[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1 Episode 7.]
The truth was going to come out eventually, and it does for Kira (Keeley Hawes) regarding the version of Eleanor (Rya Kihlstedt) now living with her in the latest episode of Orphan Black: Echoes.
After losing her wife to Alzheimer’s, Kira printed out new versions of her—younger (Krysten Ritter‘s Lucy, without memories of their life together) and more recent. It’s the latter now living with her, and the former who clues Eleanor in on what Kira did. Kira tries to defend her actions, but Eleanor argues that death is not something you can just skip over. They were lucky to find each other and they had a good life, but the fact that things like that only come around once is what makes them mean something. She argues that after what Kira went through growing up, she should’ve known better. Now, Eleanor is going to have to suffer through losing her mind, her thoughts all over again.
Eleanor leaves and goes and tells their son Lucas (Jaeden Noel) the truth since they’ve always been honest with each other. The fact that she’s a printout doesn’t change anything, she insists. He’s still her son, and she still loves him. Lucas tells her to leave. Even with that, Eleanor doesn’t regret telling him, Kihlstedt tells TV Insider.
“I think Eleanor is a very rational scientific mind. I don’t think she’s a woman who’s guided by her emotions. And I think to her, there’s no doubt that you have to go tell the truth. Lucas is entwined [in this]. Kira has lied to both of us, and he needs to know,” she says. “Could she have done that better, more thoughtfully in a different way with more—it was a little reactionary, but I understand where it comes from, the need to… I mean, it’s not protecting him, but it’s protecting him, right? Letting him know that [the woman in his life] the last two years has been a completely different [person], this is not your mother, this was not, it’s also throwing Kira under the bus a little bit, but I think in that moment, she’s not the one who needs protecting. So no, I don’t think Eleanor would’ve done it any other way, is the truth.”
Later in the episode, Lucy tells Eleanor of the only memory she and the even younger printout version of Eleanor, Jules (Amanda Fix), have, of being in the bathroom and all the blood. It was the worst day of her life, Eleanor says. Her father was clinically depressed and being alive was so hard for him. She found him after school, in the bathtub. Lucy says she always had a feeling she was responsible somehow and wants to know if that’s really what happened. Eleanor says it is. But has she told Lucy everything?
“I think she’s still trying to protect a little bit herself and them from very complicated feelings and information, and I think it’s probably something she’s never really talked about very much,” says creator, showrunner, writer, and executive producer Anna Fishko. “And so it’s still a little bit difficult.”
What did you think of Eleanor’s reaction to the truth? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Orphan Black: Echoes, Sundays, 10/9c, AMC
