As new guests arrive on board the Kinloch Bravo oil rig, things take a turn for the worse as more deaths follow. The fifth episode of Amazon Prime’s “The Rig” is the answer to several questions that have dogged the viewers for the past four episodes, and it is here that we finally learn about Pictor Energy’s real mission out here in the North Sea. The episode is also a marked lesson as to what happens when people abandon their trusted leader and start following someone they have known for mere hours. Although the actions of the crew led to the deaths of more people, one good thing that came out of these dark times was that the crewmates finally made a united stand against the evils of the corporation, which had already led to the deaths of many. Read on to find out everything that happens aboard the Kinloch Bravo and all the discoveries that we come across in the fifth episode of “The Rig.”
Spoilers Ahead
New Faces, Betrayal, And More Deaths
The lights of the vessel that were seen at the end of the fourth episode can be seen a lot more clearly as “The Rig” Episode 5 opens, although the vessel seems too small to be able to carry back the entire crew of Kinloch Bravo. Instead, it’s revealed to be a lifeboat coming from Charlie, probably because it caught on fire and is out of commission. Heather, Cat, and others go to welcome the new arrivals with blankets and towels, but the guests are less than happy. Especially the official-looking man (Mark Addy), who identifies himself as David Coake of the Research & Expansion team from Pictor. With Magnus indisposed in his cabin, finally breaking down and sobbing over the grief of his deceased child, Coake takes over the control room and starts dishing out orders. He also reveals a secret about Rose: apparently, it was going to be her who spearheaded the Kinloch decommissioning, something she stayed quiet about despite siding with the crew. Down at the med bay, a Charlie rig worker, Harish, informs Cat and Heather that Coake arrived and sent their OIM and a few of the crewmates back to the shore. He took charge of capturing carbon and storing it by sending something down to the floor of the sea. It’s highly possible that these awful experiments acted as the catalyst that led to the awakening of the ancestor, who’s now out on a mission to take over the earth. Harish continues that Coake’s experiments worsened, the pressure increased, and the rig began shaking. It was this stern man’s actions that got a lot of people on Charlie killed. It’s also revealed that Harish and Easter have had a relationship in the past, which leads to a brief, lighthearted moment amidst tumultuous situations.
After a little pondering, Fulmer makes his way to the Production Module, where he meets up with Baz and Garrow while Heather crosses-checks the Charlie crew that arrived on Bravo with the Charlie roster to find out which crewmates died on Magnus’ orders. Struck by a sudden thought, Heather looks up at David Coake, but nobody by that name turns up. What secrets is he hiding? At the cafeteria, an unlikely team forms among Murchison, Dunlin, and Hutton (Owen Teale), who are frustrated with the management system and want to hear Coake’s perspective. Inside Rose’s laboratory, while working on the circles found at the bottom of the sea, she makes a sudden discovery that the rings might be the way the ancient lifeform measures time. Only it’s not through years or decades but epochs in the history of the earth or every major extinction period that has happened on earth, with the current one being the Holocene Period. Coake asks for a team to clear out the module, but Magnus refuses instantly. Baz and Garrow ask Fulmer to turn off the Well Injection monitor when the latter states that he’s not able to feel as loyal to the cause of siding with the ancient organism. Elsewhere, Dunlin, Hutton, and Murchison meet up with Coake, and he entrusts the men with the task of pumping compressed carbon dioxide into the module that’s supposed to simply knock out Baz, Garrow, and Fulmer, who can then be safely removed from the area. This shall allow Coake to continue with CCS or to capture and store carbon as he did on Charlie. It also explains what was inside the locked containers: compressed CO2, though the cylinders note that they contain hazardous chemicals. Coake assures them that he’ll man the doors and ensure they don’t close on the team, so they can rescue the three men inside. Hutton, Dunlin, and Murchison head inside wearing protective suits, oxygen cylinders, and gas masks and load up the CO2 cylinders. However, it causes an adverse effect, and not only does the lush greenery inside the module start dying, but everyone without masks starts coughing and choking. Garrow spits blood on Hutton’s mask, and they quickly realize it’s a lot more than just a knockout gas as Garrow succumbs to the poison. On their way out, Dunlin falls behind, and Coake closes the doors on him. His oxygen runs out, and he gasps and chokes to death while Hutton screams and cries from outside. Dunlin’s loss strikes Hutton horribly because it was he who made Dunlin go ahead with the awful plan.
The Kinloch Bravo Crew Unites
In the control room, Magnus confronts Coake because Pictor knew long before that the organism had been found in the area, yet the crew was allowed to come out there. Rose learns that Coake has turned on the fire suppression system, and she rushes in with Hutton’s oxygen tank and suit to rescue Fulmer. Apparently, he is the link that connects humans with the ancient life form because he can communicate with it through the spores. She turns off the lever that releases the poisonous gas and finds Fulmer lying unconscious. She tries dragging him outside but slips and falls. Suddenly, her hand touching the dead grass sparks new life into every form of vegetation inside the module, and the spores are once again active. Fulmer wakes up and is led outside with Rose while Baz also regains consciousness. Magnus finds Hutton having a breakdown as he blames himself for the death of his colleague of twenty years. However, Magnus is able to calm him down and make him see reason. He explains that, be it the death of his son Thomas or the death of Dunlin, neither Magnus nor Hutton was directly responsible for their deaths. Hutton and Magnus finally arrive on the same page, and they decide that Coake cannot be allowed to get off so easily, and he has to answer for his actions. At the bottom of the sea, the final ring closes, and it seems that the extinction of mankind has finally arrived.
The Hour Of Doom Arrives
The fifth episode of “The Rig” introduces new characters and adds to the already suffocating tension aboard the Kinloch Bravo rig. We have a mini “Game of Thrones” reunion of sorts as Jorah Mormont (Glen), Alliser Thorne (Teale), and Robert Baratheon (Addy) come together in a different show, and for any GOT fan, this might be a rather exciting moment. On less exciting grounds, however, the character of Coake quickly establishes himself as the ruthless corporate tyrant who doesn’t mind the deaths of 2 or 20 people as long as the mission is a success. He overtakes the role of Rose from Episode 1 as the company’s representative, although he’s way more cutthroat than Rose ever was. The deaths of Garrow and Dunlin bring the total death toll to four, and it’s the death of the latter that changes Hutton. He abandons his selfish ways and finally accepts Magnus as the boss, which he previously hadn’t done, and the crew of Kinloch Bravo presents a united front against the tyrant representative from Pictor. It’s possible that the actions of this oil-drilling giant led to the rise of this ancestor and heralded the doom of mankind. This finally explains why Baz learned that the Well Injector is the device that’s being used to harm the ancestor because it’s through this injector that Pictor was sending carbon back into the seafloor. The intelligent lifeform detected the source that was harming it and asked its most trusted worker, Baz, to destroy the weapon. The final ring closing signifies that the Holocene period’s extinction is near, and the rig will be the first man-made structure that nature destroys on her path of claiming back her land. With just one more episode left in the first season, the sixth and final episode is hoped to be the climax that shows what happens to the Kinloch Bravo crew and mankind in general as the ancestor finally strikes. We can only hope that it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger that makes us wait for months to get answers.
