Plot
Pure chaos reigns in the Dollhouse. Paramedics take care of the injured Victor, and Adelle learns that Alpha has taken Echo with him. Topher explains that Alpha imprinted Echo with a personality he cannot trace; Alpha blocked the signal. Echo cannot be located by GPS either: the chip has been removed and is still lying in the lab. So Topher has no way of monitoring her or her vital signs. Adelle orders Topher to search for any sign of her.
Meanwhile Echo and Alpha are on the road in a car. They talk about how they met. It seems as if Alpha is arguing with himself – or with another part of himself that contradicts him. He says that he is not just Bobby. Shortly afterwards we see a bound and gagged woman lying on the back seat, looking fearfully at the other two.
A few years earlier:
A van full of handlers drives through the night. One of the two handlers inside is on the phone with Adelle. The van is following two dolls and a contact. One of the handlers says that Alpha has spotted them and knew he was being followed.
In a room a young man is tied to a chair. He looks as if he has been beaten and abused. Alpha asks him whom he works for and who was in the van. The young man answers that he did not see a van; his voice is full of fear. Alpha is not satisfied with the answer and pours alcohol over the man’s open wounds.
He does not believe him and threatens him with a knife, whereupon the victim says it is complicated. Alpha demands that he explain. But when the man says that neither Alpha nor his girlfriend is real, the doll hits him. In tears the man says that he ordered the two of them and that this is why they are who they are.
Alpha (of course) does not believe him and calls his girlfriend over, who until now has only been seen dancing against the light… it is Dr. Saunders! She dances with Alpha and the victim, who is still fearing for his life.
Then the door to the room is shot open and several men burst in. Alpha throws himself at them but is restrained. One of the two handlers from the van joins them, addresses Dr. Saunders as “Whiskey” and asks whether she would like a treatment, which she says yes to. She is led away together with Alpha, who has been given a sedative injection.
In the Dollhouse Agent Ballard sits tied up in Adelle’s office when she comes in with Boyd. He asks about Stephen, and Adelle tells him the truth about Alpha: until last year he was a doll called Alpha. The real Stephen Kepler, whom Alpha impersonated in front of Ballard, has been killed. Adelle shows Ballard photos of Alpha’s other victims and calls him an “unforeseen technological anomaly”.
Ballard is shocked, but Adelle points out that it was he who brought Alpha into the Dollhouse and made it possible for him to take Echo – whom Ballard probably knows better as Caroline. Ballard says he will leave, but Adelle doubts he will manage it. At that moment Boyd’s phone rings. Apparently the building is surrounded by police because of a terror alert.
Ballard also looks at the surveillance images, sees one of the investigators and says he can make sure the police leave.
He leaves the building through the front door, walks up to the lead investigator and says that they are being watched. There is no bomb; it was a bad joke. But the Dollhouse is real, and he could take him there. The investigator calls off his people but tells Ballard that he thinks HE set off the false alarm. He does not believe him but lets him go.
Adelle and Boyd watch the scene from the office. Then Topher comes in and says he has (bad) news. He has not yet been able to identify the imprinted personality, but he has found that everything ever imprinted on Echo is gone – original and backup. Adelle and Boyd are speechless. What would Alpha want with it?
The answer comes immediately: Alpha has set up a lab in a secret hideout – complete with an imprint chair. That is where he takes Echo and the woman whose car they stole.
In the Dollhouse Dr. Saunders treats the wounds on Victor’s face. Victor says that now he can no longer be his best. He asks the doctor how he is supposed to do that. She reacts rather harshly and says curtly that he can never be his best again. That is over. He is ugly and repulsive now. All he could still get is pity – and for that he has to look elsewhere, not to her. Victor is visibly shocked.
Flashback: Whiskey’s handler brings the doll to Dr. Saunders, an older man. He offers Whiskey a lollipop and then examines her wounds from the engagement with Alpha. Alpha is lying on a couch outside the doctor’s room being massaged as Adelle walks through the Dollhouse with a new prospect – Caroline.
Alpha watches the two of them very closely. Caroline says the dolls are like zombies. Adelle explains the engagement system to her. Again they walk past Alpha, who seems to like Caroline. He keeps watching the young woman with alert eyes.
Agent Ballard sees the chair for the first time. He makes nasty comments about it, which offends Topher. Topher asks why yet another judgemental man besides Boyd is in his lab. But Adelle makes clear that Ballard can help them find Alpha and Echo and that Topher is to work with him. At that moment some dolls come into the room, among them November/Mellie, which unsettles Ballard.
In Alpha’s “lab” he has put the kidnapped woman – Wendy – in his imprint chair and attached some electrodes to her head. Echo watches and asks what exactly he is doing. Alpha says he is going to wipe her, which Echo does not quite understand. Alpha tries to explain in more detail, but in a tone that makes her sulk. A few compliments calm her down again, and while the woman in the chair is being electrified, they kiss passionately.
Flashback: Caroline is now Echo. Alpha waits for her and tells her he thinks she is special. Then he kisses her, which one of the handlers sees. He sends Echo to Topher and gives Alpha a little lecture, but lets him go…
Topher has started putting the dolls in the chair. Boyd says the scientist always calls the imprinting a kind of rebirth, but he sees it more as death. Ballard watches the procedure sceptically. Then Sierra comes up to him and says that someone is going to die if her partner (November) does not get out of the chair soon. She flirts with Ballard, who reacts dismissively. Then November is finished and takes her friend away.
Alpha has finished imprinting the woman and is once again having a conversation with himself.
In the Dollhouse lab Topher explains the imprinting system to Ballard in more detail. The agent tries to shed more light on the incident and understand it. Topher tells how Alpha’s attack happened back then and whom the doll was after. But what interests Ballard is not the act of rage but what he did after fighting his way free.
Topher’s answer: himself. Alpha came into the lab and destroyed his own stored personality. He did the same this time with the backup of Caroline’s personality. The original has disappeared with Alpha.
And it is now inside Wendy’s body. When she discovers her body, she is very confused and asks what happened. Echo, however, is just as confused and understands nothing of what Alpha is saying. Alpha explains that Echo abandoned herself just because her life got a little out of balance.
Alpha again tries to make clear that Wendy is Caroline. But Echo is still confused – even more so when Alpha says she does not have to be like this…
Flashback: Alpha, Echo and Whiskey sit together in the Dollhouse pruning little trees. Whiskey’s handler comes to pick her up for an engagement. She talks with the supervisor, and the remark is made that Whiskey is number one and very popular. Alpha hears this, goes over to Whiskey and says: “Let Echo be number one.” Then he slashes her face with a scalpel, but is stopped before he can kill her.
He is forced into the chair. Topher cannot explain how it happened. Adelle orders the doll to be wiped and then “taken out of the programme”. Alpha calms down and slowly comes to rest. But when Topher wants to start the imprint, the doll frees himself and kills first his handler and then Dr. Saunders.
Ballard insists on finding out who Alpha was before he signed up with the Dollhouse. Adelle resists, but Boyd supports Ballard, since it was his own personality that Alpha destroyed first.
Meanwhile Alpha has put Echo in his chair. Wendy sits tied up next to it and tries to stop the doll from letting herself be imprinted. But Echo says that Alpha will make her a better person; she apparently trusts Alpha blindly. He starts the process with the words: “Alpha… meet Omega!”
Echo relives all her roles once more and then wakes up. She grabs a weapon – but she does not attack Wendy; she attacks Alpha.
In the Dollhouse, Alpha’s file has been found. Adelle explains that at the start of the programme, prison inmates were used – and Alpha was one of them; real name: Karl William Craft. He was in prison for kidnapping and attempted manslaughter, but according to Adelle he never killed anyone – only because his victims escaped him. Ballard and Boyd set off to find one of them.
Echo’s imprint has left her with not just one but 38 different personalities inside her – all at the same time. But she is not nearly as thrilled about it as Alpha, which also explains her attack on him. She says that although she has several personalities, none of them is really her… because she is in Wendy.
And she now asks Wendy why she abandoned her. But Wendy only gets as far as saying “it’s complicated” before Alpha attacks Echo.
Boyd and Ballard visit the known victim. The young woman is of course quite shocked when Alpha’s name comes up, but agrees to talk to the agents – just not in her apartment. So the two wait for her at the lift. When she steps out, it becomes clear that Alpha has had something to do with her: two large scars mark her face.
The fight between Echo and Alpha is still going on, but Echo seems to be much stronger than her opponent. She says that although she does not know who she is, she certainly knows who she is not: his girlfriend. With that she knocks him out and frees Wendy from her bonds. When Wendy asks her who she is, she answers: “Echo.”
Wendy/Caroline demands that Echo take her out of Wendy’s body again; Wendy should come back. She says she wants to go back onto the hard drive, and Echo asks whether she does not want to come home. But Caroline replies that she signed a contract. So Echo agrees. But then Caroline is hit by a bullet that tears her throat apart. It was Alpha.
In the Dollhouse lab Topher is still trying to find out which personality Alpha imprinted Echo with. Then his phone rings; it is Boyd. He asks the scientist whether Alpha ever had an engagement that took him to San Pedro. There, as a “normal” person, he kidnapped the young woman and held her captive.
Topher remembers the engagement Alpha carried out together with Whiskey (the flashback at the beginning of the episode). Following a sudden inspiration, Topher checks whether Whiskey’s imprint has been used recently – and he has Echo’s imprint.
Alpha forces Echo into the chair; he wants to wipe and kill her. Echo remembers the incident with Whiskey and finds her courage again. She makes clear that she is not afraid of him, not even when he threatens to destroy Caroline’s wedge. Alpha shoots at Echo and flees, but she follows him onto the roof of the building.
Boyd and Ballard reach the site and find the stolen car there. They want to get into the building but are shot at by Alpha. Shortly afterwards he throws away Caroline’s wedge. Echo sets off to save it before it is destroyed. It slips away from her and falls towards the ground. Just before it hits, Ballard catches it.
In the Dollhouse Dr. Saunders has broken into Topher’s lab and, searching the computer, has found out that she is Whiskey. She is not a real doctor, only a doll. She is visibly hurt, upset and sad. However, she has not opened the file. Topher asks whether she does not want to know who she is. The doctor only answers: “I know who I am.”
In her office Adelle talks with Boyd. Boyd says that the parents of Wendy, who has obviously died, have anonymously received a large sum of money. Alpha is still on the run and they cannot track him down. But Adelle firmly believes they will find him soon; their new “supplier” will help them. We see that Ballard is in the room too, and his comment “I don’t work for you yet” makes clear that he is the contractor mentioned.
He insists on his demands that “the young lady” be released from her contract. Then the phone rings: November arrives, this time with her original personality – Madeline. Adelle asks her to sign a few things, and with that she is released.
Echo wakes up in the imprint chair, back in the doll state. Before she leaves, she wordlessly places her hand on Topher’s heart.
Dr. Saunders takes care of Victor and afterwards offers him a lollipop.
Calm returns to the Dollhouse, and the dolls lie down for the night. As her pod closes, Echo says one more word: Caroline.