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Orphan Black: It's Time For a Clone to Die

Bye, Cosima

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Merrill Barr

This Thursday (June 16) marks the end of what is reportedly the penultimate season of BBC America's Orphan Black. With a very limited number of episodes left, and the final act of the show beginning... It's time to kill off one of the clones.

In case you've totally missed the past few episodes (and you should go back and watch it, it's been great), BBCA's clone drama has spent the past season following Sarah, Alison and Cosima (all played by Tatiana Maslany) as they tracked down the cure for a chromosomal abnormality that's killing them... An abnormality that's also a side-effect of the cloning experiment that created them in the first place.

It's a storyline that's been playing out for four seasons on the show, as various factions and shadow conspiracies have tried to dissect the "sisters," own them outright, and occasionally work with them. Along the way, the main trio -- plus anti-hero clone Helena -- have skirted death and been threatened. But so far, none of them have died.

As we rev up for Thursday's finale, Orphan Black needs to stop teasing clone death, and follow through.

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BBC America

Look, we're fans of the show here at TVGuide.com, and love each of Maslany's clones like they were our own sisters. But we're entering the endgame now. Sarah and the others have spent three seasons and change trying to escape the madness of Neolution (the fringe sub-culture at the center of the show's conspiracy) and the rest of their creators, always trying to get out of the conspiracies and live normal lives. The death of one of their own would change that dynamic completely: it would make them want to end the game being played at their expense, rather than merely survive it.

Once they came to terms with the the realities of human cloning back in Season 1, all the sisters were interested in was getting past whatever challenge was in front of them at the moment: the Castor program (male clones that were created alongside the sisters); self-aware semi-evil clone Rachel; or also semi-evil clone program co-creator Susan Duncan. Once each challenge has been taken care of, things have always gone back to "normal." Or as normal as you can get in a show about human cloning.

Losing a sister, however, would make them realize short-term thinking isn't the answer.

We need to see the sestra-hood stop going on the defensive, and instead take the offensive. Whenever the show has done this in the past, it's been stronger for it, like when Sarah posed as Rachel to get intel on Dyad (the organization that houses the clone program). Finally, the show took the fight to the bad guys... Only to back off so that every one of our main clones could stay "safe."

What could be a better way to motivate the sisters to band together -- which is when the show is at its best -- than to lose one of their own? To take down the show's big Neolution threat, everyone needs to work together, to know there is no safety until they finish this, once and for all. For better or worse, killing one the clones would give the remaining "sisters" the motivation to follow through.

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BBC America

We've spent so much time with these girls that to watch one of them go would be horrific, and gut wrenching... But it would feel the same for the remaining characters, and make for stronger storytelling in these final few episodes. We love all the stories we've watched over the past few years about Cosima, Sarah, Alison, Helena, and even Rachel... But it's time for someone's story to come to a close.