Warning: General spoilers ahead

Still reeling from Saturday’s shocking tear-jerker? Yeah, I have a feeling there were lots of drunk, depressed fans when we had to say good-bye to Mrs. S in the final moments of the last episode. Unfortunately, that somber feeling continues into this week’s series penultimate episode, as Sarah and the rest of the characters grapple with this terrible loss and try to figure out how to move forward.

As we can see from the promotional photos, an actual funeral is held for Mrs. S, which I really liked because in some sense, it was a symbolic way for the fans to be able to say good-bye to a character that had been with the series since the very beginning. This is how the episode opens, but unfortunately, there’s not much time to grieve because Sister Irina shows up at the funeral reception and informs Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) that Helena has been kidnapped. Now, Sarah must step up and fill the very big shoes left by her mother to come up with a plan for getting her sestra back — and more importantly, before she has her babies.

So, while Sarah is scrambling to figure out what to do next, the focus turns to Helena as we see her taken to Virginia Coady (Kyra Harper)  at a security facility, and in fact, the vast majority of the episode is centered on Helena. While she’s going in and out of consciousness, there is a fantastic dream sequence where we get Helena’s full backstory when she was a young girl in a Russian orphanage. We learn how she got that platinum blonde hair, which turns out to be tied to a punishment she received for spying on a nun at the orphanage and witnessing her doing something, umm, well…embarrassing. Seriously, this scene will make you want to hurl, and you’ll understand what I mean when you see it. Lastly, we see when Helena meets Tomas (Daniel Kash)  for the first time, after he shows up at the orphanage and ultimately adopts her. From there, she begins training under the direction of Tomas, and over the course of several years, is morphed into the killer that we know her to be.

Besides this, we get an up-close look at P.T. (Stephen McHattie),  and I don’t mean the P.T. we’ve seen when he puts on his best face for Cosima, Delphine, and the like. I’m talking about the real P.T. Westmoreland after the mask comes off, warts and all. Antics like tearing that wig from his bald heard while screaming at the top of his lungs, telling Virginia Coady that she must take Helena’s babies NOW because he can’t wait any longer for his cure. All I will say is that guy’s bat-shit crazy, and he goes off the rails so far in this episode that he scares even Coady. Yes, Virginia Coady! And, if Coady is terrified, you know it has to be bad.

Finally, after last week’s buzzkill of an episode, the question on everyone’s minds — are we heading for more heartache this week? Well, maybe, but it’s nowhere near the magnitude of Mrs. S’s death. One character has the crap beaten out of him/her and left for dead. Another character attempts suicide in perhaps one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the entire series. And, unfortunately, we do have one character death. I can’t really say more except it’s a death that most fans aren’t expecting but one that you should because the writing is on the wall.

The series penultimate episode of Orphan Black is titled “One Fettered Slave” and airs Saturday at 10/9c on BBC America

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