Hatake truly broke my heart last night – him struggling to hold back his grief as he bandaged Julia’s eyes is one of the most visceral scenes I have ever witnessed on screen. I do not believe he even shed a tear, but the sheer anguish as his face reddened and twisted in the effort not to cry out in pain was just heartrending.
The reasoning behind such an emotion will be examined today – why was he consumed with such sorrow at over Julia’s transformation? Should it not have instead been pride? Joy, even?
I think it might have been were it not for Constance’s arrival.
If we observe Constance and her interactions with males, it is clear that she is used to being the dominant, the Alpha, if you will. Even Hatake – who, as we have seen, is an Alpha in every sense of the word – is cowed by her, even he looks away as a submissive would in a pack hierarchy. Only Daniel seems unimpressed, which plainly takes her aback and quite vexes her (as to why he alone seems immune to her “charms,” that is yet another theory I’ll save for tomorrow).
If we go with the theory that Constance and her kind are another race entirely – we shall call them Ningen for convenience’s sake – it seems evident that females are the dominant gender, with the males as little more than drones and breeders.
Yet if females are the dominant gender, then why would Hatake be so insistent that Constance will kill Julia? We only have to look to the honey bee to answer that question:
When a young virgin queen emerges from a queen cell, she will generally seek out virgin queen rivals and attempt to kill them. Virgin queens will quickly find and kill (by stinging) any other emerged virgin queen (or be dispatched themselves), as well as any unemerged queens. Queen cells that are opened on the side indicate that a virgin queen was likely killed by a rival virgin queen. When a colony remains in swarm mode after the prime swarm has left, the workers may prevent virgins from fighting and one or several virgins may go with after-swarms. Other virgins may stay behind with the remnant of the hive. As many as 21 virgin queens have been counted in a single large swarm. When the after-swarm settles into a new home, the virgins will then resume normal behavior and fight to the death until only one remains.
– Wikipedia
Since Julia is evidently now an Alpha Vector, it would be reason for Hatake to be concerned about Constance finding out and doing away with the competition. It could also be as simple as an example of the taboo in some vampire lore which states a vampire is not allowed to create progeny without strict approval from a council or an elder.
Yet this raises another question – if Hatake is loyal (or more correctly, submissive) to Constance, then why care about what happens to Julia at all? We must remember his expression when she mentioned “thinning the herd.” This must refer to thinning out the human population in order for the Ningen to gain (or retain) dominance over humans. It could be that Hatake isn’t a bad guy after all, that his work on the cure was kept under wraps because with the cure, Constance and her “council,” Ilaria, would have complete control over who gets to live, who gets to be an Alpha, and who gets to be a drone. She did mention to Balleseros that Hatake might have “gone off the rails,” that she suspected his sabotage of her plans, so, again, another question….
Why didn’t Balleseros tell Constance what he knew? Why didn’t he tell her what he’d found about Dr. Hvit and the heads? Is he truly a double agent working with Hatake to bring down the Hive Queen and gain freedom for humans and Vectors alike?
Is this why Doreen had to die?
One of the most confusing scenes in this saga has been the sight of Balleseros crying – Balleseros, the arrogant, take no prisoners asshole who shot a man off his snowmobile without even a thought – weeping and saying “I’m sorry” as he stuck Doreen with the needle and covered her in infected rats, leaving her to such a horrible death. One must wonder if her enthusiasm for revealing her discovery to Alan might have put Hatake’s mission in jeopardy, that by telling Alan this was a constructed virus would throw the focus off the cure and onto the who’s and what’s and why’s of the virus’ construction, thereby losing the race against finding a cure before Ilaria and Constance could get their hands on it. He just didn’t count on Alan’s persistence in his autopsy and Daniel’s tenacity to set things right when it came to exacting justice.
I argue that Hatake and Balleseros are mounting a resistance against Ilaria, that they know what the endgame is and do not like it one bit – Hatake, because he is not one to be dominated for long, Balleseros, well, he has his own reasons of which I’m not too sure at this point.
One thing I am sure of is my theory that Julia is to be the next Hive Queen, one to stand against Constance and bring her down once and for all.
Thus ends my treatise, please comment and discuss either below or, please, DO use the email in the Contact Us tab.
– Lilith
Spektral Helix 