Reign 2.12 “Banished” Recap

Out on the balcony, Francis finds Mary, the latter having spent the past two days in her chamber. She explains that she saw him sleeping with Lola and the baby, but she doesn’t think there’s anything untoward about the situation – the visual of Francis with the perfect family and a happier life just brought her mood down, is all. And it’s not like she’s ready to be touched by him yet, so he grants her more time to become comfortable with the thought. Inside the castle, Kenna makes a joke about Bash having a threesome with Francis and Claude when he returns from being summoned by his brother. However, the reason for the summoning was that Francis is dividing Narcisse’s holdings and wanted to give Bash a title (Baron, which allows him to stay close to Francis) and lands, an offer he accepted. However, he’s decided to give some of the land to Diane, with his mother coming to the castle to work out the terms of their new agreement.

In her chamber, Catherine pours her guilt out over Claude to Henry, who tries to talk her down from this pity party by citing that the girls are happy. He’s provided them with the love and respect they need and he says that Catherine could easily join their world, though she still doesn’t know whether he or any of this, for that matter, is real. Claude finds Bash in the hall and, after apologizing for the trouble she caused with Kenna, asks him to look into who actually poisoned the twins, as she was too young at the time to prove her own innocence. Meanwhile, Mary interrupts Narcisse and Francis dividing up the former’s holdings – the result of him copping an embezzlement plea in order to spare his life. Once Narcisse is sent outside, Mary and Francis discuss the holdings that will be distributed to the loyal Protestants as a gesture of faith that will hopefully quash the religious tension in the country. However, when Mary suggests Conde, Francis bristles.

After receiving word from one of the castle guards, Mary pulls Greer aside and tells her that a prisoner has claimed that Castleroy is tied to the radical Protestants that attacked the castle. She gives Greer an opportunity to come clean about any possible link between Castleroy and the radicals, but Greer denies the connection before tearing her chamber up in search of any physical evidence that might exist. While there are no incriminating diaries, she tells Leith that the counting house could have the ledger of Castleroy’s finances, which would be enough to tie him to the radicals. Elsewhere, Catherine and Diane come face to face for the first time since the latter’s banishment and after getting in their respective personal shots, they part ways, with Henry appearing beside Catherine. He calls Diane too old and too thin, wondering aloud what drove him to be with her in the first place, but Catherine is more worried about Claude making a point to show kindness toward every person in the castle but herself. Henry assures her that their little family would accept her without blame or judgment and that she deserves the type of love that she’s missing – love that he and the girls can give her.

While the foursome go off to parts unknown, Claude gets Bash to investigate the whereabouts of the remaining nanny that was on duty the day the twins died and Conde returns to the castle, unwilling to accept the holdings offered by Francis. He doesn’t want to accept something from a leader who gave in to Catholic thugs, nor will he listen when Mary tries to defend her husband. As she touches his arm, desperate to get him to see her point, Francis lurks from a distance and watches the entire conversation unfold. Greer and Leith make it to the count house and attempt to strong-arm the proprietor into giving up the ledger. However, he heard the rumors about Castleroy being in league with the Protestants and uses that leverage, as well as his knowledge of where the now-hidden ledger is, to get Greer to sign over her 49% holding on the house. She does, though, warn him that if the book is found without her knowledge, she’ll ensure that the crown knows about their partnership. Meanwhile, the former royal nanny Lady Yvonne arrives at the castle and is immediately questioned about the day the twins died. She claims that she merely went out for a moment before returning to find the girls dead, causing Claude to lash out in frustration. Claude accuses Lady Yvonne of killing the girls and that pressure, as well as the guilt from nearly two decades of holding in a secret, gets Yvonne to tell the truth – Henry continually propositioned her to no avail until one day, he got her high on opium and raped her in his chambers. Hours passed during the incident and when Yvonne returned to the nursery, she found the windows wide open and the twins frozen to death. In order to protect herself and minimize the overall damage, she tore the roses off of Claude’s dress and framed the girl, thinking that the royals would go easy on her for being so young and not really knowing the difference between right and wrong.

Not only did Claude being guilty quiet the questions around the incident, it got Yvonne a noble husband, as Henry married her off to keep her from spilling the beans about what actually happened. As Yvonne is dragged away, Catherine and the girls play tag in the dungeon, though she’s still worried about Claude – if the girl did kill the twins, she raised a monster. If she didn’t, Catherine raised her like one. But Henry again tells her not to second guess herself, that the girls need her more than her grown children ever did, before Catherine and the girls run outside into the snow, with Henry close behind. At the Ice Festival, Francis confronts Conde about his rejection of Narcisse’s holdings, yet when Conde makes a remark about Francis being unable to protect Mary from being raped, the two decide to duel in quarterstaff. Francis gets in the first blow, but Conde is the first to give a face shot and it quickly becomes obvious that Mary is the source of the tension between the cousins. When Francis breaks Conde’s staff, Conde tries to attack him, only for Mary to get in between them and stop any violence from happening. Meanwhile, Henry sends the girls back to the castle before telling Catherine that everything was so dark without her; he tries to get intimate in the snow, saying that he wants to provide her with warmth, but he soon disappears and leaves her asleep on a snow-covered bench. Bash manages to find her and get her home before anything bad happened, filling her in on what happened with Lady Yvonne once she was comfortable in her chambers. She then tells him about Henry’s plan to go legitimate with Diane once enough heirs were birthed, except Henry could never be faithful and often showered Diane with gifts to keep her in his life. One in particular, a chapel built when the twins were born, turns on a light in Bash’s mind and thus, he leaves Catherine promptly.

After the fight, Mary tends to Francis, who thinks they need to do something about Conde. When Mary denies that she’s done anything to encourage the feelings Conde has, Francis lays out why separate lives don’t work for him – there can be no doubt about the paternity of the child he has faith she will bear and he wants to protect her safety and the safety of their unborn child, as paternity and the royal line have caused many a war. However, Mary takes this as Francis trying to tighten his grip on her and she pushes him away more than she ever has. Back in her chambers, Catherine gets out of a bath, only for Henry to put her clothes on. She then brings up the nanny and lays into Henry for lying to her at every turn during their marriage before turning her attention to the girls. Although part of her wants them to stay, she bids them goodbye and assures them that they will see each other again; the girls then calmly walk into the darkness and disappear from Catherine’s life, as easy as that. Catherine then resumes her rant at Henry, bashing him for never sacrificing for his family and only loving them when it was convenient for him. She taught him that it was alright to treat her a certain way and while she will have to bear the guilt for destroying Claude’s life and her relationship with her daughter, she will not bear him, as well. She casts him out of her life, calling him nothing but dust and bile, and sends him back into the darkness where the girls are waiting.

Bash goes to Diane and asks her whether she was ever threatened by Henry’s other life. The reason for his inquiry? He walked in on her destroying one of the chapel windows two days before the twins were found dead, which he thinks is proof that she couldn’t handle being a mistress anymore and that she was jealous of his “legitimate” life. She confesses to wanting Catherine and Henry to feel the type of pain that she did and when Bash strips her of her holdings, she informs him that Kenna was the one who told Catherine about the plan for legitimization, a move that could have gotten him executed. Meanwhile, Mary sets Lola up with Conde, thinking that getting the two together would solve a number of problems. Conde in a relationship would get Francis off his back, while Lola getting help with the baby would get her more time with Francis. Conde laments feeling like a chess piece in Mary’s game of life, but Lola warns him not to mess things up for Mary and intrigued by her fire, Conde decides to agree to this new arrangement.

Just then, the guard comes in to tell Mary that the ledger was found in the counting house, forcing Greer into a room in the tower. Mary and Francis manage to convince the nobles to spare her life, but she must give up everything in return – her land, her holdings, her title. She also cannot continue working as Mary’s lady, so Mary gives her friend a parting hug and empty words of encouragement. Bash confronts Kenna about Rome and she claims that she was scared and that she didn’t want to give up Henry or the lifestyle he was providing her, the latter hurting Bash’s feelings as it’s the first time her feelings for Henry had been mentioned. She tries to get through to him about the position she’s in as a woman in court and how, when Henry paid her attention, it was the first time she felt like she mattered, yet Bash doesn’t know if he can forgive her for this. When Francis checks in on Mary, he learns that she regrets bringing her ladies to court, given all that has befallen them since their arrive in France. But as lonely as she may be, she agrees that appearances do matter for people in their position and that she can only have a political friendship with Conde now, nothing more. And surprisingly for Francis, she agrees to let him stay the night and guard her while she sleeps.

Catherine sneaks into Diane’s room and attacks her from behind, striking her in the head with one of the fireplace tools. She finally pieced together that it couldn’t have been the nanny – the windows in the nursery needed to be opened by human hands and were too heavy for the wind to blow open. Diane tries to call Catherine on her hypocrisy, given that she’s killed many people in her time, but Catherine isn’t having any of that; after hitting her in the head again, she uses the necklace Diane has on, one that Henry gave her during their time together, to choke the life out of the former royal mistress, saying it was for the babies, Henry, and Claude. Before killing her, Catherine delivers the final words that Diane will ever hear:

He’s all yours.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Who will be bowing to me, by the way?”
-“And try not to scare anyone to death.”
-“Ah, embezzlement. Excellent choice.”
-“If Claude’s looks could kill, I do believe you’d be bathing in your own blood.”
-Favorite Dress of the Episode: Catherine was stunning in the white gown she wore while playing with the girls and going out into the snow. The whole Ice Festival motif worked very well for Reign, as Mary’s outfit while watching Conde and Francis duel was also gorgeous.
-Originally, I thought the gesture of Francis staying with Mary was a bit of a cop-out – a way to keep a central couple from slipping too far away from each other and avoid mining some difficult material that could pay dividends down the road. However, I do think it makes sense in that Mary has already physically connected with another man and she’s at one of her lowest points following Greer’s banishment from the castle. Mary needs someone who cares and although she still has her issues with Francis, he’s that person for her in that moment.
-I do love, though, that they didn’t go there with Mary/Lola. That would’ve been incredibly easy to fall into, but the show managed to keep the emotional truth in Mary’s caustic approach to her friends while being unafraid of the insecurity that she grapples with on a daily basis.
-Interesting lack of Narcisse these past two weeks. It might be a bit of an overcorrection, given that Craig Parker is so good, but I have a feeling that he’s got one more big moment to come and that he’s not going to be content in serving under Francis from here on out.
-No opening sequence this time around. Could it be undergoing another revamp?
-I thought Kenna’s menage-a-trois joke was funny. I don’t know what that says about me.
-It feels like this was the death blow to any chance of Castleroy coming back. I think Greer isn’t quite done yet on this show, but I just can’t see Castleroy coming back to France now that his role in the attack on the castle, however indirect it might have been, is widely known. Which is a shame because I think that Castleroy is such a good character, the wholly innocent man who only wants to do good trapped in a world built on lies and deception; it’d also be disappointing to have yet another adult character be taken out of rotation, so hopefully Reign can find a way to keep him in its orbit.
-I can suspend my disbelief regarding just about anything this show tries to pull, but I’m to believe that Catherine was talking to herself in the middle of an echo-y, mostly empty hall and nobody A) heard her or B) saw her? C’mon.
-Francis and Conde’s staff measuring content was a fun bit of physicality that the show doesn’t always get to show. It was a way of filtering violence through royal society while allowing the tension that had been simmering since Conde’s first appearance to finally boil over in a believable, compelling way. As many problems as I had with Reign‘s fall run, the seeds they planted for Conde vs. Francis paid off handsomely.
-I didn’t even mind Mary’s self-serving bit of political gamesmanship that was the arrangement between Conde and Lola. I like how fast of a thinker she is and how she’s become someone willing to do anything necessary to get what she wants, but let’s not act like she was remotely altruistic here. Putting Conde in a relationship will allow the two of them to be around one another more often, while Lola with a well-off husband won’t need Francis to come and help with the baby as much, thereby lessening her own insecurity about being unable to have a child.
-I was also a bit surprised at how cold her reaction to Greer’s banishment was. I mean, I guess you could argue that Mary doesn’t know the whole story and that she’s grown numb to the losses that she’s been suffering recently, but I assumed that she would have a more emotional reaction to the loss of one of her best friends. Maybe she was disappointed that someone she allowed herself to confide in about the rape would have done something behind her back like this, which would’ve increased the amount of betrayal she felt from the recovery of the ledger.
-Will we hear about Lady Yvonne next week? Or is she stuck in the dungeon for leaving her post and allowing Diane the opportunity to take care of the twins?
-The only thing I didn’t like about the reappearance of Diane was that it felt like a bit of cheat. Trust me, I loved Diane during her time on the show in the first season and I always felt like the show did wrong by sending her character away when she had such an electric dynamic with Catherine and provided an interesting sparring partner for Bash; part of me just thinks that this was the easy way out, pinning the murder of the twins on her and doing so one episode after basically saying Claude wasn’t responsible. While it does make sense as far as motivation, Diane is so far outside of the show’s universe anymore that the reveal itself didn’t have as much impact as it would have had if the culprit was someone with a stronger presence at court.
-If the show felt like Diane was the killer, which I’m not opposed to, the reveal would have hit much harder for me if they brought her back into the fold and made her an important part of the show again before going down this particular path. Doing it now and making this her only episode after she’s been gone for a year (our time) felt a bit rushed, which is a shame considering how much time the show spent on the murder of the twins.
-I did like that Bash was the one who pieced everything together, though. The show always shines for me when they make him an active participant and something other than a servant to Francis’s needs.
-Normally, I would complain about the ghost sex (ghost fingering? do ghosts even have fingers?) here, be it due to the weird perspective (was Catherine fingering herself before falling asleep?) and whatnot, but Alan Van Sprang and Megan Follows had such a powerful episode together that one bit of silliness is easy to look over. I genuinely would not have minded if the episode wholly focused on them and allowed the other storylines to take over come next week.
-But holy hell, that ending. Megan Follows already had such a tremendous episode before that final showdown with Diane – watching her wrestle with the guilt she felt at her lost relationship with Claude, come alive at spending time with the children she thought she’d never see again, own her power by forcing Henry out of her life for good. It was the Emmy-iest episode a CW performer has arguably ever had and Follows hit every beat the show needed her to, expertly flitting between heartbreak and humor, pathos and punchiness. She managed to bring life to a storyline that I wasn’t completely behind before this episode and seeing her slowly realize what Henry was (a product of her guilt, depression, and loneliness manifested from her subconscious) and dissociate herself from the lies he was trying to tell her to get her to kill herself was quite powerful. But that showdown, you guys – that was some amazing television. It was campy, cathartic, absolutely brutal to watch, and completely unexpected; I had absolutely no idea they would off Diane now and while I’ll miss the character, it was a bold choice in a season that needed something like this to gain some momentum. This is the type of storytelling that I want from this show and if Reign can pick its spots to shock wisely while remaining coherent and compelling in its narrative, the remaining 10 episodes of this season have the potential to be tremendous.
-Next week on Reign: Francis and Mary learn of England’s revenge plan for France, while Bash searches for an “undead” man in the village and Catherine uncovers the reason for her hallucinations.