeds of doubt into her mind and she should be able to recognize that. 

It doesn’t make sense that she doesn’t. Everything past that point in regards to things that she does is simply out of step with who she is. The show would have us believe that Melanie put her life at risk to find a way off of this train and now, simply because they don’t know entirely what will happen, she is willing to sabotage it.

This just seems like another example of something that this show has been guilty of this season far too often: characters acting in ways because it needs them to, not because it is consistent characterizing.

Snowpiercer wanted a character that could blow up the journey to New Eden that Layton couldn’t stop and so they got Melanie to do it. Similar to Pike’s betrayal a few episodes earlier, it doesn’t give her a well-drawn, thoughtful reason to do it but reeks of the plot needed her to do it.

The series wrote itself into a corner and doesn’t quite know what it’s doing now. That seems fairly obvious at this point, even to a casual viewer.

It can’t actually get to New Eden because then there wouldn’t be a show. It would be no different than a million other post-apocalyptic survival shows.

Overall, this is an episode that could be great, but ends up being nothing because it has no sense of self. There’s no logic or consistency to it. It just leaves us with a single word in our mind: disappointment. 

What did you think of this episode of Snowpiercer? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Snowpiercer airs Mondays at 9/8c on TNT.

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