Mrs. Davis S1E3 Recap and Analysis: Why Are You Doing This, Laddie?

The following recap contains spoilers for Mrs. Davis S1E3, “A Baby with Wings, A Sad Boy with Wings and a Great Helmet” (written by Alberto Roldán & Damon Lindelof and directed by Alethea Jones)

Welcome, dear reader, as we continue to review the Peacock series Mrs. Davis with Episode 3, “A Baby with Wings, A Sad Boy with Wings and a Great Helmet.” Last episode we got Simone’s backstory, this episode it is Wiley’s turn. We learn that, like Lizzie, he has been warped by the actions of his parents. Though his parental betrayal didn’t come until he was 25, finding out that his entire life up until then had been a lie.

If Halloween 2001 was his lucky day, that birthday in 2016 was his unluckiest day. The worst day of his life, as he puts it. Well, so far anyway.

Bo faces Wiley with an earnest look on his face, board room executives blurry in the background — *The game was rigged*

Tell It to Me Straight, Bo

We start (after the black and white flash forward) with the traditional flashback segment. This time going back to 2016. Wiley and Lizzie are in love. They are preparing him for a confrontation with his grandfather’s lawyers, where he will dump his entire inheritance, setting aside only enough to get him and the woman he loves started in Alaska. Instead of melting their faces off, the lawyers are fine with whatever he wants.

Enter Bo, who tells it to Wiley straight. The game was rigged. Wiley is just a cowboy who ain’t worthy of his boots. Reeling from the news, he goes down to Truckee Park Arena to prove himself. To become unlucky 13 riding Jezebull, officially designated a weapon of mass destruction! Lizzie arrives, but there ain’t no stopping him now. The crowd counts down. Five, four, three, two, one!

And we cut away.

Mrs. Davis S1E3 - Apron Man sits in a train car reading a book titled "Chivalry Isn't Dead but Your Soul Is" — *A little light reading for the train ride*

Throw Mama from the Train

In the present, we’ve jumped ahead a bit. Simone and Wiley are already in London, on a train surveilling the Apron Man. He’s headed to Scone, Scotland, where the Excalibattle Festival is taking place. Simone sneaks off to pray and is interrupted by another one of Mrs. Davis’ proxies. Or rather, Mum’s proxy, in this case, as she goes by “Mum” in the UK.

Speaking of mums, Celeste is on the train. She now runs the most successful security firm in the Western United States. Like Wiley, she’s been keeping tabs on her daughter’s whereabouts. Simone is entering a “hot zone” where her quarry, i.e. Simone’s father, is likely to be hiding. Celeste firmly believes he is still very much alive and laughing at everyone he duped. But that’s not her. She doesn’t move on. She moves towards.

Wiley in a medieval helmet stands aghast while the crowd of participants races behind him — *That’s a great helmet*

Excalibattle!

As they arrive at the festival, they spy Apron Man talking excitedly to a redhead in a business suit. Thinking it could be Clara, Simone wants to follow her. However, Wiley insists he follow Apron Man and enter the contest, despite Simone’s protestations. Once again, the crowd counts down and Wiley’s manhood is on the line. With no clue what he’s doing or why, he still manages to make it to the giant sword and put his hand on it. The contest is on.

For the next 40 hours, Wiley “battles” it out, until the contest is reduced to two souls on the sword, him and his imaginary nemesis, the one they call Horns. He’s bolstered at one point by the shoes that Mrs. Davis gifted him. Incredible shoes that attract the interest of the priest that they ran into on the train. The true enemy, though we don’t quite know that just yet.

Mathilde stands at the festival smoking a cigarette while Simone looks nervous standing a little behind her — *Simone tracks her quarry*

Meanwhile

Most of Simone’s adventures for those nearly two days are off screen. We don’t get to see her trail the redhead to the bank or break into her hotel room to discover a wetsuit. When Apron Man finally starts singing like a songbird, as Wiley’s squire predicted, he gives Wiley the clue Simone needed: Loch Drumellie.

Simone rushes out there and comes across a truly bizarre sight on the shore. While hree Apron Men stand watch, the women in pantsuits perform some sort of ritual dance around a pregnant member, slice open her fake belly, and remove the glowing Holy Grail. Just when things were getting good, Mathilde, the redhead, sneaks up on Simone and holds a knife to her throat. Mathilde thinks Simone is Clara, just as Simone thought Mathilde was Clara.

Mrs. Davis S1E3 - Two cells phones are held on screen with images of Wiley projected with glowing wings — *Wiley has Wings*

No More Secrets

Simone escapes and returns to the festival, finding out from the squire that Wiley has Wings from the Algorithm. A storm brewing within her and without, she marches up to Wiley and confronts him about it. He got the Wings by submitting for an expiration date. He has been thinking all along that Simone left him that day because she thought he was a coward, and this was a way to have people to look at him and see that he mattered.

Simone tells him the truth. That on the worst day of his life, she teleported to a restaurant, met and fell in love with the Messiah, and he fed her falafel. For some reason, she didn’t think he’d believe her. Wiley curses the guy that stole his girlfriend and gets zapped by a bolt of lightning for his blasphemy.

Lying on a stretcher, Wiley asks if he’s dead. No such luck, idiot. Did he win? Well, they gave him a pin, so yeah, now he is worthy. Simone wants to tell him all about the Grail, but Wiley doesn’t give a sh*t. He’s whisked off in an ambulance that turns out to be driven by the priest from the train. He gasses Wiley to sleep and says he’s looking forward to discussing where Wiley got those shoes.

Mrs. Davis S1E3 - JQ stands under the dome of Resistance HQ, arms out and yelling Freedom! — *FREEDOM!*

Quick Takes

A couple of quick takes on the rest of the episode and other tangentially related things:

Another bizarre AI-generated episode title. It is a great helmet at least, but the grammar nerd in me is a little bit saddened that AI does not conform to the Oxford comma.
Episode 3 starts with a “previously on” segment, whereas Episode 2 did not. So maybe I was right, and the original plan was to start with a drop of two episodes, not four. Why the change of plans, I wonder?
What is the significance, if any, of Wiley’s gesture rubbing Lizzie’s right ear?
Interesting that Wiley and Lizzie were planning to go so far off grid after he gave away his grandfather’s fortune. Were they already wanting to get away from Mrs. Davis? Or maybe from Celeste, if she was already running the security firm.
We learn that Wiley was in the hospital to get a liver transplant also, and that he and Lizzie shared that liver between them. That’s a pretty significant bond.
Thought: Could this shared body part play out into Simone’s Chosen One status, allowing Wiley to step in somehow, if there is some significance to the donor of said liver?
The “wishes are for little girls” line obviously came from Celeste, given how both she and Simone shut down Wiley when he jokingly quips the phrase. Someone who had a lot of disappointment in their life, as predicted by Mrs. Davis in Episode 1.
The shoes Mrs. Davis gifted to Wiley are British Knights (BK) brand. As in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Or perhaps the Knights Templar. Or perhaps both. Algorithms love clichés.
Wiley’s driving motivation was to be worthy of his boots, but he took off his boots to put on the BK shoes. Switching from Cowboy to Knight? Is there symbology there tied to the armored boots Clara rescued from the ashes back in 1307?
Interesting side note that was brought up on r/MrsDavisTVSeries: sneaker collectors refer to rare, highly prized shoes as “grails.” Every sneakerhead has a grail sneaker they quest for.
Wiley also had a surrogate parent, of sorts, in Bo, the cowboy who trained him for the junior rodeo circuit.
The Stone of Scone (as in Scone, Scotland, the location of Excalibattle in the show), also known as the Stone of Destiny, forms the foundation of the Coronation Chair upon which monarchs of Great Britain are coronated.
Interesting that Mrs. Davis can talk about “Celeste” (“If I’d known Celeste was traveling with you, I would have gotten her one, as well”), but if she speaks of “mother” with Simone, she experiences the “Redirect, 1024, Sandy Springs” glitch. Wacky thought, could Celeste not be Simone’s biological mother?
This time, in the midst of the glitch, her proxy says the line “deep in my heart, I am warrior” in a strange guttural voice. If this were just a proxy, the lady would have kept talking in her cheerful British accent. This was different. Very different. So what do we make of that?
Let’s talk about timelines, because there’s something amiss here. The show is set in 2023. Wiley’s 25th birthday was in 2016, seven years prior. This was the day Lizzie decides to become a nun. Yet both Mrs. Davis (in Episode 2) and Celeste (in this episode) have said that she has been a nun for “nearly ten years” / “nearly a decade” (respectively). Maybe I’m reading too much into this, and the writers think that seven is “nearly” 10. But I don’t, do you?
Clara has now been referenced twice now, by Apron Man and Mathilde, as being alive in the here and now. How is that possible?
Once again, Redditor u/tdciago has their usual collection of insightful tidbits for us on r/MrsDavisTVSeries: Episode 3: Things I Noticed on Rewatch (beware of potential spoilers for Episode 4 though).

Mrs. Davis S1E3 - The squire and Wiley hunker down close under the giant sword — *Any man will be singing like a songbird*

Best lines of the episode:

“The tie is the uniform of the enemy.”
“I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”
“There ain’t…no…stopping…us…now.
“Really? Well, my bad. Happy birthday, son.”
“Help us keep track of you, in case he eats your face.”
“Well, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but either way, it sounds like we’re dealing with real experience deficit.”
“Cliché all day, man. Cliché all day.”
“Whoa, you curse? So what are the rules? Did you say your mom?”
“I see you’re still running around with rodeo clowns.”
“Extra-absorbent nappies for big boys!”
“We have 47 souls, sir!…46 souls, sir!”
“I followed her…that was not a Freudian slip, by the way. I’m not even thinking about my mom.” “Obviously.”
“It’s the one with big trees that do this. Oh, bother.”

Mrs. Davis S1E3 - The glowing Holy Grail is held aloft by a pair of hands, solar eclipse showing in the background — *The Holy Grail revealed*

Conclusion

I feel like with this episode, we can officially say there are some shenanigans going on. Mrs. Davis’ glitch. The seven years versus 10 years thing. It’s still more of a suspicion than a confirmed fact, but there’s definitely something weird going on here. Did we expect anything less though? Stay tuned, folks.

That’s all for this week. Please let us know your thoughts and feelings about this week’s episode, and any theories you have on what’s to come, in the comments below.

All images courtesy of Peacock