The Musketeers

“We Are the Garrison”, Season 3 Episode 10

Requested By

AltarielDax

What do I know about this series going into it?

I am vaguely familiar with the source material, but have never read it. (I may have read a kids’ version when I was very, very young.) I know nothing about this series.

Recap

A group of people wearing capes walk through a church, between rows of mourners bowing their heads. They approach a coffin. “Bury your friend, your minister, the savior of France,” says a voiceover. “Your grief is your downfall.”

They lift the coffin and bear it outside the church gates, which are ornate enough that it may actually be a palace. “You are blind, you won’t see me coming,” continues the voiceover – so it’s clearly the bad guy speaking, while I assume the pallbearers are the titular Musketeers.

At a pub later, three of the pallbearers are drinking; they comment on the fact that a fourth isn’t. The innkeeper approaches a woman watching from the side and urges the latter – Sylvie – to give “him” her good news. Sylvie refuses, saying this isn’t the right time or place.

Scarred Pallbearer stands up and gives a short eulogy to the dead man, named Treville. Wavy-Haired Pallbearer follows with his own eulogy, breaking down in tears. Featureless Generic Pallbearer follows with a third. (I warn you in advance that I will not be able to tell the difference between Wavy and Featureless.)

But as they toast Treville, grenades are tossed through the windows. “Get down!” they shout, and the camera cuts to outside the pub for the explosion.

Obviously they’ll be okay, but we get to agonize over it through the opening credits.

The Musketeers run out with their guns to hunt for their attacker, but he’s long gone. In the distance, however, they see more explosions, coming from the direction of “the Garrison” – which is where the innkeeper, Constance, went moments earlier to refill the wine after talking to Sylvie.

They rush to the Garrison. Wavy, named D’Artagnan, wants to run right into the flames, and Scarred tries to stop him. D’Artagnan stubbornly pulls away and runs inside, moments before it goes up in another explosion. He is dead.

Other Wavy Pallbearer, named Athos, sees the bad guy looking down at them smugly from the ramparts above the Garrison; the bad guy disappears while covered by a cloud of smoke. Athos and the others dig out more wounded, including “Clairmont”, who reports that Grimaud was the one who attacked them. After evacuating a couple more wounded, they decide that nobody else inside the Garrison could have survived; moments later, D’Artagnan heroically emerges from the burning building, kicking down a door and holding the unconscious Constance.

Henceforth to be named “The Unconstance”.

He takes her to safety and begs Short Hair, named Aramis, to save Constance. Aramis takes her pulse and shakes his head. She’s gone.

Moments later she coughs and revives. Aramis is terrible at this.

“Even psychiatrists can tell the difference between patients who are alive and dead.”

Later, Short Hair¹ enters a room and delivers a report to the men: the only person who died in the attack on the Garrison is D’Artagnan.

Now I’m completely lost. Was the attack so terribly executed that literally nobody died in the initial firefight and explosion? And does that mean it wasn’t D’Artagnan who heroically emerged from the burning building? All of these people look exactly the same.

They discuss relocating their base of operations now that the Garrison has been destroyed. “Brujon”, whom they rescued from the explosions, isn’t happy about leaving, but Short Hair reassures him that the Garrison is just a building. We are the Garrison. As Thor says way too often, Asgard is not a place, it’s a people.

Sylvie returns home to discover the bad guy, Grimaud, harassing and arresting her friends and family. “You are no longer the Queen’s guard and have no authority to do this!” she objects, but his henchmen and weapons disagree. Throughout the scene, this random old woman keeps patting Sylvie on the stomach, revealing to us (and, unfortunately, to Grimaud) that she’s pregnant. Grimaud says to grab the old woman, and the next we see of her her dead body is dumped in front of the three remaining Musketeers by a rider who barely slows down. The Musketeers approach the body and find a note in Sylvie’s handwriting: Grimaud will kill refugees one by one, every hour, starting with Sylvie, until they come to him.

The Musketeers observe that the note is addressed to only three of them, so clearly Grimaud thinks that D’Artagnan is dead. Since I also thought that D’Artagnan is dead, I guess that’s something we have in common. Was Short Hair’s report of D’Artagnan’s death a deliberate ruse?

They discuss how this gives them an advantage: D’Artagnan should sneak in and stay out of sight, ready to give the others backup if needed because Grimaud doesn’t know he exits. During this conversation I learn yet again that Short Hair is Aramis. I will need to try not to forget that again.

Scarred Man’s wife, Elodie, arrives. They were among the refugees from the war (what war?). He tells her to stay in the medical building with Constance.

Later – but presumably within the hour - the three non-D’Artagnan, known-to-be-alive Musketeers walk boldly into Grimaud’s trap. But first they come to an agreement: We’ve been fighting Grimaud based on our code of honor, but no longer.

Grimaud comes out with his henchmen and a gun to Sylvie’s head. He demands the Musketeers drop all their weapons, which they do (though it takes some time). Scarred Man asks which of the henchmen started the fire in the Garrison and demands to fight him man to man. Grimaud ignores this; he tells his men to execute Porthos and Aramis² and bring the captain – Wavy-Haired Man –to him. Grimaud takes Wavy Man to another alley, because he wants him to watch Sylvie die. Wavy Man confidently asserts that Sylvie’s not afraid of death, but that’s because he doesn’t know about the baby…

Meanwhile, Grimaud’s henchmen prepare to execute Porthos and Aramis, but D’Artagnan jumps down on top of them from the second story. The three make short work of the goons and grab their weapons, then surprise Grimaud to save Wavy Man and Sylvie. One henchman, “Marcheaux”, flees and D’Artagnan gives chase. There is a brief swordfight, during which Marcheaux mocks the cadets that were killed in the fire³, but D’Artagnan is clearly the superior fighter. He easily dispatches Marcheaux, in between declarations thar Marcheaux can no longer hide behind Grimaud.

“And One Feroll!”

In the denouement, I learn that Wavy Man, aka the captain, is named Athos. But I’m left wondering what happened to Grimaud and why we the camera didn’t follow him during the fight, instead following Marcheaux. Luckily, the camera then shows us somebody who might be Grimaud dying-but-not-yet-dead from a stab wound and hidden beneath a wagon on a roadside. If it is Grimaud – and I’m genuinely not sure because every single character in this entire freaking show has black hair and a goatee - the soundtrack makes it clear we’ll see him again.

Athos meets with the queen, who wants him to replace the dead Treville as head of whatever Treville was head of. Athos demurs, putting forward Aramis instead because he has a stronger religious and diplomatic background.

Scarred Man speaks with Elodie again. He tells her he can’t give up soldiering, and she says she’d never ask him to – but something in her expression says she’s still not thrilled with him being in danger.

Back at the medical building, Constance descends into the basement to cry after one of her patients dies. There she encounters the guy from the wagon. Not recognizing him as Probably-Grimauld, and thinking he too was wounded in the attack on the Garrison, she gives him some medical attention and asks him to stay to be treated properly. He refuses to “ever lie down”, however, and vanishes when she turns her back to prepare stitches.

Must’ve been a ghost.

It’s days later. The queen is in a procession with her son, the reigning king (she is clearly serving as regent until he reaches his majority). But Elodie spots Grimaud through the crowd and recognizes him as having been at the tavern, and someone that the musketeers have been looking for. He must be planning to assassinate the queen! Constance, who doesn’t seem to recognize him despite having given him medical care the previous scene⁴, rushes to warn D’Artagnan. The Musketeers go into a huddle: half the gunpowder was missing from the Garrison before the explosion, so he must be planning to blow up the building. Which is indeed the case: in some dark corridors, Grimaud lights a fuse that splits, then splits again, and again. They start to evacuate the cathedral.

D'Artagnan and Athos enter the catacombs to look for Grimaud. There they find and disable the fuses before the fire can reach the gunpowder barrels. Grimaud, in a deeper corridor, is disappointed when the expected explosion never arrives. Though he seems to be on his last legs, he tosses his torch into a cistern and prepares to surprise the two when they arrive. Which they do, and there is a brief exchange of swordplay and gunfire before Grimaud flees. D’Artagnan starts to give chase, but Athos stops him: “I have to do this alone!” D’Artagnan respects this, but warns Athos that he will not raise the latter’s child.

Athos proceeds alone, and he and Grimaud both stab each other and fall into the cistern. After a bit more swordfighting, one of them stabs and drowns the other. Unfortunately, I’ve grown to differentiate them based on their hairstyles, and now that they’re both soaking wet I can’t tell which is which. I try listening carefully to the soundtrack; maybe it can tell me whether I should be happy or sad. But it seems to be just as uncertain as I am.

Although if Athos is approaching this calmly, Grimaud is probably the dead one.

In the denouement, the queen announces to the collected people of Paris that she is disbanding her Musketeers and reforming them as the people’s Musketeers. They will now protect Paris rather than her person. The practical meaning of this is not really explained.

• Scarred Man, Porthos, is going to return to the front.

• Captain Athos is in charge of rebuilding the garrison.

• Aramis will become First Minister in Treville’s place.

• D’Artagnan gets nothing. Suck it, D’Artagnan. There’re only room for three musketeers in this book!

Porthos asks Elodie to marry him before he goes off to war, so that she can collect a pension if he is killed; I guess they haven’t been married yet. And he decides to name their child Marie-Cessette, which is clearly a name of great significance that I’m unaware of.

Aramis consults with Athos on whether to accept the First Minister post.

The queen meets with a sinister-looking woman, handing her someone’s name on a slip of paper. She orders Sinister Woman to report directly to her from now on. Later, Sinister Woman surprises a curly-haired man whom I think I haven’t yet seen⁵. She tells him outright that she’s going to kill him – and although he pulls out his sword, he decides to turn his back and try to outrun a bullet down a straight corridor⁶. She introduces herself as Lady De Winter before killing him.

Athos decides not to rebuild the garrison after all, but take temporary leave to be with Sylvie and their future child. He orders D’Artagnan to serve as captain until his return.

The denouement drags on a bit, going to each of the Musketeers one too many times; nothing new happens, except I start to suspect that the king might secretly be Aramis’s son.

Unresolved questions

• What does the new formulation of the Musketeers actually do? Will it be enough to mollify the annoyed people of Paris?

Ratings

These ratings evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. The analysis accompanying each rating is written from that point of view as well.

The ratings do not necessarily apply to the episode if it is watched in the proper context. And it should go without saying that none of them apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.

Story: 4/10. Pretty by-the-numbers. Grimaud is on a classic Roaring Rampage of Revenge, but his plots don’t really make sense when you think about them for more than two seconds. For example: He stole the gunpowder to blow up the cathedral during the Queen’s procession. But before the procession, he tried to murder the Queen’s personal guards. If he had succeeded, there would have been no procession. So when did he plant the gunpowder? Before taking Sylvie hostage? That would mean he explicitly planned for the eventuality where his first plan failed so badly that he didn’t kill any of the Muskteers and yet he personally got away unscathed; even one dead Musketeer would probably have delayed the procession enough for somebody to stumble onto the barrels. After taking Sylvie hostage? How did he accomplish this while severely wounded, barely able to stand, and with no more henchmen to assist him?

There were also inconsistencies in the strength and nature of the attack on the Garrison. Was it a martial attack or a surreptitious planting of bombs? Different parts of the episode seemed to point in different directions.

Writing: 5/10. Pretty good writing overall, but there were moments of pure silliness. The writers relied twice within thirty seconds on the trick of declaring somebody dead only for them to be immediately revealed as alive. Curly-Haired Man’s decision to turn and run from a gun-wielding assassin whom he had at swordpoint was absurd. And then there was this exchange in which Brujon laments the death of a wounded man: “I really thought he was getting stronger.” “No, Brujon, it’s you who’s got stronger.”

Production: 8/10. Almost everything was well above par: The acting, the set design, the costumes (the costumes!), the soundtrack, the editing, the lighting, the action. The ending did drag on a little bit. (There was also one strange editing choice that I noted while watching but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.)

Characterization: 3/10. Grimaud had an interesting worldview to explore: a man needs to be independent, alone, implacable, unyielding, persevering, enduring, unloving, uncaring. This is of course his downfall; had he given himself time to heal, he could probably have defeated the Musketeers.

The other main characters, however, had personalities as interchangeable as their faces.

Accessibility: 4/10. While the plot itself was eminently simple and deserved a 9/10, the fact that every single character looked exactly the same kept me massively confused from beginning to end. Porthos has an obvious scar, and his face has a more unique shape, which helped differentiate him, but everyone else? This finale had the most interchangeable white men since The Crown.

Closure: 9/10. The main storyline, Grimaud’s revenge, is over; the Musketeers have been disbanded and reformed; and each of the characters have gone their separate ways. It’s clear the show set it up such that they could be reunited if necessary – and left a few plot threads just in case of another season – so I won’t give it 10/10. But they put effort into making this feel like an ending.

Do I want to watch the series now?

I love costume dramas, but the plot and writing are lacking. I won’t turn it off if it’s on but I’m not going to watch from the beginning.

1. I know, I know, I learned literally two paragraphs ago that his name is Aramis. But his face is so generic that by the time I wrote this paragraph I’d already forgotten it.

2. And yes, by this point I’d forgotten again that Aramis is Short Hair. If I’d remembered, that would’ve helped me learn that Porthos is Scarred Man.

3. What? I thought nobody but D’Artagnan was killed in the fire?

4. Either that or it wasn’t Constance in the previous scene. Like I said, everyone in this show has the exact same black hair and goatee.

5. I probably would have noticed him, as he has neither dark hair nor goatee.

6. Addendum: Neither dark hair nor goatee nor brains.