Amazon Prime’s Hanna
Season 1, Episode 8: “Utrax”
Directed by Anders Engström
Written by David Farr

* For a recap & review of the penultimate episode, “Road” – click here
* For a recap & review of the Season 2 premiere, “Safe” – click here
At the Utrax facility, trainees are becoming restless stuck in their rooms. They’re told to stay away from the windows. Girl 249 (Yasmin Monet Prince) disobeys, using that super sensitive hearing to listen in on what people are saying. Girl 249 speaks to Girl 242 (Áine Rose Daly) through the walls dividing their cells. She believes change is coming.
In the forest, Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) helps surrogate dad Erik (Joel Kinnaman) clean his wound from when Marissa (Mireille Enos) shot him the night before. She sucks the bullet out in a strangely intimate gesture— something you’d only do for family, if at all. Afterwards, she expresses the sentiment Emil could never be her father. She was raised by Erik, for better or worse.
He shows her the others being held at the Utrax facility. She remarks how they’re “all girls.” Again, the idea of a woman’s bodily and psychological autonomy comes up. Hanna, and these other girls, were not only taken from their true families, they’ve been physically and mentally altered, robbing them of their freedom.

“They’re not in control anymore”

In an abandoned building, Marissa is holding Sawyer (Khalid Abdalla) hostage. She wants to know what’s been going on at Utrax. The CIA agent only tells her they’re “finishing the job” she started. Marissa will use him as a means to her own ends. He really fucks her plan up when he forces her off the road causing them to crash in the middle of the forest. Sawyer rigs a rag to the gas tank, lights it, then heads into the trees. She wakes in time to get out before it blows, just barely, and he has no clue.
Erik and Hanna visit Johanna’s grave before moving towards their final destination. He isn’t doing so well. There’s a great moment between them when he watches her hot-wiring a van with this fatherly pride on his face seeing she’s learned so much from him. Sure, it’s not your typical nuclear family, but it’s family nonetheless!
On their way into Utrax, they head on past the fence further towards the facility, where everybody’s on high alert. Agents are blindsided when Hanna uses a dog as a distraction, then she and her dad get their hands on guns. Girl 249 watches the situation develop from her window. Erik and Hanna get inside, searching the building for the captive girls.

They eventually find the cells. They knock on the doors but get no response from the brainwashed ladies. Hanna continues to knock until 249 responds. The girls can’t open their doors. Let’s hope father and daughter can get her out, then it’ll be a real fight. Already things are GETTING WILD! Erik and Hanna begin a gunfight with the Utrax agents. Right before one of the agents shoots Hanna she’s saved by Erik putting a bullet through the woman’s neck.
Soundtrack note: “The Answer” by Savages, which we’ve heard before, plays during the fight sequence. What a killer tune.
Hanna and Erik stumble across Dr. Kunek (Noah Taylor). The doc knows Heller from when he “stole the baby girl.” These two know each other. Kunek is the very same man who helped deliver Hanna. They want him to open the cells. He advises against that without their medication.

249 leaves her cell, though not all are so eager to break the rules. She finds the father and daughter. Hanna’s able to discover her real name: Clara. She’s also able to tell the girl her mother’s name, too. Finally Clara has been liberated. Can they get the others out of their cells? And before Sawyer arrives with reinforcements? Hanna attempts to speak to all the girls. Sadly it isn’t so easy. Big problems come when Sawyer uses the P.A. to tell the trainees any unauthorised personnel are to be met with deadly force, which puts Erik and Hanna in a very sketchy spot as one of the girls lashes out. Clara has to put the girl down before she kills Erik. The rest of them leave to be evacuated.

“It’s not a question of sin— I obey orders.”

“Holy mantra of military command?”

Marissa lurks around the facility, and the soldiers start setting fire to the place. Scorched earth, just like last time. Erik, Clara, and Hanna make their way through a shooting range, where Clara gathers a bunch of explosives to greet the soldiers who surround them. One explosion takes them out fast, leaving only a handful for the trio to kill. Hanna and Clara use their enhanced skills while Erik manages well enough injured. Poor Clara’s nearly killed when Hanna rescues her. At the same time, Erik’s trying not to let his internal injuries from Berlin kill him. Sadly he tells his daughter she has to leave him. “You‘re being stupid,” she says. She and Clara take him along. Outside the facility, they’re stopped by Sawyer at gunpoint. Before he can kill Erik he’s gunned down by Marissa. An ironic turn of events, no? Marissa tells them to go while she takes care of things there. All she does is call for assistance and claim she’s been shot by Heller. She’s able to change the narrative with Sawyer dead.

In the woods, Hanna and Clara get Erik to the van. They head on the road but it’s evident Erik won’t make it. He dies in Clara’s lap. Hanna stops the vehicle to say goodbye. She calls him “dad” and weeps. At least he was able to help free one of the other girls and show his daughter truth before he died. Hanna brings him to be buried next to her mother at the cemetery.
A whole big universe awaits Clara out there for the first time.
This has been a difficult journey for Hanna, and Clara’s is only really beginning. Still, they’ve got each other. It’s them against the world.

Father Gore absolutely loved this show. If it only stays at a single season, so be it. But there’s a huge world built up here to be explored. The acting, the writing, the music, the action— all on point. Imagine a Season 2 where Clara and Hanna have to continue to fight Utrax, searching for their stolen sisters to try and free them from their psychological cages? It’d be glorious.
Luckily it’s confirmed: Amazon is going for Season 2. Long live the power of women!