Mrs. Davis Episode 5 Finally Reveals Dr. Schrodinger's Connection To The Quest
This post contains spoilers for "Mrs. Davis," season 1, episode 5.
It took a few episodes for Peacock's "Mrs. Davis" to loop back around to where it started, but now we're back on the island with Dr. Arthur Schrödinger, and we finally know how his story connects to the quest for the holy grail.
A lot has happened since the "Mrs. Davis" series premiere, when our nun protagonist Simone (Betty Gilpin) came riding in on a horse to thwart the elaborate grifts of Reno magicians. Though he shares the name of a physicist famous for his thought experiment involving a cat, you could be forgiven for almost forgetting Schrödinger. However, for fans of "The Thin Red Line" and other assorted things, the face of Ben Chaplin, the actor playing Schrödinger, may look familiar, even if it's hidden behind a scraggly castaway beard much of the time.
Viewers actually met Schrödinger before Simone, back in "Mrs. Davis" episode 1 after the whole five-minute intro with Templar Knights burning at the stake and fighting nuns beheading men in search of the grail. It turns out that intro was an unaired shoe commercial, so there's that. For his part, Schrödinger initially escaped the island by MacGyver-ing a signal flare after 10 years and 56 days of "scraping potassium nitrate off tree bark and cat turds." Instead of a volleyball named Wilson (like Tom Hanks in the movie "Castaway"), his only friend on that island was a feline named Apollo, so he didn't show as much hesitation as Simone when it came to befriending the all-powerful A.I. Mrs. Davis.
Meet your father, Clara
The show's first mention of Mrs. Davis as the Algorithm came in Schrödinger's presence, and he was last seen putting in an earpiece to ask her a question. "Mrs. Davis" episode 5, "A Great Place to Drink to Gain Control of Your Drink," kindly returns the favor by answering all your lingering Schrödinger questions.
As Simone and Wiley (Jake McDorman) sit down with Schrödinger on the island, where he's somehow returned like a "Lost" character (this being another show with a HATCH, co-created by the one and only Damon Lindelof), the episode reveals that the red-headed star of the aforementioned shoe commercial, Clara (Mathilde Ollivier), is Schrödinger's long-lost daughter. In flashbacks, we see how Clara found Schrödinger through the letters he wrote her mother, the commercial's director, Mathilde (Katja Herbers).
Both Clara and Mathilde were members of the Sisters of the Coin, a secret organization sworn to protect the grail, otherwise known as "the asset." Since it drove an emotional wedge between Mathilde and them both, Clara enlists Schrödinger's aid to try and destroy the grail, first with a Hercules laser in the physics lab at his university. Though he's standoffish at first, Schrödinger eventually comes to enjoy spending quality time with Clara, which makes her fate that much more shocking to Simone and Wiley as they sit on the beach, playing interactive audience members throughout the telling of Schrödinger's story.
A case of the exploding head
A high-stakes game of rock, paper, scissors results in Clara being the one to drink from the grail in a last-ditch attempt to destroy it by breaking the one rule for handling it. She promptly spouts a nosebleed, and it's implied she enjoys a final moment of tranquility with Jesus Christ, a.k.a. Jay (Andy McQueen), before her head explodes.
Ladies and gentlemen ... "Mrs. Davis!" In the end, we learn that Schrödinger had Clara's liver transplanted into either Simone or Wiley, since the liver is the "most detoxifying organ" and it would theoretically enable them to develop an immunity to the microtoxins baked into the grail's finish. Schrödinger was there at the hospital when they were little, but he left before the transplant, so he doesn't know which of them got Clara's liver.
The question Schrödinger asked Mrs. Davis offscreen at the beginning of the series was related to Simone and Wiley's whereabouts. However, he ultimately decided that it would be safer for them and better for his all-around peace of mind if he headed out on a research vessel with some marine biologists, fed the grail to a sperm whale, and returned to the island.
Did you get all that? If not, run, don't walk, across the water to enjoy the weird humor of "Mrs. Davis," streaming new episodes every Thursday on Peacock.