Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 2 recap: The hunt for number seven

I thought it might be a while before Mother’s snake baby, or “number seven,” would reappear, but Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 2, proved me wrong. Apparently, this show has delegated a significant portion of its budget to craft the giant snake monster as its arrival in episode 2, “Seven,” makes it seem like the snake is going to become very crucial to the plot moving forward.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 2, “Seven.”

Before the snake stuff, episode 2 quickly wraps up the fiery threat from the ending of the premiere. Dubbed a “hate crime,” we find out that the culprit behind it was Tamerlane (James Harkness). The Trust assigns Mother to be the next Punisher for her new task. Since she is an android, the Trust believes that it is safe for her to carry out Tamerlane’s punishment since she won’t get off on the vengeance. Mother must don an ancient Mithraic helmet and cloak to hide her identity as she beats Tamerlane.

After Mother visits Father and informs him that the threat has been taken care of, she finds him messing with the pieces he and Vera found in the premiere. Father claims that they’re from an android that is over one million years old. Once exposed to the light, the skeletal remains started sprouting berries.

Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 2 recap: The hunt for number seven

Mother doesn’t appear very interested in the relic, but I can’t imagine that this old android won’t be important to the plot. Could this ancient being be the cause of the mysterious signal that everyone keeps hearing? According to Sue, that signal cannot breach the tropical zone, something she learns after looking at the Trust’s planetary analysis. But we still don’t know where it is coming from.

When Mother tells Father about becoming the Punisher, he’s surprisingly okay with it. He’s happy in this new place and doesn’t want anything to upset their new way of life. Mother requests they keep her time as the Punisher a secret from the children so as not to make them believe that violence is an acceptable way to handle conflict.

Being punished is the last straw for Tamerlane. He voiced frustration at taking orders from the Trust in episode one and this latest transgression is more proof that he’s not happy with the way the collective is running. Tamerlane ends up becoming the latest member of Marcus’ flock, working alongside him and Decima to steal one of the collective’s tanks. Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 2 presents Marcus’ agenda and his desire to create a new family-oriented religion where everyone loves and takes care of one another while praising Sol. Marcus claims that his way of life will be different from what preceded on Earth.

At the collective, seeing Tamerlane post-punishment is enough to get Campion to turn in the items he and paul found in the premiere. He gives Mother the Mithraic relic found by Paul and the egg.  Mother accepts the relic to turn it over to the Trust since it is against the law to harbor it. She advises Campion to return the egg to its nest.

While climbing the tree to put the egg back, Campion accidentally breaks it. Before he can do anything about it, he’s visited by number seven. The flying snake has grown massive since we last saw it. However, it doesn’t appear to want to harm Campion. They share a strange moment together where they see eye-to-eye, maybe the snake recognizes that they share a Mother, so to speak?

Mother finds Campion on the ground with the snake hovering above him and demands that it leave. As seven departs, her android-breasts start lactating…it’s weird. But it shows that there is still a connection between Mother and her seventh child. And now she’s got big problems since Mother is still keeping it a secret that the snake is her child.

Only Father knows that. It later attacks the collective, sending many of the citizens into a panic. A group retreats inside one of the metal canister-like homes to protect themselves. Unfortunately, the snake somehow grabs the line and throws the entire thing into the acidic ocean, killing everyone inside of it, including a child.

The next day, most everyone gets assigned tasks to hunt down the snake and prevent it from harming anyone else. Father is tasked with leading the prisoners to their demise as the atheists intend to use them as bait. If the snake swallows one and leaves, their bomb will explode, thus killing the snake.

Meanwhile, Mother asks Sue to seal her lactating nipples? I don’t know what they are in android terms. Obviously, Mother wants to try to keep her secret connection with seven hidden from everyone else and it’ll be harder to do that if she keeps lactating. Then she grabs a gun and goes off to hunt the snake on her own. Mother promises Father that she will kill seven if she finds it. But will she? Similarly, Paul and Campion separate to hunt for the snake as Campion doesn’t believe seven is entirely evil and wants to protect it from the collective.

Marcus, Vecima, Vrille and Tamerlane also discover the snake after intercepting one of the atheist’s tanks and finding diagrams of the snake. Decima wonders if the snake is part of the prophecy and if Marcus is meant to master it. So now we’ve got yet another group going after this creature. Before Vrille can help them find it by using her tracking software, Decima instructs her to go home and sleep to restore her functions.

On the walk home, Vrille gets caught by another collective tank and shot at. She ends up running into Paul and Campion, requesting their help in getting her home to fix her injury in return for helping them find the snake.

Mother finds some of the molted skin from her snake baby and sets it on fire with her breath because I guess she has fire breath as one of her many weapons. We also know she has some kind of acidic blood inside her since it killed one of the surgeons operating on her in the first episode. Even without her eyes, the necromancer remains a powerful threat. Mother swears she will kill seven when she finds it since it murdered a child, but I have a feeling Mother will find it much harder to pull the trigger when she comes face to face with her baby than she thinks right now.

New episodes of Raised by Wolves season 2 stream Thursdays on HBO Max.