Warning: Spoilers for this week's episode of The Strain in play. If you're not current, please come back after you've experienced this week's episode, "New Horizons."
After a couple of weeks reintroducing us to the world of humanity and its fight against the now-powerful Strigoi, the world of The Strain seems to be pulling the threads of fate ever closer. Last week ended with Eph and his Philly crew finding a lead on some potential blood trafficking going on underneath the surface of The Partnership's ever-friendly facade. Not only did we get more information on that very scenario in this week's episode, but our heroes are slowly uncovering a new threat to humanity. One that will more than likely set up the next two acts of the story that is Season 4: it looks like the next step for humanity is to be herded into blood producing camps.
This revelation came during the latest installment of The Strain, "New Horizons," in which we spent a lot of time split between two pieces of the Season 4 story arc. One piece was with Eph and his team in Philly, as they were subject to a raid by one of The Partnership's black buses of Strigoi enforcers, which left Eph and his Resistance partner, Alex Green, as the surviving members of the Philadelphia contingent we met a couple episodes ago. Our pair had some heartfelt moments dissecting grief in a time of Strigoi rule, and eventually we saw them wandering around the streets of the city, where they happened to stumble upon something rather interesting.
Apparently, The Strain named this week's episode after a new settlement that the Strigoi are creating for their human "partners" to start giving back to the community. With Eph and Alex discussing how The Partnership's current efforts feel like a stepping stone to something bigger, the knowledge of these new communities has gotten them to thinking that the bright future New Horizons represents may not be the shining beacon that The Partnership is selling them. Which leads to the other big thread of this week, as our cliffhanger ending dealt with Dutch getting herself into only the biggest jam possible.
Initially, she seemed okay with the possibility of playing ball with Sanjay Desai's request for her to comfort the B-Positive mothers at The Partnership's facility, if only to help her own survival. However, she uncovered the fact that the babies born in this facility never get to see their mothers, and are ferried off to a new set of parents somewhere away from their birth mother. Lighting the spark of rebellion anew, Dutch threatened Sanjay's life, and made a run for the exits, ending the episode with Dutch finding the blood harvesting plant that Eichorst has been building since last season.
So what's the big deal? Well, with New Horizons being a new settlement for humanity's role in The Partnership, and these new babies needing somewhere to live, it sounds like those babies are heading to the New Horizons facilities. There they'll probably be taken care of, as humanity lives inside what we all know this facility to be: a vampire run concentration camp. With Eichorst already ordering Sanjay to harvest the babies sooner, and up the production schedule of his facility, these new children can live in these facilities, meet other B-positive people as they grow, and ultimately become B-positive breeders themselves.
In essence, New Horizons is a self-sustaining farm community, serving only the best B-positive blood, while at the same time keeping humanity under a tight watch. Whoever can't provide the best blood for The Master and his minions, will be used as workforce, while others will be pampered and made to serve with their very life essence. Should this be true in the world of the series, it will mean a big return to the world of the books, as The Night Eternal delved into a very similar concept, with a still very much alive Everett Barnes replacing Sanjay Desai, and Nora Martinez serving as sort of an analog for Dutch.
Humans were never going to be free range for long, and with a sedated, co-operative society, this plan will be as easy as ever to execute. That is, if our heroes fighting in humanity's corner don't find a way to derail these plans, what with both Gus and Fet looking to arm up in the fight against the vampiric menace. The bigger threat to their way of life is becoming ever clearer, and there's just six episodes left before The Strain takes its final bow. Join us next week, as The Strain will continue to provide thrills and scares in equal measure, next Sunday at 10 PM EST on FX.
