Game of Thrones doesn’t start up until April 6, but Joffrey came early to Syfy last night. His Helix incarnation is a cruel, petulant, murderous Immortal who styles himself the Scythe. (He’ll kill you with a pissy look if you call him Spencer.) Though the relative scales of these shows are hardly comparable, Helix seems to be doing everything possible to at least achieve a GoT level of knotty familial love and betrayal.
Unlike that show, the future of Helix is far from guaranteed, and without the resources to stage its own Battle of the Blackwater, the show may be looking to these blood ties to hook the audience for next season in the absence of more spectacular (and expensive) attractions. Spencer was introduced as a supposedly cold-blooded assassin—though he doesn’t even show his weapons this time, and in fact we never saw any genuine scythe-play during last episode’s slaughter. (It makes you wonder how many centuries this actor has really devoted to his killing craft.). But before we’re ten minutes in, he’s been handed his mother’s death at the hands of Hatake as a spur to revenge. That tends to water down the whole secret-parent motif; next thing you know, Alan’s going to be Sarah’s dad, which … just no, this whole place is incestuous enough already.
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