‘The Passage’ Series Premiere Recap: Before The World Ended

In a time where the world’s most powerful countries face threats due to diseases, Project NOAH goes underway. A team of brilliant scientists puts their heads together to work on a cure for all illness, but has the potential to wipe out the human race. During a virus outbreak in China, worldwide panic erupts. Project NOAH’s team does what is necessary perfect the cure– before The Passage.

In the series premiere of The Passage, Federal Agent Brad Wolgast (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) receives the strangest mission from Project NOAH: bring a young girl, Amy Bellafonte (Saniyya Sidney), a chosen test subject, to them. When Brad goes rogue and decides to protect Amy from them, his old friend and colleague, Clark Richards (Vincent Piazza), hunts him down.

250 Year Old Man

FOX

Dr. Tim Fanning (Jamie McShane) and Dr. Jonas Lear (Henry Ian Cusick) lead an expedition in Bolivia to find a man, rumored to be over 250 years old. However, Dr. Fanning’s eagerness becomes the death of him. As soon as they reach the caged man, Dr. Fanning comes too close, and the man bites him. Tim makes an exceedingly fast recovery, that is until he becomes a vampire, just like the caged man.

Lose One to save Millions

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As news about an outbreak in China spreads worldwide, Dr. Major Nichole Sykes (Caroline Chikezie) gathers the Project NOAH team to brainstorm. Fortunately, Dr. Daniel Pet (Alain Uy) comes up with a solution should the virus reach the U.S. However, it would require a horrible sacrifice. Dr. Pet worked on the virus that infected Dr. Fanning years ago. His research led him to work with numerous other test subjects, all younger than Dr. Fanning. The younger the test subject was, the lesser the side effects were. With that, Dr. Pet concludes that the virus will reach full efficiency and will produce no side effects, if and only if the next test subject is a child. No matter how hard Dr. Sykes tried to discredit Dr. Pet’s findings, he was right. They needed a child test subject.

Acquire The Girl

FOX

After convincing an inmate on death row, Anthony Carter (McKinley Belcher III), to join Project NOAH as a test subject, Agent Brad Wolgast and Agent Phil Doyle (Zach Appelman) bring Carter to Project NOAH’s headquarters. After they offload Carter, Clark gives the Agents a different mission: acquire a young girl, Amy Bellafonte, chosen since she has no paper trails. While this operation raises Brad’s eyebrows, he agrees to go through with it, nonetheless.

Acquiring the girl proved to be harder than they thought. Amy was a smart kid, and she knew that they were not from Social Services, so she made a run for it. Blocking her escape was messy as Phil hits her then throws her in a car while bystanders looked. The cops were onto to them, so they had to take the heat off before they went back to the headquarters.

However, Brad has a change of heart during the trip. Amy reminded Brad of his deceased daughter, and he found it easy to care for the young girl. Phil was having none of it and was highly annoyed the entire time. When Brad takes Amy to a carnival, he makes his final decision. Brad decides to take Amy with him to someplace safe, so he takes Phil out, and then they make their escape.

Surrogate Father

FOX

Brad knew that they did not have much time before the feds found them, so he makes the most of what they had. After helping Amy make peace with her mother’s recent death, they head to a gas station to resupply. As expected, his face was shown on the news, labeling him as a rogue who kidnapped an African-American child. Brad voluntarily surrendered to the local sheriff, but he made sure that Amy’s voice got heard on the airwaves.

Still, the feds did not honor their end of the bargain. Led by Clark himself, the feds stormed the precinct, and they even kill the sheriff, whom Brad used for cover. Luckily, Brad and Ay escape in a police car, albeit Brad got hit by a bullet. They may have had the feds on their tail, but they knew that they had a fighting chance.

‘The Passage’ Series Premiere Final Verdict

The show takes the ‘zombie apocalypse’ narrative and turns it into something different. The characters and the plot may seem to have taken inspiration from well-known video games, but is excellent, nonetheless. Ultimately, the interesting spin on the zombie narrative is what makes this show a hit, and will keep the viewers interested.

The Passage continues Monday, January 21st, with You Owe me a Unicorn at 9/8c on FOX.