Kenna finds Lola crying in the hallway and learns that her friend’s family has disowned her due to Francis claiming the child. Now that Lola is notorious, they want nothing to do with her and refuse to accept her into their home again. As Lola is trapped in a home full of strangers, she’s understandably upset at this sudden rash of loneliness, but Kenna springs into action, telling her that she needs to hold on to anything she can get. Lola needs to gather a nest egg just in case things turn sour for Francis and she has to flee with her child; it helps that since she’s unmarried, anything she is given belongs to her and her alone, so she does have a shot at getting some financial independence if she plays this the right way.
During the carriage ride to Bavay, Mary figures out that Catherine lied to her about going to the noble party – instead, Catherine is heading to Nyon, a small village where she is to give a speech thanking them for naming a monument after her. As Catherine explains that royals have to balance the nobles and the peasants in order to keep their rule safe, their carriage gets surrounded by a group of disgruntled citizens, with their guards being killed in the ensuing scuffle. Mary and Catherine manage to escape through a door built into the carriage and run off into the woods, where they turn their cloaks inside out and hide their jewelry in order to stay hidden in the shadows. While Lola confronts the banker who transferred her dowry to Julian, only to learn that it’s intended for Julian’s father in Hungary now that he died, Mary and an injured Catherine, who hurt her ankle in either a foxhole or a badger hole, come across a village where they look to stay until being rescued. At a nearby inn, Catherine tries to order food, only to be confronted with their lack of coin and the reputation as obstacles to said goods. She and Mary eventually stumble upon the lie that they’re maids who lost the lady they worked for in the plague, a mother and daughter whose lives have been forever changed by events outside their control. The innkeeper agrees to let them work for a meal and a bed at night, but Catherine opts out of the arrangement, which would’ve had her milking a goat, citing her sprained ankle.
Back at the castle, Francis hears about Mary and Catherine going missing, so he names Bash as temporary regent and rides out into the woods with the likes of Conde by his side. As Narcisse offers to help Lola retrieve her dowry in exchange for a cup of tea or two, his status as a worthy lover and influence among the bankers causing her to reconsider his invitation, Catherine suggests she and Mary buy a horse before realizing that it’s too expensive and that they can’t exactly pawn their jewels in exchange for a way out. She then gets Mary to confess that the reason she was so amped to go to Bavay is because there was a physician there who specializes in fertility. 
While the two fake royals collect money from those in the inn, as nobody in that area of the country had ever laid eyes on the real Francis and Mary, Kenna advises Lola to stay as far away from Narcisse as she can. When Lola intimates that she believes Narcisse when he says he didn’t kill either of his previous wives, Kenna presses her on the issue of the butterfly birthmark and how Lola must be interested to see if his lovemaking loves up to his reputation. Lola does end up taking Narcisse up on his offer for tea and the two sit outside in the garden by the water. Narcisse also shows her how to shoot a bow and arrow and uses the opportunity to get more physically intimate with her – steadying her arm, fitting her with a glove, softly speaking into her ear. Meanwhile, Catherine and Mary listen as the crowd inquires to the fake Mary about rumors of Catherine torturing a family of hat makers. Catherine quietly refutes it to Mary, saying that she only tortured the one man, but the things quickly turn when the crowd realizes that Fake Mary lied about the pond of asses milk by the castle. Mary steps in to defend her, though, telling Catherine that she has a plan.
On the way to save Mary and Catherine, Francis, Conde, and a couple of men run into an old woman whose farm was burned down by a man she claims was King Francis. Francis then realizes that someone out there is trying to discredit him and undermine the throne, just as Mary and Catherine decide to hitch a ride with Fake Mary and Fake Francis. The two are headed to a town about halfway between their current village and the castle, so this is about as good a chance as they’ll get if they want to make it home on their own accord. When they come in contact with Fake Mary, Mary gives her the sob story about losing the lady she and Catherine worked for, something that got Fake Mary to inadvertently reveal that she always wanted to be a maid. Catching Fake Mary in a lie, Catherine decides to run with it, telling the girl that she and Mary are professional deceivers on their own, with her daughter portraying Mary, Queen of Scots and herself as Catherine de Medici. Just as Catherine gives Fake Mary her crown in exchange for a ride, Fake Francis arrives back at the inn after setting fire to another family home in the countryside.
At the same time, Armsman Gifford, one of Francis’s men, makes it to the castle and learns of the impostors from Catherine. Mary wants Fake Mary to come to the castle and work as a maid, but it turns out that Gifford is in on the conspiracy to slander the royals and that it wasn’t Fake Francis who got Fake Mary into the world of royal playacting – it was Gifford. After killing the other men in Fake Mary’s inner circle, including Fake Francis, Gifford grabs his beloved, Mary, and Catherine and heads toward White Horse Hill, the site of a possible royal execution. On the way there, Mary and Catherine get Fake Mary to confirm that Gifford is behind this, though Fake Mary only reluctantly agrees to be the one to take Gifford out with Mary’s blade. Catherine believes that Fake Mary’s cowardice will serve her well, as it means she wants to live and that she can get closer to Gifford, but when Fake Mary fails at stabbing Gifford and gets her neck snapped by the turncoat armsman. Mary and Catherine then learn that Elizabeth is behind the slander due to Mary donning the English coat of arms, resulting in Mary poisoning Gifford’s horse and getting the animal to trample him to death, just as Francis arrives to save them.
When they return home, Catherine tells Francis to trust Mary and to be honest with his wife, lest he want a marriage of distance and lacking true love. Elsewhere, Narcisse watches a girl he believes to be Lola getting into a bathtub, thereby fulfilling his offer to help her with her dowry if she would let him watch her bathe. However, it turns out that Lola got her laundry girl to get in the tub and with Narcisse already having secured her dowry, she didn’t need to bathe for his enjoyment anyway. However, Narcisse is still pursuing Lola due to them having the same wants (to find love) and her being an intriguing game player. This time, Lola returns the interest by putting her hand on his before going back inside from the balcony. In the royal chambers, Mary again presses Francis for the reason why he’s being so distant and he chalks it up to the pressure that goes along with being king. He vows to fix things and to keep their relationship from becoming like his parents’. Mary agrees, though the look in her eyes suggests that she’s listening to Catherine’s advice of not rocking the boat too much.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“I may not care about peasants individually, but in general, I care a great deal.”
-“My feet are too dainty to get caught in a foxhole!”
-“Purses are for servants.”
-“Alas, m’poor ankle. My daughter shall have to work for the both of us.”
-“We must think practically. We need to buy a horse.”
-“Where do these stories come from? It was one man and I only stretched him a little. Nails, indeed. First you should know he was a terrible, terrible hat maker.”
-“Well, aren’t you a little short to play queens?”
-“Poison?” “Oh, you say that so hopefully now.”
-“I don’t carry poison everywhere. I might accidentally kill myself.”
-“My dear, never give up a crown. To anybody.”
-One interesting thing I noticed was that the Italian envoy’s visit was a non-factor in the narrative. When Francis mentioned a visit from the envoy, I expected the episode to be a little more political and play up the tension between him and Mary, as well as Mary and her sense of duty to the throne, so for it to go a whole different direction was quite fun. And it was a nice change of pace from the show’s focus on the micro aspects of Francis being king, a self-contained detour with the best character work of the season.
-The episode was also great because it allowed the show to have some fun amidst the political machinations of 16th century France. What I most liked about the first season was that Reign never took itself too seriously and took what chances it could to distance itself from the expectations of a costume drama. Season two has been decidedly dour, so much so that this type of episode was not only welcome – it was necessary.
-It’s no coincidence that an episode this full of life prominently featured Megan Follows, who had been sidelined a little during the first five episodes of the season. Catherine is the most complex character on the show and injects an unbelievable amount of energy into whatever scenes she gets, so giving her this prominent a storyline could only lead to great things, especially when paired with Mary. The dynamic she has with Mary is so rich that simply putting them in the same room by themselves and letting them bounce off of one another would’ve been enough, but this episode went above and beyond the call of duty. It made both characters proactive; it added dimension to their relationship, in that Catherine might actually respect the girl that Francis chose to marry; it seems like it’ll inform a lot of choices that Mary makes going forward regarding her marriage and the way she rules; and it highlighted the ways that Mary and Catherine are similar while showing just how lost Mary is as a wife and a ruler.
-It also gave us the sequence of Catherine demonstrating how you kill someone with a blade on Mary, which would’ve made the entire storyline worthwhile even if it wasn’t already great.
-The most intriguing aspect of the episode was the final look that Mary gave the camera. Didn’t that seem to signify that she’s on her road to becoming a mini-Catherine as far as choosing to focus on herself vs. her marriage? I don’t think Mary could ever give up on Francis the way that Catherine gave up on reaching Henry, but it looks like Francis’s lie is going to make things much more difficult for himself than he might’ve anticipated.
-In case you were wondering where you knew Roger (aka Fake Francis) from, that was Ari Millen from Orphan Black.
-The only real criticism I have for this episode is that it continues the weird TV trend of making neck snapping look really easy. I know about plot expediency and all that, but there’s no supernatural element here and therefore the show should be a bit more realistic as far as human anatomy and whatnot.
-I love that Elizabeth was the one responsible for the slanderous impostors that popped up around France. Not only was the plan itself quite creative, it keeps the show’s universe feeling large without being bloated and there’s a sense that stuff like this is adding tension to a dynamic that will come to a head in the near future. I only wonder how close we are to an appearance from Elizabeth.
-I do wonder, though, why Francis doesn’t figure out a way to carry something that confirms to people that he is indeed the king of France. Now that he knows that people are attempting to cause unrest around France, maybe that will become a priority?
-I thought Fake Mary was quite a good guest character. She became sympathetic fast enough that her death was sad and her fate coming at the hands of a man, the same man who set her down the path that ended her life, was a nice reminder to Mary that she has to have some sort of identity and autonomy away from Francis. Arguably, seeing Fake Mary die confirmed to Mary that what Catherine told her at the inn had some validity.
-Another cool thing about the episode was that the B-story actually thematically tied into the A-story. Some of the episodes this season have been a little disparate, so watching Lola and Mary deal with the same issues in decidedly different ways was a nice parallel and an interesting commentary on the socio-political climate at the time. Lola has been deemed damaged goods, more or less, for bearing a royal heir, so she doesn’t have a lot of romantic or financial options and it makes sense that she would gravitate toward someone like Narcisse. She tends to see the best in people, so I believe that she would be able to look past his sullied reputation, and he’s a good-looking, financially well-off leader who understands her, seems to value her, and could help her and her child live a life that they wouldn’t be able to without him. But Narcisse has been painted as such thus far that I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop – I wanted to believe him when he told Lola about what happened to his wives and when he tells her how intriguing he finds her, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is a long con meant to inflict damage upon Francis and Mary. We’ve already seen that Narcisse is no stranger to setting traps and methodically exacting revenge, so I wouldn’t put it past him for his feelings for Lola to be a charade.
-Also, I’m kind of feelin’ Narcisse’s chemistry with Lola, and how they’re two outsiders who’ve found one another, so it’d be nice to keep that going for a bit.
-Next week on Reign: Princess Claude makes an unexpected visit home, while Narcisse tries to make Francis betray his ethics, Mary aligns herself with Conde, and Greer returns from her wedding tour early.
