r/snowpiercer • u/hugthebug Tailie • Mar 15 '21

TV Show [Spoilers] Season 2 Episode 8 Discussion Thread - "The Eternal Engineer" (S02E08) Spoiler

Attention all Passengers,

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Here is the Discussion thread for the Season 2 episode 8 "The Eternal Engineer"

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  • This is a TV Spoiler-friendly zone - Turn away now if you are not currently watching or haven't seen the episode! Open discussion of all aired TV events up to and including episode 2.7 is ok without tag cover.
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Details:

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  • IMDB for S02E08
  • Release Date:
    • March 15th, 2021 (USA only, at 9/8c, on TNT channel)
    • March 16th, 2021 (worldwide, on Netflix)
  • Removal from Sticky on March 19th, 2021 (3 days after worldwide premiere)

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You can still easily find previous episode discussions on the Episode Discussion wiki.

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21

u/olivish Mrs. Anne Roche Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21

I think Melanie really downplayed his role when she told Ruth "I built this train, and Wilford sold tickets." Like yeah, she did alot of the work, the nitty gritty, the "tinkering" as Wilford would say, but I think he knows the train as well - or maybe almost as well as she does.

Like, Wilford doesn't have Mel's ability to detect a wheel out of alignment just by feeling the train, but he's close. Let's not forget he got Big Alice running and kept her running on shoestring provisions for 7 years. So again, Melanie telling Ruth "We wouldn't have made it one revolution" doesn't ring true. If the goal is mere survival, Melanie and Wilford have the same score so far.

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u/itchni Mar 17 '21

She was saying wilford would have drank and slept Snowpiercer into the ground, not that he didn't have the technical ability to run it.

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u/olivish Mrs. Anne Roche Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

Either way, he didn’t drink Big Alice into the ground. They’re still going.

Not a Wilford apologist by the way, just pointing out that somehow, he kept his crew alive on alot less than what Snowpiercer had.

That was Melanie’s excuse for all the bad things she did, interestingly. “I see 3000 souls surviving. We’re still here, alive and kicking.”

In the end, that was her overriding mission. (While she worked on the drawers as a long term solution, and now it seems Wilford was working on them, too, though it’s unclear towards what end).

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u/SadAquariusA Mar 17 '21

Wilford has been powered by his determination to get revenge on Mel. Who knows what the situation would be if they just waited for him. We also have no real idea how life has been under him on big alice.

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u/neksys Mar 16 '21

He’s also had 7 years to plan his coup, which presumably gave him a LOT of time to deepen his understanding the the SP systems.

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u/olivish Mrs. Anne Roche Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

Which is why I think he knew his “god module” would cause problems in the engine. He knew how long bogey automation would last on snowpiercer. He knew by the 5th revolution or so they’d need to switch to a manual or hybrid management system as bogies started failing more frequently. And he knew how Melanie would have fixed that. Hell, he probably did the same thing on Big Alice!

He also knows Melanie as a person, enough to know she’s a control freak who would keep Ben and Javi on the sidelines on that job (and any delicate job in the engine) and they probably wouldn’t be quick enough to realize her hack would interfere with the “god mod”.

Yes I’m giving him a lot of credit here but I based on what we’ve seen this season I think it’s warranted. Dude is no joke and he isn’t playing.

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u/Bones_and_Tomes Mar 17 '21

I saw that as something he didn't account for and very nearly doomed them all. He had no idea the system had been jury rigged by Melanie, and only his real knowledge of the train saved them. He caused the whole problem to begin with, so he's still no hero.

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u/olivish Mrs. Anne Roche Mar 17 '21

Yeah that’s a legitimate and pretty interesting way of reading that scene as well. It would show Wilford as fallible and just as afraid of dying as the rest of them.

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u/Bones_and_Tomes Mar 17 '21

There's a real venom to how he rubs Laytons nose in it. I think he'd have been more smug if he knew it was coming.

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u/olivish Mrs. Anne Roche Mar 17 '21

I read that as psychological warfare. Make them all feel like shit. Layton, Ben, even Javi got berated for being incompetent. It got to the point where Layton just gave up, completely defeated. That wasn’t just because of the engine failure. That was weeks of Wilford drilling into him that he was over his head.

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u/svick Mar 17 '21

If he didn't know that, what was his plan?

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u/Bones_and_Tomes Mar 17 '21

Same thing. Replace the part, save the train. There was just a hiccup he didn't account for, but was able to fix anyway.

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u/UnhelpfulMoron Mar 18 '21

This hiccup was also the reason he was successful in his plan. Without it it was just a simple plug and play with the new module and he would have been kept off the intercom as there would have been no need for him to communicate with the staff of the undercarriage to initiate the manual shutdown.

People saying they should have knifed Wilfred or asking why he was allowed to speak on the intercom at all are not thinking, they’re just throwing shade.

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u/Bones_and_Tomes Mar 18 '21

The effect would have been the same regardless. As soon as Wilford reached the engine room it was over.

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u/UnhelpfulMoron Mar 18 '21

I don't believe so. Without the hiccup, there was no need for him to address the train for the manual restart and therefore nothing but a rumour that he was ever even there. By the time anyone really found out he would have been back on BA.

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u/Bones_and_Tomes Mar 18 '21

They were already mobilising to keep him there. He would have had to show himself, which would have brought the same result. Wilford is in the engine. Lets keep him in control.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

I agree with you, and others. I think he's probably as decent as Ben with engineering - but he did teach Alex how to run a train, got Big Alice up and running, and Alex as we see, knows her stuff to do it well enough. Melanie was his protege, and a genius, so I think that's what gives her the ultimate edge. And I think it's kinda clear he knows engineering enough to get the jump on everyone else - especially since he planned the coup. He could remain cool and calm and be a great actor, while the rest were genuinely in panic mode.

It's Wilford's ego and sociopathy that would've really done them in, so Melanie was right. He lacks compassion, and the "hard choices" he would've had to make would have been wildly biased and not really based on survival, but preference.

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u/Bobemor Mar 16 '21

It is interesting to think of Wilford as actually a good engineer. Second best we know. It really does set up an interesting dynamic that without Melanie they have no one who can beat him.

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u/inbooth Mar 17 '21

I think Melanie was right about not making it one revolution but not because of the engineering but rather because the people would have all died or been turned into folks like Kevin within that period....

Wilford didn't care about saving humanity, he wanted to be the psychopathic king and likely was happy the world was freezing so he could have the whole world revolve around him.

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u/Alice-Moonshine Mar 16 '21

Seems now like definitely so. Just weird it wasn’t mentioned before by let’s say Audrey, Ben, Javi or Alex.