Miracle Workers: End Times Season 4 Episode 9 Review: John Christ

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.

As the season comes to a close, Miracle Workers: End Times Season 4 Episode 9, “John Christ,” should serve as a fantastical penultimate episode, and in many respects, it does. While the road to get to the solid ending is rocky, overall, the story serves to start wrapping up our time in Boomtown.

Freya and Sid’s struggles continue, but their awakenings toward the end of the episode make up for the less-than-compelling story to get them there.

The only plot point to make it smoothly from Point A to Point B within the confines of “John Christ” is Tai’s evolution. As it stands, he could be the complete undoing of Boomtown.

Sid and Freya Might Finally Come Together in Big Ways

While Sid works out his feelings and stance on Men Vs. Machines, his wife, is working out whether or not she misses being a warlord. It’s a nice parallel for the two characters who have spent most of the season seemingly having separate struggles and not meeting in the middle.

Sure, they’ve been married this whole time, but there have been intimacy issues, opposing viewpoints on significant decisions, and an utter lack of clear communication all season. In short, the chemistry and charm that Radcliffe and Viswanathan have been famous for in previous seasons just don’t seem to come through.

Miracle Workers: End Times Season 4 Episode 9, “John Christ,” starts off seeming more of the same — Sid excitedly tells Scrapps about the new baby while Freya prepares to get the War Dogs back together. However opposite their paths seem in this episode, Sid and Freya are dealing with the same underlying emotion — nervousness about impending parenthood.

Sid’s excitement is more outward, while Freya’s is more reserved, and vice versa for their anxiety. All in all, they both must process these emotions in their own ways to come together for their child.

Interestingly, Sid does this by joining a revolution to take down “the man,” while Freya immediately retreats into who she used to be. Neither option ends up helping them until they have a heart-to-heart with someone and realize they can be happy and nervous about their child while staying true to who they are.

This lesson comes out especially strongly with Freya, who has more adjusting to prepare for motherhood.

Tai Realizes His True Place

A common vein through Miracle Workers: End Times is that Tai is a bully robot representing the worst that humanity can offer. There hasn’t been an episode where Tai isn’t using his “superiority” to ridicule someone else, especially Sid.

Now, the tables have been turned as a punishment for Tai bringing John Christ through time to wage war on machines. He’s never had to deal with someone telling him that he’s not the best that robots have to offer.

Therefore, he doesn’t react very well when NeuralNet uses their “Next Top Model” competition to poke fun at him. He must receive treatment like he’s always dished out in the hopes that it will change him for the better — eventually.

Unfortunately, Tai takes this ridicule and uses it as an excuse to go complete war machine — forgoing those traits that allow him to assimilate amongst humans.

On the one side, it’s easy to see that being treated unfairly and cruelly broke his heart, so he turns to a friend only to find he isn’t wanted there either. On the other, Tai hasn’t been a nice person unless you are Freya, so in a small way, he deserves some of what has come to him.

However, feeling alone and isolated is never great, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, making his fall into war machine mode much more understandable.

After all, Tai has to guard his heart now; to do that, he has to turn off all his human emotions. This is going to make for a great season finale next week.

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What did you think of this episode of Miracle Workers: End Times? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Miracle Workers: End Times airs Mondays at 10/9c on TBS.

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