Hanna – The Trial

By: Kelly Kearney

When we left off with episode one Hanna meets former villain Marissa after Utrax assumes she died in an explosion. With the people hunting her assuming she is dead, it gives Marissa time to figure out their next move. Can Hana have the life Erik planned for her? With Marissa in charge, anything is possible.

Paris, France

After her ordeal with Clara (Yasmin Monet Prince) and Carmichael (Dermot Mulroney) we watch as Marissa (Mireille Enos) heads back to her Paris apartment to find a Dear John letter from her boyfriend. It seems he could not handle life with an international agent for the CIA and he bailed. Now she is alone, back to her old job and secretly keeping Hanna (Esmé Creed-Miles) safe in a hide-out not far from where she lives. With Carmichael occupied by what went wrong with Clara, it is easy for Marissa to fly under the radar until she can organize an escape for Hanna.

Meanwhile, at The Meadows Sandy (Áine Rose Daly) and Jules (Gianna Keihl) seem to have patched things up enough to be gossiping in the cafeteria about the mysterious car that pulled up to their school. Sandy thinks someone must be back. That someone is Clara who has been put in Leo’s (Anthony Welsh) care in hopes he is able to determine what happened to make her reject her genetically programmed mind to always obey their orders. Leo enforced the story that Samira, her mother, is dead and The Meadows is a place she can call home. “If you want any life at all, it has to be here,” he says. Then, he drops some equally awful news and tells her that Hanna died in the cabin explosion. This sets Clara off and she grabs Leo by the throat and starts to choke him. She eventually releases her death grip and Leo takes her to the facility’s control room. There she sees the familiar faces of the girl’s she was raised with. This was Leo’s chance to remind her that everything she ever knew was now at The Meadows.

Back in Paris Marissa gets a new assistant/spy, Sonia (Emma D’Arcy), courtesy of John Carmichael. Her mission is to play nice at the office and then follow Marissa everywhere she goes and report back to her boss. Sonia is warned that Marissa can be extremely unsuspecting and to never take her eyes off of her. Sonia assumes she has it all handled until Marissa gives her the slip and hops on a motorcycle to take off to parts unknown where she ends up is at the hide out with Hanna. With a shopping bags of food and a smile, Marissa makes the teenager some food and then they get down to business. To stay dead Hanna needs a new identity and a new look. Marissa cuts and bleaches her hair, takes a headshot for her new passport and documents and then calls her old high school teacher in Canada. She asks the kind and seemingly uncomplicated man if he could take Hanna in no questions asked. His rural northern life would be perfect for her, but most importantly away from the watchful eye of Utrax. Erik (Joel Kinnamen) promised her a normal life and this teacher of Marissa’s might be the only way for Hanna to cut the strings of a fate that she has been entangled in her whole life. The woman who chased her into the forest is the same woman who is going to finish what Erik Heller started – giving this kid a fresh start somewhere safe.

Welcome Home, Clemency

Speaking of fresh starts, Clara is now Clemency or so her identity notebook says. She returns to the trainee program where Sandy is there to welcome her home. Clemency immediately notices the difference in her old neighboring cell-mate 242. Sandy is different. She seems overly invested in the lies The Meadows is feeding her and it does not help that she talks to her “mother” every day in texts. These people do not exist and on some level Sandy knows this, but loneliness can make people thinks crazy things and nobody is lonelier than these trainees swiped from birth and raised to be killers. Lies are what The Meadows feeds them but maybe that is all Clemency has now that her mother is dead?

Heading back to Paris and Marissa is sick of ducking Sonia and confronts the woman about tailing her. She lets the spy know that Carmichael sent her to spy but its not needed. She has no intention of betraying Utrax and if Sonia does not quit tracking her she will “rip your face off and mail it back to Carmichael.” This easy going life Marissa tries to convince Sonia she is living is just a way to bide her some time until she can get things in order for Hanna. After meeting up with a trusted friend over some fake IDs, she heads back to the hide out to talk to Hanna who does not seem to be in the mood to talk about this new life Marissa has planned for her. All Hanna can think about is rescuing her friend Clara. The wolf in Hanna relates to the wolf in Clara and knows she must be struggling in whatever cage Utrax locker her up in. Of course, Hanna is right. Clara is not settling in as well as John would like, even with the fabulous life Terri (Cherrelle Skeete) created for her. Things seem off and John gives Terri a few days to bring Clemency up to speed or else he will have to cut (kill) her from the program.

The trainee that is taking to The Meadows like fish to water is Sandy. She is thrilled about her new life and friends, but finds herself at constant odds with her bestie Jules. Especially now that Jules has been expanding her mind through literature. After only a few weeks in this simulated real world, Jules has already been exhausted by the hetero-normativity that dominates their lives. That is not how she identifies and the more Jules reads the more interested she seems in the fairer sex, in particularly, her friend Sandy.

Passways Pharmaceuticals

In Paris things are wrapping up with Marissa and this Canada plan and she texts Hanna “From Mom” that she needs to be ready to leave. Only when Marissa shows up to take her away, Hanna is gone! Where did she go? The resourceful teen flirted her way into a neighbor boy’s house, stole his father’s wallet and used his computer to look up the location of a lace called Passways Pharmaceuticals. When Hanna cut the medical implant out of Clara’s arm the little device said Passways on it. Knowing this could be a clue to where Clara is means Hanna is headed that way and so is Marissa. Once she arrives outside the company’s doors she fakes her way into a drug trial they are testing. The answers to finding Clara must be there.

However, Clara is not at Passways. She is in The Meadows and things are getting tense for her. When she finds out her friend 242/Sandy told Utrax about her mother, Clara blames Sandy for being captured and the death of Hanna. A fight breaks out between the two girls until Jules and some guards drag Clara to a holding cell.

As Clara/Clemency gets a time out, Hanna is at Passways being drugged and propped in front of a projection screen. In some kind of throwback to The Clockwork Orange a nurse straps Hanna into her seat and forces her to watch as a camera flies through a dense forest. At first Hanna hears the calming voice of her father, but it quickly turns menacing. She goes from relaxed and drugged to full on raging panic. She rips out her IV and goes on a rampage, smashing through windows and killing any staff worker that tries to stop her. Eventually, she comes to a room where she creeps up behind a man (Antoine Mathieu) in headphones typing away on the computer. Over his shoulder she reads an email that ties Passways to a place called The Meadows and that is enough for Hanna to know this must be where they took her friend. She startles the man with a forearm around his neck, but before she can beat the location of The Meadows out of him she is chased by guards through the building and out the door. Luckily, Marissa is waiting for her with a getaway car and the two peel wheels out of the Passways parking garage and away from the hail of bullets raining down on them. Now that Hanna has an idea where her friend was taken, she will not stop until she rescues her. Not that Clara is looking for a rescue. She assumes her friend is dead and the only person she has now is Terri, who decides to break Utrax rules and make friends with the reluctant trainee.