Clarissa makes her way into the queen’s chambers and rifles through her things, only to be interrupted by two of Catherine’s servants, taking the opportunity to steal a romantic moment in a private room. Afterwards, though, the female servant hears Clarissa whispering and goes to the window to peek behind the curtain, confused as to who she was hearing and whether they were of any danger to her. Clarissa then latches on to the girl and snaps her neck. Mary visits Bash at the stables and he assures her that the Vatican is going to ultimately side in their favor and legitimize him. She brings up the toll all the recent castle drama has to be playing on Charles and Henry and suggests that they take the boys to the Frost Fair in town as a way for them to socialize and get their minds off the instability of their home life.
However, when Bash and Mary load Charles and Henry into the carriage and set off for the village, a group of anti-Medici thugs attempt to capture the boys, a product of the unrest the country is facing. Everyone makes it home safely and Catherine confronts Mary about the danger the children are facing, as she claims they’ll be all but orphaned once she’s executed by Henry. They’ll receive no attention from their father, who will be wrapped up in his new marriage to Diane, and Bash will be dealing with the type of unrelenting pressure he hasn’t yet faced, but Mary pledges to raise the boys as if they’re her own before suggesting that she help Clarissa. Specifically, she wants to give the girl her own chambers and a mask to cover part of her face; Catherine, though, compares her daughter to an animal that needs to be put down. While Clarissa finds the mask in the box of things she swiped from the chambers, only to grow angry when she views her reflection, Lord Hugo warns Bash that he might need to begin thinking about doing something with the princes in order to assure his own safety and the safety of his position in the country. He argues that blood will be spilled as a result of the change to the line of succession – the only question is whose will it be.
Bash wants to send the boys away for their own protection, to avoid having them grow up in an environment of fear, while Mary chalks his decision up to his feeling guilty over what happened with Francis and rejects the idea of sending the boys away. She uses her leverage with Henry against Bash and he reluctantly agrees to put extra guards outside their room. Meanwhile, in Paris, Lola arrives at Burgundy House to settle the gambling debts of her brother Frederick. The man he owes, Morris, claims that the debt is much more complicated than what Frederick intimated, as the latter lied about his worth and tried to cheat at the table, a serious breach of house rules. As a result, the cost of his freedom has increased from what he owed + interest to what he owed, interest, and a night with Lola. She offers to double the payment instead and Morris rejects the idea, claiming that he’s been around nobles long enough to where he wants to finally get to touch a noble girl, a woman of title. Before he can make a move, though, word comes that a viscount wants to wager double Frederick’s debt on one cut of the cards – that viscount being Francis. When the cards are cut, Francis loses badly and talks his way into wagering 16 times the debt owed and the rights to the girl; luckily, he wins and gets to walk off with Lola.
Back at the castle, Nostradamus brings a Bible to Catherine in hopes of providing her absolution before her scheduled execution. However, she rejects his advances and suggests that he bring her poison, as she doesn’t want Henry to have satisfaction about the spectacle surrounding her beheading. He leaves the book, though, just as Mary and Bash walk outside into an impromptu Frost Fair. Feeling guilty about the boys not getting to go to the fair, Bash put it together himself and Mary kisses him for the sweet gesture. However, soon enough, Kenna and Greer notice that both Charles and Henry are gone and 
when the children all take their masks off, it’s confirmed that someone took the princes. That someone? Bash, who orchestrated the “kidnapping” as a way to get the boys headed toward a nearby abbey before their ultimate destination of Spain. Elsewhere, the boys and their driver make it to their first checkpoint to eat and rest before hitting the road again, only for Clarissa to sneak off the wagon, having stowed away. She takes the boys on her own and promises to care for them, just as Lola thanks Francis for saving her and her increasingly adrift brother. Francis can relate to feeling lost and the two discuss what he doesn’t miss about court (his mother’s meddling) and the recent string of drama that has rocked the castle. She assures him not to be ashamed of the pain he’s feeling and that his heart will mend soon enough.
Nostradamus and Catherine’s guard bust into her room and find that she’s hung herself from the ceiling with a rope that had been left. They get her down and Nostradamus pledges to bring her to the infirmary, only to take her to her chambers and revive her. Catherine’s ready to hitch a ride with a wagon at the east end of the castle, which will take her to Italy so that she can regain her strength, but her journey gets derailed when Nostradamus informs her of the children being kidnapped. He tells her of Bash sending men to find the boys and she thinks that Bash was the one responsible for the kidnapping in the first place; Catherine promises not to leave the country until she knows the boys are safe. She later confronts Mary about the promise to take care of the boys and the subject of the box found in the passageway, the one that Clarissa took, gets broached, with Mary mentioning the piece of skin that was wrapped around the lockets of Charles’ and Henry’s hair that Catherine had been keeping. The skin belongs to Clarissa and Mary surmises that it means that the girl wants Catherine to know that she has the boys. Catherine pleads her way into coming along with Bash and Mary as they track the whereabouts of Henry and Charles, which Mary grudgingly accepts.
Lola and Francis wake up the following morning and she again thanks him for saving her and for the wine the two shared the prior night. He confesses to feeling empty inside despite all the material wealth that he has, a feeling that she knows deeply, and the two share a kiss. Lola pulls away, afraid of being disloyal to Mary, but Francis assures her that he’ll never see his former fiancée again and Lola gives in, with the two falling on the bed together. The search party finds the boys’ driver dead and Bash, Mary, and Catherine follow a trail that leads them to a nearby lake where Clarissa is holding Charles and Henry. They find the boys gathering rocks to put in their pockets, an order given to them by Clarissa, and when she sees that the jig is up, she holds Charles at knife point. Tearfully, Clarissa claims that Catherine never loved her and that she was tired of being forced to hide away as she’s been in the shadows her entire life. Since Catherine took away any chance of family for her daughter, she wants to do the same by killing the boys. Catherine steps up and tells her daughter not to be like her, not to be so passionate in your convictions that you’re willing to lose everything. Catherine lived her life like that and now she’s an inch from being beheaded; it looks as if Clarissa is going to forgive her mother, only for her to latch on tighter to Charles and ready herself to slit his throat. She’s interrupted when Mary hits her over the head with a rock and kills her.
Mary marvels at Catherine opting to stay behind when she had the opportunity to be free and escape her execution, while Catherine admits that she owes the lives of all of her sons to Mary. She then gets taken back into custody and when everyone returns to the castle, Bash promises Mary that the boys will have more security and attention for the foreseeable future. They make up from their spat earlier and Mary suggests that they get married today, getting what they want and not playing it safe for once. She proposes, only for Bash to reject and propose himself, an offer that she accepts and seals with a kiss. Meanwhile, as Lola and Francis prepare to leave, he receives word of Catherine’s impending execution, said to happen within the week. He decides to return to court to stop his father from murdering his mother, while members of the castle guard toss Clarissa’s body down a hill in lieu of digging a grave.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“How lucky I am to have such steadfast support.”
-“It’s all very thrilling, but let’s save that tale for later.”
-“Safe choices don’t always make us safe.”
-This was the first episode without opening narration, yes? I guess they figure that the show is successful enough to where it didn’t need the premise stated in the back half of the season.
-Was I the only one who expected Clarissa to still be alive at the end of the episode? After she was hit by the rock, I figured she was done for, but the fact that they cut back to her body and showed people “laying her to rest” just begged for a final revelation that she survived. Instead, it was just a heartbreaking coda to what was a pretty strong episode anyway.
-Snapping a neck always looks really easy on television. I mean, a malnourished girl who lived in the walls for years can quickly dispatch somebody in the same way that vampires do on The Originals.
-The fact that Reign killed Clarissa right as she became Richard Harrow makes me sad. C’mon, show. There was so much emotional complexity left to be explored and it’s more than a touch disappointing that Reign cut one of the signifiers of its weirdness/unique approach to period drama.
-I like how this episode expanded the show’s universe, especially since it took us to another city for the first time. Not only did it give one of Mary’s ladies something interesting to do that wasn’t directly tied to Mary and threw her up against another character, it made the show feel bigger and offered an interesting visual with the pleasure palace that the Burgundy House looked to be. The only disappointment in the show’s Paris adventure was that we didn’t get a Diane sighting, since that was where she claimed to be heading when she left the castle.
-The lighting when Nostradamus brought the Bible to Catherine was gorgeous. If any show on television is going to take advantage of natural lighting, it’d be this show.
-Favorite outfits: Kenna and Greer looked amazing at the Frost Fair. Reign does winter wear quite well. However, my favorite visual of the episode was Clarissa standing by the boys after killing the driver and taking his cloak. Spooky.
-Nice to see Reign taking a plot from Heathers.
-Catherine’s speech to Clarissa about not making the same mistakes that she did might have made me choked up. That was some beautiful acting, Megan Follows, and it made the reality of Clarissa’s death all the more sad. But will we get to see just how Mary handles the responsibility of taking a life?
-Next week on Reign: Mary must decide whether to marry Francis or Bash, while Marie de Guise’s visit to the castle troubles Catherine and Henry.
1 Comment
I’m pretty sure if Clarissa was meant to be dead-dead, she would’ve been buried. I’ll bet we see her in some form again.