Snowpiercer Season 4, Episode 6 Review: The Show's War Turns Ugly (2024)

When Snowpiercer reintroduced Joseph Wilford in Season 4, Episode 5, "The Engineer," the AMC series had a lot of explaining to do. Not only had Wilford been presumed dead by the audience, but the character's return muddled Season 4's entire story. Season 4, Episode 6, "Bell the Cat," acts as the writers explaining to viewers exactly what they were going for -- and detailing exactly where the rest of the season (and show) is going.

That exposition is both a positive and a negative for the fans. On one hand, "Bell the Cat" finally provides a lot of important information that the season has needed. On the other hand, it rarely stops feeling like an explainer. And when it does, it's because there's something either strange or unsettling -- or both -- going on. This is a significant episode as far as understanding the story, but its not one that viewers will need to watch again.

Snowpiercer Clarifies Who Season 4's Villain Is

Season 4, Episode 6 Leaves No Doubt Over Who to Root Against

One of the biggest problems with Wilford's return was that it gave Snowpiercer fans two characters to hate. Was the villainous mastermind of the season still Admiral Anton Milius, head of the ironically named International Peacekeeping Forces? Or was the TV show revealing that once again, Wilford was going to be the Big Bad for Andre Layton and his friends to overcome? "Bell the Cat" provides a definitive answer to this question. The episode highlights that not only does Milius treat Wilford like a subordinate, but he does things that even Wilford finds uncomfortable, and the two wind up on clearly opposite sides.

The events of Season 4, Episode 6 don't mean that Wilford won't somehow be a villain by the end of the series, or that he's in any way redeemed. In following the age-old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" concept, it's entirely possible that Wilford helps Layton defeat Milius, and then the season ends with another showdown between Layton and Wilford, bringing Snowpiercer full circle. But "Bell the Cat" also takes time to highlight just how unhinged Anton Milius actually is. Here's another episode where he goes from taskmaster to full-on tyrant, and this one is worse. He burns a soldier with one of Wilford's cigars simply for not informing Wilford he can't smoke in the Silo, and audiences see him briefly losing control of his anger afterward. Later on, the viewers find out that what he calls a "sample run" is actually sending the Animal Squad to hunt down former IPF soldiers turned into human experiments.

While this episode firmly establishes that Milius is the greater of two evils, it does call attention to how underutilized Clark Gregg is. Audiences who watched any part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe know how talented Gregg is from his MCU role as Agent Phil Coulson, and here he's got no room except to play the ruthless, psychotic bad guy. He's doing a wonderful job of it, but Snowpiercer definitely isn't using him to his full potential. With each episode highlighting a particular character, it would be interesting if one of the remaining four episodes was told from Milius' point of view and showed more about him than audiences currently know.

Snowpiercer Season 4, Episode 6 Reveals Many Secrets

Yet There Are Still Ongoing Mysteries

• Stu Whiggins was last seen in Snowpiercer Season 3, Episode 4, "Bound by One Track."
• Actor Kristian Bruun, who plays Stu, is recognizable for starring in Orphan Black as Allison Hendrix's husband Donnie.
• More recently, he starred in Netflix's popular spy drama The Recruit as Janus Ferber.

At this point in the season, Snowpiercer has no choice but to start explaining itself. It does an awful lot of that in "Bell the Cat," in a variety of ways. Firstly, the opening minutes show how Wilford survived being put into in the track scaler at the end of Season 3, his being found by the Animal Squad, and how Milius recruited him as an ally. These relatively brief scenes bridge the gap between seasons.

But beyond that, the episode brings back Stu Whiggins -- the recurring character portrayed by Kristian Bruun -- to claim the severed hand found in Season 4, Episode 4, "North Star" and detail more of the Animal Squad's initial assault on New Eden. Stu reveals that he identified Zarah and Dr. Headwood to the soldiers, and lost his hand jumping off their snowcat in a panic after he realized that Zarah had been murdered. In looking into Stu's claims, Oz discovers detonation cord that proves the Animal Squad's plan involves blowing up New Eden; it's a vital piece of information the audience also didn't have before, and brings New Eden back into the overall storyline.

Yet there's even more information being doled out in the Silo portions of the episode. Layton wakes up on the floor that had been sealed off by Milius and meets the disfigured soldiers, learning that they had been exposed to a chemical leak. Snowpiercer details that the chemical leak happened three years earlier as Nima tested his Gemini compound -- the compound he wants to launch in more rockets to create more areas like New Eden. While Layton gets details from the trapped soldiers, Nima gives them to Alex Cavill, telling her that the nosebleeds she's been experiencing are a side effect from Gemini exposure. This amounts to an awful lot of talking and significantly slows down the pace of the episode, but by the end, the viewers have a much clearer picture of what Snowpiercer Season 4 is trying to do. However, two of the main characters remain off-screen: Sam Roche is still missing, and while reference is made to Melanie Cavill, she's still gone.

Snowpiercer Goes to Strange Places to Move Its Plot Ahead

Season 4, Episode 6 Has Its Awkward Moments

There are quite a few cringe-worthy moments in Snowpiercer Season 4, Episode 6 -- either because they're uncomfortable or because they're just awkward. There's the few beats of prolonged whimpering as Milius makes Wilford watch him burn the soldier with Wilford's cigar. And Oz's method of getting information out of Stu is not something audiences will see coming, or want to see again. And watching the abandoned soldiers being lured out in a desperate bid for food, while a large portion of the sequence is obscured by darkness, is still a strong example of how poorly people treat each other in Snowpiercer's post-apocalyptic world. They're seen as subhuman and hunting them is a sport.

But those aren't the only reasons that "Bell the Cat" veers between expository and strange. Some parts of the episode just feel forced. Sean Bean continues to be reveling in his shameless portrayal of Wilford, but most of what Daveed Diggs has to do is just make more threats toward his nemesis. The back and forth between Layton and Wilford is tired already, because the audience has heard this song before. Even when they're supposed to be working together, neither character moves out of their expected emotional lane. Wilford even tries the stereotypical bit of trying to convince Layton they're alike, suggesting that Layton's self-interest in getting Liana back is the same as his self-interest in wanting to recover his trains. The only part of the episode that hits a real emotional chord is the tribute that Ruth Wardell and Bess Till arrange for Bennett Knox: carving a "B" into Big Alice. Other than that, Snowpiercer serves up an episode that's important to understand the season, but offers little rewatch value.

Snowpiercer airs Sundays at 9:00 p.m. on AMC.

Snowpiercer Season 4, Episode 6

5

10

TV-MA

Sci-Fi

Action

Drama

Nima needs more samples for his experiments, so Milius sends Wilford and the soldiers to collect. Privately, Milius tells Wolf to kill Wilford. Layton wakes up on an abandoned floor and is approached by humans with toxic gas scars.

Release Date

May 17, 2020

Creator(s)

Graeme Manson , Josh Friedman

Cast

Daveed Diggs , Mickey Sumner , alison wright , Iddo Goldberg , Sheila Vand , Lena Hall , Annalise Basso , Roberto Urbina

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Seasons

4

Pros

• Reveals / explains important parts of Season 4's storyline.
• Daveed Diggs and Sean Bean get substantial screen time together.
• The memorial for Ben is a bittersweet moment.

Cons

• Several scenes are more than a little uncomfortable.
• Episode highlights how underwritten Milius is as a character.