The New World, Parts I & II
Two-hour third season premiere first aired Sunday, June 11, 2006 at 9:00pm
We start almost where we left off last season… Isabelle a grown woman. Before we get to her, we see Dennis testifying in court, taking full responsibility for the promicin inhibitor project, and asking for his bureaucratic cohorts not to be punished for their parts, as they were only doing what he told them to. Many familiar faces are in the courtroom; Diana and Marco, who are now a couple, Tom and Alana, also still very much together, and Tom, Marco and Diana’s NTAC supervisor, Nina Jarvis. We find out during a break that Kyle’s in jail, awaiting trial for Jordan’s death, and refuses to see or talk to Tom. As they all re-enter the courtroom, Tom and Dennis face-off; Tom looks away and Dennis enters. The same 4400 that got all the men hot and bothered last season, TJ Kim, enters the courtroom, casually disguised as a photographer, a wig covering her short hair, as the hearing resumes. As TJ does her thing, Tom sees her, just as Dennis’ lawyer grabs a letter opener from his briefcase, and stabs the former NTAC boss several times in the chest; TJ has honed her ability and now can focus on just one man to do her bidding. Of course, the courtroom erupts in action, and Tom goes after TJ, shooting her as she gets into a waiting car. Ryland’s life is touch and go, but he survives.
Isabelle’s appearance is a shock to Shawn, who goes to get Richard; Richard doesn’t believe this adult woman standing in front of him is his daughter, so he goes in search of Lily. He finds her in their apartment, just recovering from an apparent fainting spell…and she’s aged. Lily is old, in her mid 70’s according to Kevin Burkhoff, who is still working with The 4400 Center. At first, Lily is a very healthy senior, but within a short amount of time, she’s exhibiting typical ailments humans develop as they age, something new each day: diabetes, arthritis…and her health becomes much worse. Shawn does what he can to help ease her pain and discomfort. One of the things Kevin discovers that as Isabelle progresses, Lily fails – he believes, in theory, that the ties that bound Lily and Isabelle so closely in-utero and during infancy, are now killing Lily. If Isabelle was to die, Lily might live, might revert back to a 29 year old. Isabelle’s reaction to this is to quietly try to kill herself, by throwing herself off the roof of The 4400 Center. As her body lies on the paving bricks, Isabelle seems to be broken, appearing dead or at least severely injured. As a crowd gathers around, Richard comes running out, and yells for someone to call 911. As he does, Isabel opens her eyes, gets up, straightening an arm that had appeared to be crooked, and appears whole and healthy again. As she asks in bewildering shock what she is, Richard can only pull his daughter to him, and hug her; he has no answer.
Richard has been trying to cope as best he could with this situation, and as he fills pill dispensers for Lily, with various meds for her many ailments, he cracks, and exhibits his own new ability – telekinesis – using his mind to throw pills and dispensers across the kitchen, a water-filled glass crashes into the cupboard, the cupboards doors fly open, and the dishes inside are strewn across the room. As he checks on a sleeping Lily, it seems clear that promicin-free Richard has kept this development to himself.
Diana, Maia and Marco are playing a board-game, when Maia solemnly announces she doesn’t want to play anymore; what’s the fun in playing when she knows Marco’s going to win? After she leaves them,just after telling Marco not to worry, “he” is smarter, but Mommy likes Marco better, and she goes in her room, Diana and Marco discuss pre-cog girl. Diana has no idea who “he” is, and she’s worried because all Maia wants to do is record everything she ‘sees’ in marble composition books, and now that she’s off the promicin, she sees a lot. Marco is sympathetic, and advises her as best he can. Perhaps Kevin Burkhoff can help; he is, after all, one of the few people that is smarter than Marco. Later, Marco also points out the fact that The 4400 Center has a school available, a very good school, that might be good for Maia.
Diana does go to meet with Kevin, and he says he’ll try to work something out; she’s somewhat disturbed to notice a syringe and a yellow liquid she correctly assumes is promicin lying out before he can stow them in a drawer, obviously ready to be used. On a later visit, Diana confirms her hunch that the doctor is injecting himself, and seeing that he’s in need, she reluctantly agrees to assist him, in order to keep an eye on him. Her only condition is that if she believes he’s putting his life in risk, she will stop it, she won’t watch him kill himself.
Shawn meets with Daniel Armand, who has TJ Kim in the back seat of his car. The gunshot from Tom is going to be fatal if Shawn doesn’t heal her; he does of course. Daniel tells him he’s a hero to his people. We discover Shawn has given Daniel a large sum of money to build a defense against the government, in case the government tried to attack them again, as they did with the promicin. Instead, Daniel took the money and created the Nova Group, an organization of 4400’s, who are not only responsible for the attack on Dennis Ryland, but for the deaths of his ‘co-conspirators.’ We see a few of these deaths: one man frozen to death on his toilet, another attacked by the family dog, suddenly turned into Cujo. Shawn is very unhappy that the funds were used, not for the purpose that he intended, but in fact were used to form a terrorist group, which is making things worse by scaring the ‘normals’, as well killing people. Daniel makes it clear they’re in bed together.
In a broadcast, the Nova Group promises the world a demonstration of their power on October 19, which starts pandemonium – of course this must be a huge, horrible, world-shattering event, perhaps even literally ‘shattering’ given some of the powers that have been exhibited. NTAC brings in Gary Navarro, the telepath, to help Tom and Diana in their investigation. They find that another federal agency, the NSA, has been having Gary assist them in tracking down 4400’s they feel may be especially dangerous; Navarro tells Diana and Tom that he’s flown in to various areas around the world, ‘listens’ to a target, and lets the NSA know what the targets’ thoughts are, then he’s flown back to his ‘very comfortable’ existence, and says he doesn’t ask questions. Navarro is a far cry from the man we saw last season, a man on the edge, no control; this Gary is cool, calm, and very much in control of his power. After he serves them up a false lead, Tom and Diana soon discover that it is Gary, in fact, who is one of the key members of the Nova Group. He’s captured just after injecting an undoubtedly fatal liquid into a recovering Dennis Ryland’s IV drip, and the interrogation process begins – they need him to give them more information about Nova, before the October 19th deadline. And, once again, Ryland will survive.
Tom and Diana start by talking to Navarro, newly clothed in orange jumpsuit, and he resists, throwing out a teaser for each, how Alana’s helping Tom cope, with her little fantasy ‘trips’, and how Diana’s tip-toeing around with Marco. They give up for a short time, but tell Nina while Navarro may have been in all their heads for a year, they know how to deal him. At the next session, Tom and Diana are the ones talking… about the 4400’s Navarro fingered, all from outside the US, and all mysteriously missing, just after his visit. It appears this is his weak spot, the fact that he’s done this to his fellow returnees, and why. In the NSA’s eyes, it was bad enough for the US to have it’s fair share of 4400’s with powers –ever expanding powers, now that they aren’t secretly being forced to take promicin into their systems- but they couldn’t have all those foreigners having power too. Navarro had figured out they were using him to take these people out, and he didn’t much like it. So, he joined the Nova Group. Having spent time with Diana and Tom, he knows they’re basically good people, and that they both have intense, personal ties to the 4400. In fact, he had talked to Diana before they found out he was in Nova Group, about Maia and the issues she’s facing. He’s another 4400 with a powerful ability, and understands what Maia’s going through. He explained to Diana that Maia needs to let go, surrender to her power, and eventually, it’ll just be second nature, and she’ll have her control. Navarro knows these two normal humans, and knows they aren’t the bad guys. Just as he’s starting to open up, the door does, and Nina comes in with two agents, clearly the Sopranos side of the NSA. We discover Mr. Ryland has reached out to some of his friends, and Navarro will now be questioned by the goon squad. An angry Tom confronts Dennis, who tells him they need to know what’s going to happen on October 19th, and Tom wasn’t getting it fast enough. Ryland says matter-of-factly that Tom’s too soft – clearly they didn’t know each other as well as they thought.
Daniel calls Shawn, tells him one of the Nova members have been arrested, and they’ll need to go underground, so they need some cash. Shawn, again, is not pleased, but arranges to meet Daniel. Instead, TJ shows up, telling Shawn it’s ok, he can trust her; she knows he saved her life and she owes him one…just as a tiny dart punctures the skin on her neck, and she knows she’s been betrayed by Shawn, just as she passes out.. Shawn, who had been approached earlier by his uncle, Diana and Gary about the Nova Group, had brought NTAC in. Daniel later calls Shawn, telling him he knows Shawn is young…but he’s not prepared to forgive him.
The nasty NSA agents have literally tortured Gary, stretching him out and punching his stomach, not letting him sit, lying him down with a cloth over his face and dumping water over his face, almost drowning him; it was actually really hard to watch. He finally spits out one name – Daniel Armand. Gary says Daniel was the only Nova member he ever dealt with, but the head goon doesn’t believe him, and intends to continue the session, although he’s been advised Gary’s body is not able to handle this treatment. Tom and Diana get Navarro out of that nightmare, just in time for him to be transferred to a NSA facility – time is running out, October 19th is just a day away, and they need more answers. Tom and Diana protest that their facility is the best one equipped to handle a 4400, and a tired Nina says she told them the same thing, but was overruled. While en route, Navarro’s vehicle is crashed and tumbles over and over… when it stops, Daniel pokes his head in as Navarro asks what’s happening…
Meanwhile, Matthew has returned to The 4400 Center after finding it difficult to lobby on the center’s behalf, because non-4400's are increasingly frightened of 4400’s, thanks in no small part to Nova. Shawn tells Matthew he’s very happy to see him, and fills him in on recent events, most particularly, Isabelle’s recent suicide attempt. Shortly after, Matthew visits Isabelle, and, very surprising, he slaps her, hard, across the face, telling her exactly who she is and what the future's plans are for her. We are not privileged to this conversation, but apparently it has something to do with good and evil, because that is the focus of her next, intense, conversation with Shawn. The upshot of their discussion is that one chooses to do good or evil. As Matthew has a phone conversation, with an unknown person about someone who is “back”, but won’t be allowed near Isabelle – and we see pictures in a file folder of Jordan Collier, both before ‘death’ and after, with a long gray beard - he’s interrupted by Isabelle. She tells him he was wrong, she can choose to be good or evil, and she doesn’t have to be who he thinks she is. Playing her like a piano, the manipulative Matthew gives her a syringe of a cloudy white liquid, explaining that if she uses it, it is the only thing capable of killing her – which may save Lily.
Everyone at NTAC is gathered around, watching the time tick down. Literally. The clock ticks down…11:59:57… Where will it strike?…11:59:58… What are they planning?…11:59:59…Will there still be a world in the next second?…12:00:00…
...12:00:01… Hmmm… Well, the world’s still here.
The NTAC crowd disperses out to their offices, to wait for the demonstration. And it isn’t long before they’re rewarded. A napping Tom hears an “Omigod!” in the central room, and goes out to see what’s going on. The television monitors tell the story: a wheat field in the middle of a desert. The Nova Group's demonstration of power is to grow edible crops in an infertile piece of land that hasn’t seen anything growing in it, ‘since before the birth of Christ’ as Nina Jarvis puts it. A beautiful, yet powerful statement – and a non-verbal threat. See what we can do for good? Just think what we could do for evil, if we so chose…
Back at The 4400 Center, Richard and Lily prepare to leave. As Richard packs the car, Isabelle watches from the window and Lily enters her room. Lily has had a bad bout of arthritis, leaving at least one hand clenched in a painful fist, which Shawn wasn’t able to cure for her [although she was careful not to let him know, because she knew it would upset him], and she seems very frail. She gives her daughter a ring Lily’s grandmother – Richard’s sweetheart decades earlier – had passed on to her, and tells Isabelle she’s going to leave now. She doesn’t know how long the trip will be, tells Isabel they’re going out of the country for another possible cure, and she asks Isabel to keep her ring safe. Lily takes her daughter’s face in her hands, drinking her in, they embrace, and Lily leaves. Lily is assisted out to Richard, who helps her into the vehicle, and she says sadly that she lied to her; he apologizes, and she says it will be worse for him, because he’ll have to tell her the truth. The truth Richard will have to tell their daughter is that there was no cure, no trip out of the country, just to their little log cabin, the one they lived in just before Isabelle’s birth, where they were so happy – so Lily can die.
As her parents reach the cabin, Isabel rushes to a drawer, pulls out the syringe Matthew had given her. She touches the needle to her skin, pushing…
Richard and Lily talk. Richard laughs about Lily keeping so calm when she went into labor, and how she got him to the hospital. He turns to her…
Isabel pushes the plunger…emptying the contents onto the floor next to her…
...Lily is dead.
Isabel solemnly puts her mother’s ring on her finger….
…as Richard mourns, holding Lily's hand, and remembering, his young, beautiful Lily… laughing, dancing, kissing…
being…
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