This is it. The final episode of season two. Overall, was it an improvement? I don’t think as a season it was, no.

There were episodes that I definitely enjoyed. Looking back, I dug the season premier, “Sleeper,” Martha Jones’ first ep, the wedding ep, and the final two-parter. That’s five out of 13 that I really liked. Probably not the best average. I suppose it will really amount to personal taste.

However, if you enjoyed any episodes of Torchwood in the past, you’d almost assuredly appreciate this one. It had action, intrigue, pathos, twists. It was about as good as the show gets, and when the show starts up its third year, it will probably be changed a lot due to the events of this episode. So read on for a recap with my thoughts and plenty of spoilers.

Last week the Torchwood team was ambushed but escaped a bombing at the hands of Captain John Hart, who claimed he would make Jack suffer by tearing apart everything around him, due to Jack rejecting him. And he had a trump card – he’d captured Jack’s long-lost brother, Gray.

The team discovers major rift activity throughout Cardiff and Jack dispatches the Torchwood members to focus on different problems. Gwen is sent to police headquarters where four senior officers have been killed by a Weevil outbreak. Tosh and Ianto head over to the central server building. Rift activity indicates aliens there and if they take down the servers, the military, police, emergency services, and the city nuclear power station will be plunged into darkness. Owen heads over to the hospital, where a Hoix alien is rampaging. Jack heads back to the Hub where he’s ambushed by Captain John Hart. John is prepared for Jack with twin automatic weapons and kills Jack. Once he revives, John has tied him up and taken away his weapons and tools.

John takes Jack to the rooftop and calls on the other team members to go to their respective roofs. Then he sets off multiple huge explosions throughout the city, plunging it into chaos. John uses his time agent device, activating the rift and taking himself and Jack through. They end up in Cardiff in the past, around 27 AD, before the city is ever built. John quickly explains that his time agent wristband has been molecularly bonded with his skin, rendering it unremovable. It’s monitoring him and is set with a remote detonator, ensuring his compliance. Then Gray appears through the rift!

John breaks down, crying, happy to see his brother and embraces him. He looks up with a look of shock because Gray buries a knife in his chest. When Jack revives, Gray explains that he was captured by the aliens they both ran from as children and they tortured him for years. He blames Jack and is just using John to get to him. He forces John to dig a grave for Jack, saying that Jack will have to live under the city he protects, dying for all time. John begins covering Jack in dirt, throwing his ring on top of him, saying it’s of no more sentimental value to him.

John returns to the Hub in Cardiff, his work for Gray done, to help the team. He encounters and convinces Gwen that he’s there to help and the rest of the team join them, minus Owen who is at the nuclear power plant, trying to stop a meltdown set off by the explosions. Gray shows up, having hidden in the Hub for them all along, and traps John, Gwen, and Ianto in the old Weevil cells. He shoots Tosh in the gut and leaves her for dead when he hears loud banging.

Gray goes to the morgue and opens one of the cryochambers, where the noise is coming from. Jack steps out. A quick flashback reveals that in 1901, the Torchwood team of the day digs up Jack because the ring is giving off an alien homing beacon signal. He convinces them that they have to freeze him in a cryochamber with it timed to open up at a specific time in 2008. In the present, Jack subdues a stunned Gray and forgives him, and puts him in the cell, letting out the others.

Meanwhile, Tosh has been holding on and helping Owen remotely stop the meltdown process. They lockdown the room Owen is in, to vent the cooling system, but Tosh puts a time delay so that Owen can escape the room. Unfortunately, a power surge causes the room to shut early, trapping Owen. He rages, but Tosh begs him not to because he’s breaking her heart. The room vents, killing Owen. Jack finds Tosh and she dies in his arms.

Jack puts Gray in suspended animation in a cryochamber. John says he should kill him, but Jack says there’s been enough death. Then John asks why Jack didn’t struggle when he was being buried, to which Jack replies that it was his form of penance, for leaving his brother behind and causing all that he did. John decides to stick around and explore earth, and that he might see him around.

Ianto logs Owen and Tosh’s deaths in the official records, which triggers a pre-recorded video by Tosh in which she says it’s ok and thanks Jack for all that he showed her.

Pretty powerful stuff. I liked it a lot. We didn’t get to see a “funny” Jack, but I don’t know how you would’ve fit anything flippant in an episode filled with so much drama. It moved quickly and had a lot of action. Jack and John’s plan of burying him and allowing the Torchwood of 1901 to help was especially cool.

I’ll miss Owen and Tosh, but the rumors are that Martha and John might join the show. I’d be pretty happy if that were the case, since both are honestly much more interesting. It was pretty rough if you cared for Owen and Tosh at all, though, learning about their past and joining Torchwood in the last episode and losing them in this one. Hopefully, with the show almost definitely continuing next year, they can finally find a real direction and tone for the show.

I give this episode a 4 and a half out of 5 Cardiff flags.