Orphan Black: Echoes

During the churnier middle episodes, it makes you want to lock everyone in a room and force them to talk it all out, if only to get things moving along. The show is at its best when all of its characters are pinging off each other, Ritter’s jabs moving against Fix’s sullen walls and Hawes’ desperate pleas for everyone to just have a little sense while they navigate the twisty, emotional core of the show’s action.

At the end of the day, Orphan Black: Echoes is perfectly serviceable science fiction. Its pace is brisk, its twists are generally exciting, and its story is not quite as convoluted as its predecessor’s. (Which, let’s be honest, is a good thing in some ways!) But is it the spinoff that OG Clone Club members were likely hoping for? Probably not.

The original Orphan Black was more fun. .... If the sequel is more dour meditation on loss, mortality and the possibilities and pitfalls of rebirth, the first season builds to some shocking climatic jolts, begging for renewal. [24 Jun - 14 Jul 2024]

None of the acting shines the way Maslany did the first time around. “Echoes” offers fan service at best but too often it’s just a degraded copy of the original “Orphan Black” series.

Echoes doesn’t have anything unique to add to the wonderful world Orphan Black built. Even the color palette is paler here. And the few reminders that this is indeed a sequel (with the help of some cameos and references) either feel forced or random.

The show’s curiosity about the nature of memory and experience has a poignant allure, but it wastes its questions and answers on stock characters and blank vessels. A few characters from the original pop up, but only in hollow ways that highlight the new show’s absence of chemistry. Copies of copies deteriorate. Echoes, too.

It feels less like a sequel to the original, continuing its ideas in a new format, and more like a cheap remake; change a few names, and it could be a completely different project, with almost no throughline to the original beyond Kira’s name.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]