#wh13

For the first three episodes all we know is that there’s a shadowy figure hacking the Warehouse that Artie is desperately pretending isn’t going to get in, and we watch them very clearly get in.

Then comes episode four and Claudia is, one) Claudia (young, female, looks like shit, semi-crazy), two) in the Warehouse, and three) kidnapping Artie with electrified handcuffs.

We spend the next 35 minutes going from thinking she’s going to kill Artie, to thinking she’s actually psych ward insane (that picture did her no favors), to thinking she’s very tragic in the way villains are tragic, back to insane, so on and so forth.

Like, that whole performance, both the writing and Allison Scagliotti’s acting, is so good. Because as you’re watching you’re getting a very complete picture of this character, even as she’s getting more sympathetic or we understand what’s going on more, you still kind of get the feeling that we could be watching her villain origin story. And we literally don’t settle out of that until Joshua is saved.

And like, in hindsight? Everything she was doing was, maybe not rational, but it made complete sense, the logic checked out and while it was extreme it wasn’t irredeemable or anything. It’s crazy because despite your first impressions watching the episode she’s still the same character we see through the next five seasons, just incredibly desperate, and running out of time, and dying.

So it’s like, there’s two completely different images you get of this character from this episode and they’re both true to her, it’s literally just a difference in circumstance.