12 Monkeys - 'Lullaby'

Oh. So this episode is going to hurt then.

Time is on the brink of destruction again, thanks to the Witness's vicious counterstroke, but his actions have given Jones a plan.

The Witness is using Time Travel to do what he does. That means that without Time Travel, none of it would exist: the Army of the 12 Monkeys, the Splinter programme, Sam's disappearance, maybe even the plague itself. Thus, Jones does what she believes is necessary and sends Cassie back to the moment of her daughter Hannah's death to kill the younger version of Jones and erase Time Travel.

Cassie completes her mission, but immediately finds herself back where she arrived in 2020, this time with Cole, who has insisted on being sent back to stop her. As she tries to prove that she already killed Jones, they realise that this is the same day over again, especially when Cole's presence sees them thrown in the Scav Tank with Jennifer. Each time Jones dies, the day resets; Time needs time travel to exist, which means that Jones can't die. More tragic yet, although Cassie realises that Hannah is only suffering from bacterial meningitis, Time won't let her save the child because that would refocus Jones on curing the plague and not preventing it. As Jennifer puts is, Time wants Jones just the way she is. So, they try to wait out the day, but that doesn't work either, so clearly they are here to do something.

Cole engineers a meeting with Jones, although it does require them all to be executed by firing squad, to ask her a question raised by his conversations with Cassie: Is a moment of happiness worth a long period of loss?

Yay!

Cut to Cole and Cassie being recovered to 2044, where they try to convince Jones that Time needs her; needs them. To prove it, they take her to the Daughters' camp and explain that they couldn't disrupt her creation of time travel, so instead they faked Hannah's death early, then resuscitated and cured her, finally delivering her to the Daughters, who took her in for the next twenty four years. Jones's heartbreak was needed, but now she has at least a little time to get to know her daughter.

Just to bring us down again, a drunk Ramse threatens to shoot Cassie for bringing about the events which lost his son. She offers an alternative, however. She was in the Witness's mind while he was in hers, and in the words of Jonathan Harker, she knows where the bahstahd sleeps. She suggests that she and Ramse go to a place called Titan and kill the Witness.

I admit, I was worried this episode would be a total downer, what with Jones's daughter basically dying over and over again. In the end that plot went pleasantly upbeat, and the episode also provided a salutary lesson for Cassie, as just following the mission became not merely ineffective, but impossible. The final scene added a new twist, as Cassie's revelation gave the first indication that the Witness, for all his power, might truly be vulnerable. I doubt it will be so easy, but perhaps there is hope.