Reverie Season 1 Episode 8 Review: Despedida
Dale McGarrigle
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Things were going just too smoothly for Mara.
Mara saved another client from the program but may be losing herself on Reverie Season 1 Episode 8.
While processing what happened at the end, let's consider the client of the week.
It seemed like a perfect use for Reverie. A dying woman stuck in an assisted-living facility used the program to escape back to happier times.
Or so it seemed. Of course, being Reverie, it was more complicated than that.
It wasn't Mara's finest hour. She was lovestruck by her reunion with Chris and was definitely seeing through heart-colored glasses.
Related: Reverie Season 1 Episode 7 Review: The Black Mandala
Mara assumed, incorrectly, that Pilar just wanted to reconnect with her lost love Joaquin, who got killed while fighting for the rebels in the 1973 coup in Chile.
I'm with Charlie in his reaction to the historically challenged Paul and Mara.
Santayana was right he when said, "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." Just watch the evening news if you don't believe that. Demagoguery is in vogue, and all the warts of the 1950s are again ascendant.
Pilar did use Reverie to relive what was likely the most important time of her life.
But that wasn't her brief fling with a Chilean rebel leader. Instead, it was protecting and rescuing a handful of young girls from government soldiers.
Usually, Mara is more sure-footed when she is searching around people's psyches. But she was off her game this time.
Figuring that PIlar was seeking to rekindle her relationship with Joaquin, she pulled him from his role of a doomed rebel leader, which resulted in government soldiers seizing the girls Pilar was trying to protect.
Related: Reverie Quotes: Season 1 Episode 7
Fortunately, Mara undid her mistake with a block of C-4, blowing up a Jeep to distract the guards. It allowed she and Pilar to sneak in and rescue the girls, with Pilar driving them away in a van through gunfire.
Rather than die in Reverie, Pilar was convinced by Mara to leave behind the memory of those girls to live her final days in assisted living.
Mara still pulled out a happy ending, as she and Charlie were able to locate Elvia, the young girl who gave Pilar her doll. Elvia was now a grandmother and brought her granddaughter named after Pilar. She showed Pilar photos of her children and grandchildren who wouldn't have existed if not for Pilar's efforts to save her.
It was a heartwarming and upbeat moment.
The biggest leftover concern from Reverie Season 1 Episode 7 was Mara's getting injured in the program. Paul took his concerns to Alexis, who did her best to gloss over it.
Apparently, Oliver Hill, Alexis's crazy ex, and her former partner, had warned about something like this happening. So, against her will, Alexis had to call and meet with him, in hopes of stemming this problem.
Their dinner meeting went as well as could be expected, at least at the beginning. Oliver figured out that it was the program which crossed Reverie which caused the problem for Mara.
I don't suspect Oliver had anything to do with the programs crossing, because Charlie pretty much proved that Monica was behind that, to get that interrogation program shut down without actually doing it herself.
Then Oliver determined that the military had designed the program in question, and that set him off ranting. So the two parted on bad terms, once again.
Was the fix that Oliver offered to Alexis legitimate, or is it part of his master scheme? Alexis will check it out from every angle before employing it, I'm sure.
Just what is Oliver up to anyway? He's obviously got a plan to get involved with Reverie again. That security guard he's brought off is going to download something at Onira-Tech, but it's hard to say if season's end will reveal its purpose.
The bigger hanging question right now is what is happening to Mara, and does Oliver have something to do with it? After all, he had gone into Reverie just before that.
Related: Reverie's Sendhil Ramamurthy Q&A
Is what Mara experiencing more of the derealizations she suffered from earlier in the season? Supposedly the drugs Paul gave her are taking care of those. Or is she in her own Reverie, either of her own design or someone else's?
That leads to the question of what was real and imagined among Mara's experiences in recent episodes. Did she really visit her comatose brother-in-law in his hospital room? Was she really re-connecting with Chris, or was that just in her head?
Reverie Season 1 Episode 9 promises to be a visit into Mara's mind.
To try to figure out what's happening to Mara, watch Reverie online.
What's Oliver up to now? What's wrong with Mara? What other dark secrets does Reverie hold? Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.
