Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s sci-fi drama ‘The Peripheral’ follows the story of Flynne Fisher as she travels to the future and discovers startling things about the world. The third episode takes her further into the mystery of Aelita West while the threat of another assassination attempt looms on her and her brother. While she handles things in the future, Burton prepares on the home front, trying to keep his family alive. By the end of the episode, the entire thing gets more complicated, and it looks like Flynne might have to pay too hefty a price to try to save the world seventy years later. Here’s what the events of this episode mean for her. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Peripheral Episode 3 Recap
The second episode of ‘The Peripheral’ ends with Flynne’s mother’s full recovery. Not only is her tumor gone, but she can also see now. Considering that Wilf and Lev have held up their end of the bargain, it is time for Flynne to honor her side of the deal. Once again, she puts on the headset and arrives in the future, only to find out that Corbell Pickett has been approached by the Research Institute to get rid of her and her brother. She rushes back home to warn Burton, and he comes up with a strategy to get Pickett under control.
Flynne shares her situation with Billy Anne, not realizing that her husband, Jasper, is Pickett’s nephew. While Burton decides it’s best not to tell anyone the whole picture, he is forced to take drastic measures when he discovers that Pickett might find out about them. With his army buddies, he comes up with a carrot and the stick approach to intimidate Pickett, who is working on a plan of his own.
The Peripheral Episode 3 Ending: Why is Cherise Hunting Flynne?
There are a lot of questions that ‘The Peripheral’ has raised in its three episodes, but for now, it continues to focus on the mysterious disappearance of Aelita West. Where did she go after abandoning Flynne in the secret RI facility? More importantly, what exactly did she find out or do there that has now put Lev and Cherise Nuland, the head of RI, in a race to locate her?
While Flynne hasn’t grasped the whole scope of the situation yet, it is clear that Cherise is just as intent on killing Flynne and Burton in the past as she is keen to find Aelita, and probably kill her too. Considering that Flynne knows nothing about the future and RI, why is Cherise after her? Why is she expending her resources to put a bounty on two seemingly insignificant people in the past? The answer is hinted at in the final scene of the episode.
After figuring out what “where snow last fell in London” means, Flynne and Wilf arrive at Aelita’s secret residence. Flynne has been to this place before, twice. The first time was after she kidnapped Mariel, and the second time, she was inside the house, getting her eyeball replaced. They find the place empty, except for two dead peripherals. Trouble arises when they come face to face with Daniel and his robot, linked to Cherise, who’d been following them.
A fight ensues and after taking some heavy blows, Flynne succeeds in subduing Daniel. She asks him why he is so dedicatedly hunting her. Knowing that he is very close to dying, Daniel starts to get chatty. He tells Flynne that Cherise will never stop coming after her because she took something from RI. Before he can spill more beans, Cherise, who’s in control of the robot, kills Daniel. Clearly, if Flynne is in the dark about what she and Aelita actually did in the secret facility, then it’d be in Cherise’s favor if Flynne doesn’t find out about it just yet.
Rewinding to the ending of the first episode, we find Aelita and Flynne entering the facility using Mariel’s retina scan. When they reach their destination, once again, Aelita asks Flynne to scan her eye, but this time, her own. While they’d been using Mariel’s eye to unlock doors, it is possible that the final scan was not to open something but to put a lock on it, the key to which is Flynne’s or rather Burton’s eye scan. Considering that Flynne hasn’t mentioned this detail to Wilf or Lev, it makes sense that they haven’t tried to break into the facility and use Flynne’s access to find out what RI has been keeping a secret. They are focused on Aelita because she is their only way to access the past, but seeing how shady of a character Lev is, there is certainly much more to the story.
Cherise, on the other hand, had access to the peripheral that Flynne had been using when she was with Aelita. She used it to trace Flynne to the past and put a bounty on her and her family. It is possible that while rummaging through the peripheral’s memories, she saw the whole eye scan thing happen. Perhaps, this has locked her out of the system and has most probably obstructed her access to the past. It is possible that this is what Daniel meant when he said that Flynne took something from RI.
If this really is the case, then Flynne has access to something that can have significant repercussions on the world. We still don’t know why Research Institute needs access to the past, but they have clearly been at it for a while now. In the first scene of the first episode, when Wilf meets Aelita she says that she has found a way to save the world, though not their own. Could it be that Cherise knows that the world, or whatever remains of it, is hurtling towards a certain end, and is looking for alternate realities where things aren’t so dire?
If so, then the fate of the world is in Flynne’s hands now. This puts her in a precarious position and she’ll need to be very careful about whom she trusts. For now, Lev might seem to be on her side, but he is keeping secrets of his own, which means that, instead of Cherise, he might turn out to be the real villain of the story.
Read More: What Game Does Flynne Play in The Peripheral? How Does the Game Work?
