Reverie recap: Is Mara really safe inside the tech?

Mara delves into an elderly woman’s reverie in Episode 8, titled Despedida. Meanwhile, Paul and Alexis need to decide whether the technology is really safe.

Reverie picks up off the back of the previous episode, with Mara waking up in bed the morning after the night before. Chris is getting ready to leave and Mara starts to worry about whether they’re rushing into this. It seems like a very normal exchange, so you likely think nothing of it at first.

After all, the most important storyline in the episode appears to be the elderly woman, Pilar, who is clearly unimpressed with life at her retirement home. Pilar has reverie and decides to go back to a time she was young. If only it was just to dance the night away.

Why is Pilar reliving a memory?

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When she’s caught, the owner of the retirement home makes it clear to Charlie that reverie isn’t allowed. The patients need to engage with each other and not in their minds. Plus, Pilar has lung cancer and she’s dying while inside. So, Mara goes in to find something much bigger than she expected.

What initially looks like Pilar’s attempt to find a lost loved turns out to be a memory of sacrifice and danger in 1973. Pilar wants to get a group of girls safe to the Chilean border, away from the military government. Without Pilar, the girls will die. All Pilar wants is one more chance to relive this memory; to go back to a time when she felt like she was actually needed.

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It’s an understandable need. When Mara messes up thinking it’s all about love, Pilar also has a very understandable request to start it over. Honestly, I also love the message. Pilar isn’t bothered about romantic love. While she enjoyed her time with the man she met there, he died fighting the government, giving Pilar time to get the girls out. It was a sacrifice Pilar believed was worth making and she was grateful for that.

This episode is about empowerment. Women don’t need men to be happy with their lives. Pilar’s happiness is all about feeling wanted, needed, and important to someone–more specifically, these four young girls.

Mara manages to fix the thing she did and she and Pilar get the girls to the border. Pilar shares that she’s going over the border with them. Part of the problem has been never knowing what happened to them. With refugee camps and orphanages, the girls just disappeared into systems.

After talking Pilar out of staying, Mara is able to locate one of the girls, who now has a family of her own and even brings her granddaughter, also named Pilar, to meet her namesake. It’s a touching and beautiful moment, as Pilar sees all the people who were born because of the good she did.

Alexis turns to Oliver for help

Paul is still worried about Mara in reverie after the bruising she received. There’s a theory that Mara’s body is acting like women with hysterical pregnancies. The mind believes the pregnancy is there, so makes the body show symptoms. In this case, the mind believed she’d been shot so the body showed the after effect. This could get worse.

Without showing Paul that she is concerned, Alexis turns to Oliver. This is something the two and Paul had theorized at one point. Oliver learns exactly what happened and makes it clear that it was probably the crossed reveries, especially going into one that had been changed to stop the Exodus function working.

However, Oliver is deeply concerned that the military has the technology (he’s able to figure it out from the description Alexis gives). I’m glad to see he’s concerned like the others of how this technology could be used by the military.

He writes a few things down for Alexis for her to fix the potential problem and leaves her to it. However, it’s clear he’s up to something as he now has a reverie system and puts himself into one.

My question is whether this could be linked to Chris. Remember the Chris from the start of the episode? Well, he’s in Mara’s apartment when she gets back. Only, he starts calling her while she’s in front of him. Odd? Yes, definitely, because it’s the real Chris on the phone and he hasn’t seen her in a few days and got her earlier text about dinner, which is why he’s calling.

When Mara looks back at the Chris in front of her, he starts changing into her murderous ex-brother-in-law, who says he’s “here for a reason.” That’s familiar to what Brynn said to Mara about Mara being in the apartment when she had one of her hallucinations.

What is this reason and is it linked to Oliver in any way?

What did you think of the messages in Reverie this week? How do you find the series? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Reverie Season 1 continues on Wednesdays at 10/9c on NBC.