Catherine wakes Claude up with the intention of taking her to meet her future husband – the son of a Bavarian count. However, Claude is in no condition to see other people, given that her hair is a bird’s nest, and it’s not as if she wants to be married to someone from the country anyway. Catherine argues that the alliance with Bavaria could help France’s trade routes and that each of her children has to do their duty in continuing the family line, so whether Claude wants to be married or not, she’s getting married. Out in the village, Conde gets kidnapped and taken to the woods by a group of Protestants who know about his pledge of affiliation with them. Along with Jacob Rivel, the self-proclaimed leader of the cause, Conde looks on at the growing number of Protestants and hears of the group’s hope for their minister to get an audience with the crown. Elsewhere in the woods, Lola’s horse gets scared away by Narcisse in an attempt to get her to ride back to court with him. Though she doesn’t want to be near him right now, it’s an awful long way back to the castle and she ends up riding in front of him, all the while hearing his talk about his former wife’s riding habits.
When the Protestant minister comes to court, Conde says it’s because he wants to have the church that was burned down rebuilt, yet the man uses the opportunity to threaten the crown by saying the Protestants have amassed a considerable amount of gunpowder. In three days’ time, they’ll be staging an attack on the Catholics, so Francis orders the minister arrested before turning his attention to finding the accomplices. He sends Conde and Bash out into the village to do some digging before shutting down Mary’s attempt at getting involved in the action. While Narcisse again tries to tempt Lola into starting something with him, saying that she should have something in her life that’s purely about pleasure and doesn’t involve the tedium of court life, Catherine meets with Claude’s proposed husband William and his father to discuss the possibility of marriage. However, William’s father is unsure about the union for two reasons: 1) Claude has a bit of a reputation, so he’s concerned about whether her virtue is still in tact and 2) He doesn’t understand why Catherine is allowing her daughter to marry down in class. In order for him to sign off on the union, he’s going to have to get assurance that Claude’s virtue is still in tact.
As Bash and Conde interview members of the minister’s congregation, they’re interrupted by the arrival of the Vatican inquisitors, who perform a violent search of the house before taking the patriarch away. Back at the castle, Lola tells Francis that she knows about him killing Henry and that she did end up planting the evidence despite her previous statement about tossing it out of her carriage. Yet Lola is the one who receives the biggest shock when Francis informs her that Narcisse threatened her baby, one of many acts that has Francis bound and determined to take Narcisse’s head. Francis and Mary, both feeling the weirdness of assuming their normal duties under 
While in the dungeon, Francis tries to reason with the minister, promising him that no harm would come to him or his people if information is given about the attack. The minister claims that the gunpowder is being kept at a monastery, yet when Francis sends Conde and a group of men to apprehend it, it turns out that there’s no gunpowder. It’s only saw dust and a bloody threat written on the wall. After hearing that she’ll have to do a virginity test in order to get the marriage she didn’t want, Claude complains to Bash about the possibility of going to Bavaria. Since Claude has ruined a few opportunities to stay around France without having to marry, Bash suggests that she’s only doing acting out because she wants Catherine’s attention, the type of rebelliousness that initially drew him to her. However, in Bash’s mind, a marriage can be a new start for his half-sister and she seems to hear what he’s trying to say. Bash then goes to Catherine about the Count’s region being sparse, thereby not as good for trade routes as she had intimated to Claude. He doesn’t want Claude to be a casualty of Catherine’s manipulative nature and Catherine explains that she prays for all of her children, even those that she lost when they were young. While talking to Bash, though, she sees the two girls (her twin daughters that died as infants) on the bed in her chambers and Bash watches as she tucks them into bed, even though he only sees his mother.
When Bash hears about Narcisse being back at his home, he organizes a team of men, produces a warrant, and searches the man’s home, only to find that the cypher was not there. Back in the dungeon, the minister is being stretched in hopes of giving up the names of his conspirators and Francis ends up going too far, separating the man’s shoulder and causing him to pass out. He does end up stopping, though, when Mary informs him that the man would be a martyr and further inflame the tensions between the Protestants and Catholics with his death. The minister’s arm gets set back into place, but it turns out that he has a blood clot forming in his chest, something that needs immediate medical attention if he is to live. With the nearest physician at least half a day away, Francis orders Bash to take the man to the doctor vs. waiting for him to come to the castle. Meanwhile, Narcisse slithers his way into Lola’s room and confronts her about the cypher, which he found quickly after she left that. Mostly, he’s just saddened that she chose Francis over him and when she comes for him about threatening her friends and family, he says that it was all a way to push Francis to be a better leader. Even though Narcisse might be a dangerous man, he was dangerous in a dangerous world, the type of dangerous that could protect Lola and her baby at a particularly precarious time.
As Claude gets the virginity test performed on her by a clergyman, Catherine comfortingly puts her hand on her daughter’s hand, an act of kindness inspired by Bash’s urging. Afterwards, Catherine apologizes for making her daughter go through the test and flashes back to Claude’s jealousy over the twin girls, whom she pinched and looked at with scorn. Catherine continues that she’s done the most she could to protect and mother Claude, yet when Claude says that she doesn’t want to get married, Catherine informs her that the deed has been decided. Later, as an act of rebellion, Claude sits on Narcisse’s lap just as she’s about to meet William, causing the Count to walk away in disgust and Narcisse to rev his engine, so to speak. Out in the woods, Bash and his men are attacked by Protestants, but the surprise comes when the minister is stabbed in the stomach and killed by one of his own. Bash ends up being it out alive and informs Mary and Francis about the strange scene that occurred once he was stabbed. It turns out that the Protestants killed the minister and hanged him like a heretic in the middle of the village, saying that this was the fault of the royals. A brawl breaks out in the middle of the village and though Francis and Mary make it to safety, she spits out that he was the one responsible for this and that she has no faith in him anymore.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“I couldn’t convince the Count of your chastity, but surely God can.”
-Visually, I think this was one of the best episodes of the season – the creepy “executioner” mask; the vibrancy of the red on the Protestant doors; the angle of Bash watching the minister being gutted; the body of the minister being hanged upside down in the town square; the shot of Narcisse behind Lola’s bed post. Reign‘s a good-looking show anyway, but the art direction and Charles Biname’s direction were both especially strong here.
-I’m very curious if Francis will be pulling back on the way he’s approached Mary. Now that she’s claimed she has no faith in him, does he have any incentive to pull her back to him? Or is he going to let her drift further away while he deals with Narcisse and hope that their love is strong enough to overcome the forced deception he’s had to implement?
-What I don’t like, though, is that the show seems to hit the same beats with Francis and Mary pretty often, which is surprising considering that the show has a pretty fast pace. The closing scene with Lola might’ve been too brief and felt tacked on, but at least it kept this episode from ending in the same way that last week’s did, with Mary declaring that she doesn’t know who Francis is anymore. There was another incident earlier this season where 2-3 episodes in a row had almost verbatim conversations about how they need to trust each other if they’re going to make it through this, so it would be nice if the show could find a way to differentiate some of these plot points and interactions more. We’re eight episodes into the season and they’re already starting to run together, so if they can’t take advantage of the Francis/Mary dynamic, it might be interesting to sequester them away from each other and bring them back together later in the season, at least for a change of pace. I did, however, like them having to welcome nobles back to court, just because it pointed toward the royal façade they have to put on in order to keep themselves looking stronger as rulers and as a unit.
-For some reason, I always like costume dramas in this time period that invoke the Vatican. I’m not religious, but I enjoy the world expansion of relating a show to one of the most powerful institutions in the world. Reign hasn’t been shy about showcasing religion this season and bringing the Vatican in not only amps up the stakes, it felt like a natural course of progression that will lead somewhere in the near future.
-The flashback casting of Claude was eerily spot on, so good job, Reign casting department. I’m guessing that the reason the girls are back in Catherine’s life is to get her to remember the reason for their death, as that’s likely a memory that she had to repress due to the sheer trauma of one child killing two of her siblings. But now that Catherine knows, is she going to do something about Claude still being at court? (In other words, are Claude’s days numbered?) And why did the girls follow Claude when she left the room after her conversation with Catherine?
-As vaguely relieved as I was that they added some more context to Claude’s thing with Bash (he was into her because of how rebellious she was to Catherine), they had to go and make the girl a murderer. I want to like her because I think she has an interesting role (a princess resenting being shipped away, a woman defiant against the sexual mores of the time, someone trying to make their own life while being entrapped by the responsibility of her lineage) and Rose Williams has been playing her well, but how are we supposed to attach to a character who was painted as a sexual predator in episode one and a murderer in episode two? And the juxtaposition of these acts with someone who carries herself like Claude is still so bizarrely jarring to me; the swerve against making her Paris-Hilton-in-a-corset is appreciated, but c’mon.
-I loved the final conversation that Catherine had with Claude, though. It was edited well (the flashes to the twins’ deaths), Megan Follows absolutely sold the tightrope she had to walk as Claude’s mother (she tried her best and loves her daughter, yet she can’t let emotion cloud what’s best for the family), and I’m intrigued enough about what Catherine remembering the deaths will mean for her relationship with her daughter.
-Kenna had absolutely nothing to do again. And Greer was absent – again. I’m totally fine with Lola getting this much screen time, but Kenna has been invisible all season and Greer’s been the same since she wed Castleroy a couple of episodes ago. While I know the show is already bursting at the seams and not all characters will be used to their fullest capacity at all times, it feels like Reign could do a better job at folding more ancillary characters into the main storylines.
-So, I kind of think that Lola should have aligned herself with Narcisse. With Francis slowly losing his grip on the throne, she’s going to have to have somebody to protect her; if he gets ran off by the French citizens, she’ll be in danger due to her association with him and without Narcisse, she won’t have anyone to look out for her. Narcisse might be a monster, but he’s a monster she could’ve trained and I think his resentment of her decision to choose Francis could come back to bite her.
-Conde once again hits on Mary, telling her that Francis is a fool for shutting her out. Seems like the countdown to their hookup (her emotional distance from Francis, his infatuation) is still on.
-I wonder what happened to Lola’s horse. Someone put out a medieval APB on Rosie, please.
-Could the cypher come into play at a later date? Narcisse has possession of it, as far as we know, and it’s such a powerful weapon that I can’t imagine him not using it on someone at court, not when he has extra motivation to take Francis down after what happened with Lola. But how high up will he aim as far as knocking out one of Francis’s most valued men?
-I hope this show isn’t taking Catherine down a similar line to what it did with Henry. Granted, Henry’s madness ended up working quite well, but Catherine is the show’s most valuable character and someone that I can’t see it creatively thriving without. Now that she’s seeing the girls more frequently, it seems like the show is saying that her condition is getting worse and that her mental state might come into question (e.g. Bash seeing her tucking in a couple of ghosts). Is it too early to start the #SaveCatherine hashtag because I might have to at this rate?
-If Catherine was going to bribe the church officials into saying that Claude was a virgin, why did the girl have to go through the test to begin with?
-I like whenever the show gets into image, propaganda, and the exchange of information. It was touched on during “Three Queens” and it pops back up here in the form of the Protestants using the minister’s death as means to further their cause. Stuff like this is interestingly paralleled to today’s world (e.g. public perception of politicians/leaders vs. the truths behind their actions/policies), while perception and propaganda make for more complex foes for Mary and Francis than they’ve had to date. Having to control their image is a good wrinkle on top of the tangible threat from Narcisse and getting into how the rest of the country views the royals makes the show feel less claustrophobic.
–Reign is on hiatus next week, but on December 4th, Bash thinks he’s figured out how Francis can defeat Narcisse, while Mary proposes the idea of marrying a Protestant (Lord Conde) to a Catholic (Princess Claude) and Greer discovers that her connection to Protestantism runs deeper than she thought.
