Clones?

Episode 6 of Alex Rider begins with James returning to the group but he’s clearly been changed and different from how he was acting before. Alex walks away in disgust when James holds his fist out as a sign of a truce, and the changed kids watch him suspiciously as he leaves. With Grief’s plans involving Kyra being taken away into Eva’s office, Alex realizes what this means and prepares for the worst. Using Kyra as a distraction, Alex heads down to the basement and finds numerous files, including pictures and details of his own surgery overnight. Pictures of him strapped to a chair while experiments are conducted brings back flashes of his past back while strange images on the computer appear to hint closer toward the kids potentially being cloned. At school, Tom receives a strange phone call and races off, believing this to be his calling. Only, it’s actually Mr Langham who brings him before Parker. He immediately receives a frosty reception and gets straight to work questioning him surrounding Alex Friend. Realizing he’s in hot water, Tom attempts to leave are in vain as he finds himself caught in a very difficult position. Alex meanwhile continues to dig deeper into what’s happening in the basement, stumbling upon a cage full of the kids that have been replaced. Only…that means the ones above are actually clones running around. Among the kids inside is Stepan Serenkov; the missing operative from years back. Unfortunately Alex is caught and tied up by Greif before he can release them, who reveals just what Project Gemini is. Jones receives the news about Tom’s disappearance from a concerned Jack and as they watch the snowmobiles mobilizing outside Point Blanc from their drones above, they realize something is up. Meanwhile, Alex is questioned by Greif over his real name and what’s he doing there. As he mentions his Uncle Ian, Greif seemingly doesn’t know who he is and fails to get information extracted from Alex as he begins singing and resisting the serum. While Greif is gone, Kyra returns and saves Alex, freeing him from his binds and revealing she decided against escaping and doubled back on herself after losing the guards in the forest. After admitting the truth about who he is and what he’s doing in Point Blanc, the duo rush off together. At the same time, Crawley arrives and saves Tom while learning Alex has been compromised. Langham has Tom’s phone too which includes everything to uncover his true identity. Back in Point Blanc, Alex and Kyra work together to create a make-shift snowboard. Alex hurries outside and races down the steep mountain-side while being chased, bullets spraying all around him. Eventually he comes to a stop in the middle of the forest as he tumbles down and lands in the trees. Thankfully, the soldiers fail to find him but as Alex makes his way onto the main road, an approaching truck honks its horn loudly as Alex stands in the way, which is where the episode ends. With a good cliffhanger ending and a nice bout of action at the end, the reveal including the clones is certainly unexpected and moves the series further into sci-fi territory. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though and the snowboard chase at the end is well-shot and makes good use of the fluffy snow, especially given how notoriously hard filming on snow can be. The series leaves things wide open going forward too but based on this showing, it looks like we may be gearing up for a very dramatic set of episodes to come.   Published: 04 June 2020 at 2:35 pm on TheReviewGeek.com