Nerdophiles Catches Up With Orphan Black

Hey, Clone Club!  I don’t know about you, but I’ve been craving my weekly dose of Tatiana Maslany playing about twenty different characters who also masquerade as those characters playing each other.

A lot happened last season, so before we return to Orphan Black‘s season premiere on April 18, here’s the run-down on where the series left off broken down by character:

Sarah Manning

Our girl Sarah split her time last season hiding from corporate clone Rachel and  trying to rescue her daughter Kira.

In the first portion of the season, Sarah rescues Kira from Mrs. S’s traitorous friends and then goes into hiding with the help of Kira’s father, Cal.

Along the way, Sarah learns more about the Dyad Corporation’s past. She meets up with the lead scientist and Rachel’s father, Ethan Duncan. Ethan tells Sarah a little more about the clone Project Leda and how Leekie stole Rachel from him and his wife years ago.

After both Kira and Sarah escape from Dyad’s headquarters, Sarah meets Charlotte, a new clone who looks like Kira. Finally, Sarah learns about the male clone companion project, Project Castor. The entire audience is disappointed it’s a series of carbon copies of the creepy church guy instead of extremely-attractive-but-morally-ambiguous Paul.

Cosima

Cosima has it rough. Sure, she’s got a sweet setup at Dyad with her girlfriend Delphine.

Unfortunately, she’s also dying.

Cosima spent last season researching the clones’ genetics for a cure to their respiratory illness. She does end up teaching Kira how to build a contraption to launch a pencil in Rachel’s eye, but other than that, we didn’t get to see a ton of Cosima being a boss like we did first season.

As Cosima’s illness gets worse, it looks like Kira’s stem cells might be her only hope. When Cosima finds out her cure comes from Kira, she’s (justifiably) horrified. She’s done with Delphine, who hid the truth from her and helped kidnap Kira (you know, out of love, as one does).

Near the end of the season, Kira finds out that she’s helping Aunt Cosima survive, so she gladly donates a baby tooth to the cause and agrees to a bone marrow donation. It’s a race against the clock to solve Cosima’s illness – but now the clones have Ethan Duncan’s coded notebook full of clone secrets.

Alison

Alison finally proved Donnie was her monitor, just to end up in rehab for her alcohol and pill addictions. And community theater addiction, which is arguably worse.

Alison meets up with Vic, the skeezy guy Sarah used to date before she stepped up her boyfriend game. Turns out that Rachel hired Vic to get dirt on Alison. He figures out that Alison watched Aynsley garbage-disposal choke herself to death (that scene alone deserved an Emmy) but agrees to keep Alison’s secrets to himself.

Long story short(er), Vic gets knocked out and Donnie and Alison reunite. Donnie gets a little trigger-happy and kills Dr. Leekie and the couple now have to hide a body. Luckily, Alison’s a pro at taking care of her husband’s messes.

Helena

Yeah, so the weird cult thing. Poor Helena got kidnapped by the weird Castor cult and artificially inseminated by its leader.

In between bouts of captivity, she meets a cute boy at a bar (helloo Mike from Suits), but things go awry when the creepy male clone shows up and starts a fight before recapturing Helena.

As per usual, Helena gets the last laugh, though. She escapes, freeing fellow cult-member Gracie, and burning the entire place to the ground.

Rachel

Rachel has so many issues – poor girl should probably invest in a good therapist at this point. Pretty sure the other clones would foot the bill.

First, she figures out all the clones were infertile, which triggers this need to be a pseudomother and ends in kidnapping Kira. Then she banishes her father-figure Leekie who ends up getting shot by Donnie. She refuses to play nice with her actual father, Ethan. She also has kinky dominatrix sex with Sarah’s old squeeze, Paul.

Issues abound.

Tune in Saturday, April 18th for Season 3 of Orphan Black, and check back here for recaps after each episode!