Things have continued to get more complicated and twisted with the Leda and Castor clones as Orphan Black‘s fourth episode of Season 3, “Newer Elements of Our Defense,” demonstrated.
As we know now, the Leda and Castor clones came from originals who were brother and sister. Knowing that they are biologically siblings, if you can really call them that, has changed the dynamic entirely. Sarah has already shown her loyalty to her sisters, with the exception of Rachel, and now she is even trying to protect Mark from crazy Bonnie and the other Proletheans.
At the close of episode 3, Bonnie shot Mark, but they didn’t show him actually die. As one my expect with that missing visual detail, he is still alive, and Sarah rescues him before they could get back to finish him off. Even though we know the Castor clones are pretty much ruthless and willing to kill anyone who gets in the way of finding out the source of their DNA, Mark actually seems like he is capable of compassion.
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From the notebook inside Willard Finch’s box, which unfortunately turned out not to contain biological samples as Mark discovered, Sarah figures out that Henrik was Ethan Duncan’s lab assistant. Cosima and Sarah then find out that previously Henrik wanted an original Castor, not the synthetic sequence, so he took the DNA and Bonnie carried the cloned fetus. The baby ended up dying and was buried. And, of course, because who would expect anything less at this point, Mark and Sarah try to dig up the body to retrieve the DNA.
Both the Leda and Castor clones are sure putting in a ton of effort to try to figure out who they are, but it’s not just for the sake of knowing. As we’ve figured out, both clone groups seem to have a genetic defect that is making them sick and the only way to potentially cure them would be to know the genome sequence.
It was only a matter of time before we were introduced to another Castor clone. But in this episode he came and went quickly – not without a totally terrifying scene, though.
Helena escapes the area of the infirmary she was being kept in and discovers the clone restrained with the top of his skull removed, exposing his brain. He’s clearly in pain, and Helena decides to put him out of his misery from this twisted medical experiment that’s being conducted by Dr. Coady and the others. Scalpel to the bare brain it is.
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Bonnie briefly took Gracie back in after she left Mark, but when she miscarries the baby that was implanted in her (which we can kind of assume could likely be either a Castor or a Leda) Bonnie has no need for her anymore.
Rudy shows up and confronts Sarah and Mark after they dig up the buried Castor baby. With Rudy’s loyalty to Dr. Coady, of course he brings Sarah in to the infirmary as well. So she finally made it to where Helena is, but they are now both being held against their will.
So at this point, there really are so many unanswered questions that we will just have to wait to play out. Why Bonnie and Henrik have such a weird obsession with implanting cloned embryos isn’t clear yet. What Dr. Coady is trying to figure out about the Castor clones’ brains also isn’t clear.
But what we do know is that all of the clones appear to be capable of empathy and have a strong need for loyalty, despite being technically synthetic beings. So if the Castors and Ledas don’t eventually team up as one big bizarre family, they probably won’t make it.
