Review – Orphan Black (Season 5) – A Great Finale to a Flawed Show

Orphan Black concluded its fifth and final season last Saturday in a fitting resolution to a show that never quite understood its own strengths well enough to consistently play to them…

There’s a certain magic to a first season of any innovative show. It’s when you tune in not quite understanding the way the creators want to shape their narratives, and where expectations are vague enough to be most easily subverted and changed. I can think of many different opening seasons that had a standard never quite met by its predecessors – but Orphan Black sticks out in my mind most clearly. It’s a show in which the most exciting moments were being introduced to the potential of its world and characters, but one in which the subsequent seasons never made full use of its best assets and possibilities.

The clones introduced throughout that original season never stopped being great characters but the scenarios that they were placed in, the pacing of their plot-lines, and the emphasis on mythology and world-building often placed character work further down the pecking order. The first season was grounded and focused in a way the show lost touch with when it threw more and more elements into the mix, building to a point where the backstory was an all-encompassing labyrinth. Sarah and Alison were more compelling characters when trying to maintain normal lives rather than going on the run. Cosima’s seemingly endless work on a cure stopped feeling tense and started feeling drawn-out. Helena’s pregnancy plot lasted four seasons.

This isn’t to say that Orphan Black never delivered strong character work, but rather that action and threat became the main priority.  Betrayals and double-crossings became predictably regular staples of the plot. The corrupt cop partner for Artie happened on multiple occasions. And the show may have regularly introduced antagonists within Neolution, but it still felt like a big faceless ominous entity until the appearance of its creators within the last two seasons. In the second and third seasons, the cast became so saturated with new characters that there was little time to focus on the relationships that worked.

Thankfully, the fourth season signalled a major course correct, taking the story back to the tragic suicide of Beth that began the series. Only a handful of necessary characters appeared for the first time after the third season closed the door on a number of ongoing sub-plots, and those who stuck around were made good use of. And the satisfying fifth season was more reflexive and focused than ever before, doubling down on the main cast of clones to create some real emotional conclusions to their stories.

To be fair, Orphan Black was in a very strong position going into the fifth season premiere. Rachel had just returned to a position of prominence and power, had secured most of the main protagonists, and was about to meet the bigger bad of the overall series. ‘The Few Who Dare’ manoeuvred this cliffhanger back to a new status quo in which the clones returned to their ordinary lives under certain conditions from Neolution, with the exception of Cosima who remained on Neolution’s island (a very cool setting) as a POV character to what the villains were up to there.

From there the season unfolded in two interconnected halves – one in which Mrs. S and Sarah fought with Rachel and Ferdinand for control of Kira, and another in which P.T. Westmoreland’s island cabal schemed to maintain his ‘immortality’. The latter was initially the stronger of the two, bringing back past enemies Virginia Cody and Susan Duncan to re-frame and clarify their role in the series’ mythology. And it built to a climax much more quickly (by episodes five and six), culminating in interesting revelations about Westmoreland that confirmed him as the clones’ ultimate foe.

Elsewhere the more familiar urban setting revisited old well-trodden beats for Sarah, once more using Kira as the emotional stakes of the series to mixed results. But it was Rachel’s redemption and abandonment of Neolution that made for the most interesting material, bringing down Westmoreland’s backers and isolating him and Coady. The closing two episodes saw the last remaining foes abducting Helena (who had been hiding away since the premiere), and Sarah and company racing to rescue Helena’s children from their clutches. It wasn’t the most radical or interesting ending, but it was certainly still a fitting and satisfying one.

As ever, recalling the overarching plot fails to touch on the best aspects of Orphan Black, which in this case is the terrific character focus. Cosima (and Delphine) and the villains worked so well on the middle island episodes, but it was Alison and Mrs. S who stole the show overall. The spectacular third episode ‘Beneath Her Heart’ looked back on a history of Alison throughout the series, encapsulating and amalgamating everything that has happened to her to devastatingly brilliant effect. The Alison big event episodes have been a farcical highlight of every season, and it was a wonderful subversion to see the last so dark and meditative.

And a moment for Maria Doyle Kennedy’s work through the series as Sarah and Felix’s adoptive mother Mrs. S, or simply Siobhan. Mrs. S evolved from enigmatic presence into the coolest wisest character in Orphan Black, and her death sacrificing herself to protect Sarah and Kira was the perfect emotional ending. The Siobhan/Sarah dynamic has been a subtly strong part of the entire show since their reconciliation, and seeing the finale re-visit the moment in which Sarah decided to keep Kira, and Kira’s subsequent birth, can’t have left many dry eyes.

Overall, this final season made full use of the new start given by its predecessor to make it the best season of Orphan Black overall, and that’s not an easy achievement for a show that had played so many of its best cards by the end of its opening year. I’m sure there are those that relished the turn into the sci-fi genetic terminology and the complicated overlapping mysteries of Leda and Dyad and Castor and Neolution, but for those who were tuning in primarily to see what happened to Sarah, Alison, Cosima, Helena and even Rachel, these final two seasons were an unexpected joy.

Even so, this was a flawed show until its very end, preoccupied with trying to seem clever and political rather than delivering compelling character narratives. As Tatiana Maslany’s brilliant Emmy winning multi-rolling went from being the series’ main draw to an accepted occurrence, the show was forced to find new strengths, but it never quite landed fully on what made so much of it so good and lived up to its potential. In the end, Orphan Black was never one of the best shows on TV but with this final season it proved that there was a clear route from start to finish through its labyrinth.

And it’s a series most fittingly summed up in the final group moment in which Helena got out her diary and declared that she’d written down the story and called it Orphan Black. Strangely misjudged and predictable but charmingly emotional nonetheless.

Score: Orphan Black‘s final season was its strongest, and the best ending we could have hoped for.

Written by Tom Besley