Shadowhunters season 2 episode 16 review: Clary, Jace’s mission; no control
One of the big revelations at the heart of this past new episode is simply that Jonathan, Clary’s brother, was still alive. At the end of the mission that she embarked on with Jace (one that he signed them up for, by the way), she found out a little bit more of the truth. This is a big deal mostly in her attempts to connect the dots and get the Institute team closer to the fact that “Sebastian,” at least the version that is roaming around, is really Jonathan in disguise. This is a huge deal since it could mean an ally for Valentine, provided of course that the two of them can get on the same page and figure out how to play ball with one another. You’d think that this would be a very easy thing for them to do, but alas, somehow they figure out a way for it to be super-difficult.
The Jonathan – Valentine scenes that we did see tonight were useful for further establishing the bonds that were there between the two of them now, and also furthering along an endgame here that puts many of the good guys in trouble. Do we wish that they had more interactions with some other characters? Sure, but this still qualifies as an interesting start to their story.
What was weird was that in contrast to these stories and what we saw over with Clary and Jace, Simon’s dinner party with Maia was actually rather muted by contrast. This offered up an opportunity for him to figure out more about her — including her career opportunities — while also giving Simon a chance to relax a little bit in the wake of his terrifying experience with the police and the murder last week. If there is some good news, it is that Simon is not actually a killer — yet, everything that happened to him, plus everything that transpired with him, Clary, and Jace — still hangs over his head.
In the end, this was an hour of subtle revelations rather than big reveals, given that there were no huge surprises that we saw throughout the hour. This episode was focused a little more instead on just pushing us down a road that we’ll explore more later, and be figuring out where certain relationship pieces lie on the chess board. It would’ve been great to have more Alec/Magnus, or for Clary to directly piece together matters with Jonathan/Sebastian a little bit more than she did. Episode Grade: B.
Where do we go from here?
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