The title is ominous. Knowing Alpha has taken Echo in the last episode, the addition of the final Greek letter is foreboding.

I have a confession to make. As Stephen Kepler, Alan Tudyk was brilliant. As Alpha, I don’t believe it. He was still crazy, but in a quirky way and not as menacing. I suppose that was a subjective failing. I was expecting Jason Bourne and I got Benjamin Linus.

So Alpha has taken Echo. They know each other. Turns out, one of Alpha’s imprints knows the imprint he put in Echo. She calls him Bobby. They drive off but call in a terrorist threat to make sure the Dollhouse is locked down and no one can follow them. Alpha also dug out Echo’s GPS chip which means the Dollhouse is blind to her whereabouts. Claire Saunders and Topher share an odd moment about knowing the mind of a crazy person. Alpha and Echo drive off in a stolen car, his other imprints pushing Bobby aside every once in while but it’s obvious the imprint he put in Echo is not anything special; in fact she appears to be some trashy nobody. The lady they stole the car from is in the back seat tied up.

Flashback time frame is “A Few Years” ago. A couple actives have been lost and Adelle is scolding the handlers. Alpha is torturing some guy while a girl is dancing in the glare of headlights. Alpha wants to know what this guy is hiding. The guy finally cracks and tells Alpha that he’s a active, playing the role of cross country crime spree. The man is a client, Alpha and his girlfriend are accomplices. Alpha calls to “Crystal” and out of the headlights walks Dr. Claire Saunders? There’s a montage of the two actives making out and playing with knives on top of the client when the handlers and a team bust in and take Alpha and Whiskey in for treatment.

Paul, Adelle and Boyd come to an uneasy truce and Paul says he can make the FBI go away. He goes out and talks to Tanaka “The Romo” Lampkin who’s heading the bomb threat unit. Paul tells Tanaka that they are standing above the Dollhouse. He’s completely serious, but Tanaka thinks he’s lost his mind and called in a fake bomb threat so sends everyone home. Paul played him perfectly. (Side note, Tahmoh Penikett has a very unique walk, almost like a classically trained dancer. In this episode you get to see it a few times. It’s almost robotic.) Topher reports that Alpha took all the wedges, or imprint hard drives, that have ever been put into Echo. Boyd asks why he would need that. Alpha brings Echo and the tied up woman to a dark warehouse with a evil looking chair.

Saunders is stitching up Victor who goes on about not being his best any more. She finally snaps and says he can’t be his best; he’s ugly and disgusting and all he can hope for is pity. In a flashback, Whiskey comes into the med center to meet…Dr. Saunders, an aging white man who gives her a lollipop. Whiskey is the house’s number one active. As her handler leaves, we see Alpha getting a rub down watching Caroline with Adelle on her orientation tour. Alpha says she’s sad.

Paul and Adelle bring Paul to Topher’s lab. Topher’s not happy but Adelle wants him there to help find Echo. They bring in a couple dolls, November one of them it’s an awkward moment for Paul. In Alpha’s dark evil lab, he’s got the kidnapped lady in the chair. His alternate personalities show up for a bit and then they kiss while the chair starts jolting with the lady sitting in it. We flashback to Alpha waiting in the hallway for Echo, he kisses her and it’s an odd scenario, like two three year olds kissing. Echo’s handler breaks it up and warns him to stay away. He looks on a bit malevolently as Echo goes for a treatment.

Topher programs Sierra and November as bounty hunters and sends them off. Alpha finishes his work and his imprints are getting more forceful. He’s pulled the woman into a hard drive. Paul talks to Topher and finds out that Alpha has 48 complete personalities dumped into a brain, Paul wants to know who he went after first. Topher says he went after himself, meaning his personality drive, and then smashed the hell out of it. Apparently he took Echo’s original and then smashed her backup. Back in Alpha’s lab, Caroline awakes in the kidnapped lady’s body.

Alpha goes on a tirade about how Caroline abandoned herself and then tells Echo that she can be more, he’s seen it in her, and he’s always been there for her. Flashback to Alpha, Echo and Whiskey trimming trees. Alpha overhears Whiskey’s handler say she’s the number one doll in the house. Next thing we see is Alpha standing over Whiskey saying, “Let Echo be number one.” Then he starts slashing at her face with the pruning sheers. They pull him off and put him in the chair while Topher tells Adelle he’s running a scan on all Alpha’s builds to find out what happened. As the chair fires up to wipe the imprint, Alpha fights off his handler who is shoved into a computer which triggers the dumping of all the previous builds/personalities into Alpha. Alpha gouges his handler’s eyes out and Old Man Doc Saunders comes in to see what the hub bub is all about and is attacked by Alpha.

Paul says all the imprint information tells him nothing and that he doesn’t think they can erase people’s souls. Boyd and Adelle agree that finding out which personality Alpha took will help figure out who he is. Topher has to find which imprint Alpha put into Echo. Alpha has Echo in his chair as Caroline tries to talk her out of it. Alpha keeps talking about super being and ascension and understanding it all, as well as sacrifice, saying the old gods demanded it, and the old gods were back. He says, “Alpha, meet Omega.” We’re treated to snippets of most of Echo’s previous engagements and she jumps from the chair saying she gets it all now. She picks up a pipe and goes to hit the kidnapped lady, swinging around and hitting Alpha instead.

Alpha’s real name is Karl William Kraft. He was apparently a convicted felon, but no killings. The Dollhouse helped by trading lengthy sentence for five years of service with them. Kraft’s first victim got away and when he was arrested, Kraft had a “murder kit” in his van. The victim is still alive so Paul and Boyd head out.

Echo smashes Alpha’s computer, says she’s not going to kill herself. She says they’re not gods, he says super men. She has control over her personalities, but she knows not one of them is her. She agrees for a second that Caroline did abandon “her” and she says it was complicated. Alpha and Echo fight. Paul and Boyd visit Kraft’s victim, she says she’ll meet them downstairs. She comes out of the elevator and she has scars on her face. Alpha and Echo fight more, he keeps saying she thought she was special, he knocks him out. Echo unties the Caroline host body and convinces her to get back into her own body, then Alpha shoots Caroline body in the throat. He then threatens Echo by putting the gun up to her wedge.

Topher’s looking for Echo’s missing imprint when Boyd calls saying the victim could only remember an abandoned warehouse in San Pedro. This sparks something for Topher and he has his assistant give him a Whiskey imprint and sure enough it was the one he was looking for, the one Alpha put in Echo. Whiskey/Claire is standing outside of Topher’s lab listening. Alpha talks Echo into the chair, threatening to shoot the hard drive with Caroline’s personality. His plan is to put Caroline into Echo, cut her up, then kill her, then use the wedge to do the same to random girls until he gets bored. She gets out of the chair, and goes after him. He shoots her in the arm and flees. A chase commences and Paul and Boyd show up in time to get caught up in it. Shots are fired. After a bit of running around on catwalks, Alpha throws the hard drive. Echo goes after it but it falls and Paul catches it.

Topher finds Whiskey has hacked into his computer and finds she’s a doll that was imprinted with the doctor. She’s curious why Topher made her hate him, and when asked why she didn’t open the file, she says she knows who she is. Adelle and Boyd talk about Alpha eluding them again and the dead girl’s family is being provided for. Paul Ballard is there as well as the Dollhouse’s newest contractor, and as part of the deal, he has November’s contract paid up and she’s given her self back and released. Victor leaves Whiskey/Saunder’s office, she tells him to come back and get a lollipop. Paul gets November’s real name, it’s Madeline. She asks for his and he says he’s nobody. Echo is wiped and when she comes to, she goes over to Topher and touches his chest then walks off. Meanwhile the music plays a chorus of “Everybody’s gotta learn sometime.” The dolls go to bed and Echo lays down and says, “Caroline.”

Answered: Alpha was made by accident. After going off script at an engagement, he attacked Whiskey because his doll-brain had a crush on Echo. While in the chair to get wiped, all his previous imprints were dumped into his head, he then killed the doctor. The house then put the doc’s brain into Whiskey. Alpha was previously a budding serial killer.

So where does this finale leave us? Echo knows the name Caroline, but is it because she remembers her? What’s with the hand on Topher’s heart? Paul works for the Dollhouse now to help them find Alpha, apparently Topher’s bounty hunters weren’t enough. Alpha is a broken active, but I wasn’t sure if he’d put his real self back into is brain or if it was part of the big dump that was accidentally triggered. And isn’t that just the way, it had to be a big accident by someone falling on a keyboard. It couldn’t have been malicious programming but a yet to be determined third party, it had to be the “oops I spilled beer on the server” story.

The revelation of Whiskey wasn’t as big as I think it was meant to be. Sure, when I saw a girl dancing in the glow of headlights, I immediately thought of Echo and it was interesting to see it wasn’t, but after both November and Victor’s reveals, we just assumed everyone was a Doll. Alan Tudyk did a great job, again, with his gumbo of minds stewing in his head but I was let down by Dushku’s performance after becoming Omega. She commanded no weight and very little threat, I keep waiting for smartass lines from “Bring it On.” She, of all the participants, has the longest way to go with her acting. She has a very set way about her and she reacts a lot like a baby with someone blowing in its face. She twitches and gasps a lot, but it’s always the same. I’m hoping, like Tricia Helfer in Battlestar she’ll use this to find her way, but she’s had plenty of opportunity before. I’m just not a fan.

But the show itself is entertaining enough to watch again. If it gets picked up for another season, I’ll tune in. I don’t know if I’d buy the DVD just to see Felicia Day, but it’d almost be worth it.

Four creepy doll heads.