(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Sunday’s “The Nevers.”)
At the end of this week’s episode of HBO’s “The Nevers,” the never-emotional Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) breaks down in tears in front of her best friend, Penance Adair (Ann Skelly), Harriet (Kiran Sonia Sawar), Myrtle (Viola Prettejohn) and the other Touched women as they read out the message they deciphered from the late Mary’s (Eleanor Tomlinson) final song.
But Amalia does not become affected by the message, which starts with, “You’re not alone,” until Harriet reveals that it was specifically directed at Amalia.
“‘Amalia, my lonely soldier,’ something about wearing stripes. But she said, ‘I didn’t leave you. I went inside the city. I was damaged, incomplete. I had to heal. Soon, we will all be ready. But it’s dark, there’s a darkness.’ She said to everyone, all of us, ‘to gather and protect each other because of the dark.’”
This is when Amalia begins crying, and Penance clearly knows why, asking Harriet if there is more to the message in the lyrics.
“‘Find me. Let them help those who will. Come below and find me. And come before the dark and we can save’… It ended there.”
Harriet asks why Amalia is tearing up if the message in Mary’s song was actually coming from someone else.
“That’s right,” Penance says, looking at her friend as she continues to cry and looks on in fear.
“Then who? Who do we need to find?” Harriet asks, right before the episode, titled “Undertaking,” ends.
Well, Skelly isn’t revealing anything, but she did give us a few hints about how much Penance knows and what lies ahead in Episodes 5 and 6, the final installments of the first half of Season 1 of “The Nevers.”
“Where it goes after Episode 4, I don’t want to spoil anything at all. But yeah, Penance is very aware of Amalia’s past and her mission as a whole and believes and trusts in Amalia,” Skelly told TheWrap. “She does. And as crazy as it sounds, anything that comes of Amalia’s mouth, Penance is like, ‘Yeah, cool. Yup, that’s it. That’s the way it is.’ That’s really nice to have her back 1000%. I really love playing the character who Amalia can say anything to and know that she won’t be judged and they’ll find a way to work through it. God knows we need more of those kinds of people. So that’s nice to do.”
Earlier in the episode, Penance and Augustus “Augie” Bidlow (Tom Riley) made up after she went to the home of him and his sister, Lavinia (Olivia Williams), under suspicions that he had something to do with Mary’s death.
Skelly said she loves those two together as a romantic pairing, and is glad they came back together after he pushed her away because Lavinia convinced Augie — who has revealed to only Penance that he is Touched — that it was the best thing for Penance’s reputation.
“Augie and Penance’s relationship — I’m obsessed with them. I think they’re so cute,” Skelly said. “Working with Tom Riley is really dreamy because he’s so funny in a totally different way to Augie. But then somehow [he’s] hilariously goofy and sweet on screen. It’s an honest relationship. I think it’s a really nice touch in the show. I think that they’re such a sweet pair. And it is a funny dynamic because Augie really brings out a different side of Penance that we don’t really see. She can get kind of testy at him and things like that. It’s lovely, I think. I’m glad that they mend it after all that.”
“The Nevers” airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.