Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1 Episode 3 Review: Pegasus Girl

Jules may be a copy of a copy, but she’s also her own character. Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1 Episode 3, “Pegasus Girl,” turns the focus towards her in one of the best episodes of the season so far.

We’ve seen enough of Jules to know how feisty she is, but Amanda Fix also gets to show off more of Jules’ vulnerable side as this episode explores her “origin story” from the time she woke up in the hospital after the “accident.” 

Cue the entrance of creepy neuropsychologist Dr. Pam Teller (Marnie McPhail), who helps Jules during her rehab. It’s so agonizing watching Jules deal with her memory loss while knowing that she’s being gaslit about her past the entire time.

This is first confirmed when Lucy tracks down information from the hospital and learns Dr. Teller is working on a memory study and was hired independently of the hospital. And then again when Jules discovers her old diary has been plagiarized from a book and they track down the author. 

Whereas Lucy’s storyline is overwhelming and frenetic when we meet her, Jules gets a better balance of tension and plot twists while still having room for the character to breathe. It helps to have some more information about what’s going on, but also to just have a protagonist who keeps a calm head.

Her effortless cool and relatability even when dealing with life-altering discoveries makes her an easier character to hang out with. Maybe teenagers just cope with the whole clone thing better. 

Even her relationship with her brother Wes (Liam Diaz) adds some dimension to the story since we get someone with an outside perspective commenting on things. Unlike Jack, who is about as interesting as a cardboard cutout, Wes isn’t afraid to challenge Jules and point out how crazy things are. 

Overall the result is a much better pacing than we’ve seen in prior episodes, and time to actually invest in the conspiracy. Before this, Orphan Black: Echoes was banking a lot on you caring about Kira’s presence, but now we have a chance to root for Lucy and Jules as they team up. 

The show works a lot better when they’re on the same side, so I’m glad we’re done with Lucy’s kidnapping and waving guns at innocent people era (hopefully). 

There is some improvement in the Kira department, or at least she’s willing to stand up to Darros to protect Lucy. That feels more like something a Manning would do instead of hiding out in the lab. 

The question still remains of how Kira got herself tied up in this project to begin with. Printing organs makes sense, but what was the motivation for printing an entire person? Did Kira learn nothing about the ethics of cloning from her childhood? 

And more importantly, what made them chose the Jules/Lucy scan to create the first copy? 

Kira operates in the gray, which makes her a tough character to read. She later acts suspicious when she removes her son’s blood donation after her work does a blood drive.

Kira may be the holdover from the original series, but she’s clearly not the hero of Orphan Black: Echoes. That’s a strange thing to adjust to after watching the original sestras fight for what is right. 

What did you think of this episode of Orphan Black: Echoes? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Orphan Black: Echoes airs Sundays at 10/9c on AMC and BBC America.

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