Everything You Need to Know to Watch "Orphan Black" Season Two

Missed out on season one of "Orphan Black," or just want a refresher before season two tomorrow? We've got you covered.

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Image via Complex Original
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Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you've probably heard about the BBC America sci-fi series Orphan Black. Or perhaps you've heard of Tatiana Maslany's amazing performance as not one, not two, not five, but 11+ characters in the show. Hell, she was nominated for a Golden Globe award, which is fairly unheard of for the star of a cable sci-fi series, no matter his or her talent or brilliance.

If you haven't yet had the chance to experience the show's magic, good news: season two starts tonight. You have a whole new season to get invested in the brilliance of Maslany and the insanity of the plot, which follows a group of clones. The bad news, though, is that you've got about 11 hours to watch 10 one-hour episodes. This is doable if you have nothing else to accomplish today and you're reading this post at exactly 10 a.m. EST (the premiere won't air until 9 p.m. EST tonight), but it'll also be ridiculously difficult to pull off unless you are a master of the binge-watch.

Don't worry, those of you who can't lock yourselves in a room and watch the entire first season immediately. We've put together a list of Everything You Need to Know to Watch Orphan Black Season Two before the premiere. If you've never seen the show before, you should definitely still catch up on season one, but, at least this way, you won't be lost tonight.

Let's get started!

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This is Sarah Manning. She has no clue what the hell is going on.

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Sarah is our entry point into this crazy world of clones. Born in the UK and raised in the foster care system, Sarah's led a troubled life, and has no clue who her birth parents are—or, you know, that she was designed in a laboratory.

This is her foster brother, Felix:

They met when Sarah was placed in a home overseen by Mrs. S, and they've had each other's backs ever since. 

Sarah also has a young daughter named Kira:

Kira's father is unknown at this point, as is much of her early years with Sarah. But we do know that, at one point, Sarah left Kira with Mrs. S in Toronto, feeling she was an unfit mother, and went off to... Well, we don't know. Sarah's reasoning for being in Toronto is to get Kira back.

It should be noted: the fact that Sarah biologically had Kira is an anomaly. It's revealed later in the series that the clones aren't able to have children, so it's not clear how Sarah was able to conceive.

However...plans change when Sarah gets off of a train in Toronto and sees this woman: Beth Childs.

They look alike, don't they? Yeah, Sarah's as freaked out about that as the viewer. Beth takes one look at her, then jumps in front of an oncoming train, effectively killing herself. Sarah is stunned, but doesn't waste any time before stealing her bag. Another thing to remember about Sarah: she grew up on the streets and is used to turning tricks in order to get by.

After doing a bit of investigating into who the woman was, Sarah realizes Beth was rich—Beth's bank account has a lot of money in it. Sarah decides to pose as Beth for a short while to steal her money, then skip town. She also has Felix go to the morgue to identify Beth's dead body as Sarah Manning, so everyone would think someone else died.

It's a fine plan, until Sarah realizes that Beth was a cop, who was actually under investigation for shooting and killing a woman named Maggie Chen. Even worse, Beth's partner notices Sarah's (as Beth) strange behavior, and watches her like a hawk. Also, further complicating things, Sarah begins an affair with Beth's boyfriend, Paul, so he won't suspect anything is wrong...but there's more to him than it seems:

Eventually, Sarah's plan goes kaput, but she's got bigger things to worry about; namely, running into a number of other woman who look just like her. Not to mention, the fact that someone is trying to kill all of them. Oh, and that killer? Looks just like her, too.

This is Helena. She's batshit insane, but it's not her fault.

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Which brings us to Helena. She's a complicated gal, you see. She's actually Sarah's twin sister clone—the two were born to the same surrogate mother in the UK. But when the surrogate realized that they were experiments, she hastily attempted to split them up in order to keep them safe. Sarah ended up in the foster care system, and Helena ended up at a Ukrainian convent where she was raised by super-crazy radical extremists, the "Proletheans." They drove the idea into her head that she was the "original" clone, and that her duty was to kill all of the "abominations" who shared her face: a.k.a, the other clones.

So, yes, she's completely insane—and majorly dangerous.

Helena succeeds in killing off a few clones, whom we never meet, and ends up shooting Katja, whom we meet for a hot second, right in the head. Sarah, however, she cannot kill, and she realizes it's because the two are twins.

This doesn't stop her from kidnapping Sarah's daughter Kira, though. It does, however, prevent her from kidnapping Kira for longer than five minutes, because that little girl is so damn adorable and Helena probably just wants to be loved. Kira is her niece, after all.

Unfortunately, Kira gets hit by a car like two seconds after Helena lets her go—but she survives! Helena is truly devastated when she sees Kira get hit, and it seems that she's developed a strange obsession with Sarah, whom she calls "seestra." I guess that's Russian for "sister."

It's worth noting that the Proletheans have kept Helena isolated for all of her life, which caused some major damage to her psyche.

This is Alison Hendrix. She's a suburban mom who's probably developing a drinking problem.

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A different kind of nutso, Alison Hendrix is a seemingly normal suburban housewife. She has two kids and a longtime husband—hell, she even drives a van. Unfortunately, she is far from normal. After being contacted by some other women who look just like her, Alison realizes that she is actually a clone, and that someone else (yes, Helena) is trying to kill them.

Another downside: She really cannot hold her liquor.

When Sarah eventually meets Alison and Cosima (more on her later), both of whom are shocked to find out that Beth has died, they begin to find out more and more about their origins. They also learn that Alison and Cosima are being watched by "monitors," sent from a place called the Dyad Institute—the lab where the clone experiment began. Alison freaks out when she believes that her monitor is her good friend Aynsley, and things don't turn out well:

As in, she watches Aynsley choke to death when her scarf and hair gets caught in the garbage disposal of her home.

Spoiler alert: Aynsley was not her monitor; her husband Donnie actually is. And Alison? She's got no clue.

Yikes!

This is Cosima Niehaus. She's smart as hell.

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The next member of the self-proclaimed "clone club": Cosima Niehaus, an insanely smart doctorate student from Minnesota studying evolutionary development, or, as she likes to call it, "evo devo." She's originally from San Francisco, which means that she's super cool, super chill, and a super stoner.

Unbeknownst to Sarah, Alison, and previously Beth, Cosima has been researching mysterious respiratory problems that another clone, Katja of Germany, contracted out of the blue and trying to figure out if it's in the biological make-up of all the clones to contract the same thing. 

Her research is sort of put-off, however, when she meets the very French and very hot Delphine Cormier. According to Cosima, she realizes from the very beginning that Delphine is actually her monitor, sent from the Dyad Institute to get close to her and keep tabs. Still, that doesn't stop her from doing this, consistently:

And it definitely doesn't stop the two of them from falling deeply and adorably in love with one another. 

Towards the end of the season, Cosima realizes that she, too, is contracting the same disease from which Katja was dying. She has no clue how to cure herself, or if the other clones will begin to exhibit it as well. Delphine vows to help her and stand by her through whatever may happen.

This is Rachel Duncan. She wears very high heels and doesn't mind walking all over anyone to get what she wants.

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We actually don't know much about Rachel Duncan yet, except the fact that she's a "proclone," and has been raised all of her life completely aware that she was created in a laboratory. She seems to have some sort of job at the Dyad Institute (remember, this is the laboratory where the clone experiment began), but it's not clear exactly what she does. Whatever it is, though, her gig requires her to wear high stilettos—seriously, those things are killer.

When we meet Rachel at the end of the season, she offers Sarah, Cosima, and Alison "contracts" that will supposedly ensure they'll never be contacted by the Dyad Institute, and that they'll be protected from the Proletheans and Helena, who want them dead.

While Alison accepts the offer, fearing for her family, Sarah does not, despite the fact that Rachel subtly threatens Kira, saying she will be in danger if Sarah does not work with the Dyad Institute.

When Sarah returns to Mrs. S's home to see Kira, she finds both Kira and Mrs. S gone. Like a plotline out of a Liam Neeson movie, they've been taken. It's assumed Rachel had something to do with the kidnappings.

There are lots of other clones, too—no one knows how many.

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The Dyad Institute, headed by Dr. Leekie, is a creepy organization that created and secretly monitors the clones.

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Which brings us to the Dyad Institute, the creepy organization that both Delphine and Rachel work for, and the one treating new clone Jennifer Fitzsimmons. Right now, it's not clear if they're evil or not. We know that they're behind the clone experiment, and that it's a product of their steps in the "neolution" movement, a sub-form of evolution.

The Dyad Institute's face: its overseer, Dr. Aldous Leekie.

Other than that, we don't know much about institute. As Paul, who was Beth's monitor and boyfriend, tells Sarah once he discovers that Beth is actually dead, the Dyad Institute forced him to be a monitor because they're blackmailing him with information from when he was a soldier stationed in Afghanistan. Thus, it's clear they're not exactly a clean organization. They often brought the clones in (without their knowledge) for testing, treating them more as experiments than actual people. They even refer to them as binary code numbers instead of their actual names:

And, worst of all, they have no issue killing off anyone, monitor or even clone, to get what they want. As Cosima discovers towards the end of the season one... Well, we'll get to that soon enough.

The "Proletheans" are a radical extremist group that believes the clones are abominations, and seeks to kill them all.

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On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Proletheans. These guys are basically against everything that the Neolution movement stands for, and believe that the clones—with the exception of Helena—are all abominations that should be killed.

As a result, they've trained Helena from the time she was a baby to believe in their way of thinking, and to think that she is the "original" clone; the rest (Alison, Cosima, Beth, Katja, Jennifer, and Rachel), they say, are all mere images of her.

Helena initially believes that Sarah is as O.G., but she quickly realizes that the two have a special bond because they're actually twins, separated at birth.

While we don't know much about the Proletheans yet (expect this to change in season two), it's clear that the group is dangerous. They're radical extremists who have no issue resorting to murder in order to ensure their vision of a Neolutionist-free society come true.

So, basically, don't fuck with them.

The clones, realizing they're in danger, band together to figure out more about their origins—but shit quickly hits the fan.

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Which brings us to the most important part of Orphan Black: what the hell is going on?

It doesn't seem like anyone knows. Towards the end of the season, Sarah has no idea what's happening; Cosima is still trying to balance her research of the cloning experiment with her budding love for Delphine and her simultaneous distrust of her; and Alison is having what appears to be a complete mental breakdown because, you know, her whole life is a sham and she was created in a laboratory by a bunch of scientists. Can you blame her?

As previously specified, Helena kidnaps Sarah's daughter Kira, but, after about five minutes, lets her go when she realizes she doesn't want to hurt her, or Sarah. Kira sees Sarah frantically looking for her in the distance and runs toward her, only to get hit in the middle of the street by a car. Sarah rushes her to the hospital, understandably frantic, and luckily finds out that Kira is going to be OK.

Meanwhile, Mrs. S has been searching for Sarah's birth mother, Amelia, and ends up finding her and bringing her to Toronto. While this is good news in the beginning (Sarah is thrilled to meet her), its not that great when Sarah takes Helena to meet her in an effort to show Helena that the Proletheans have been lying to her all her life. Their mother explains that the pregnancy was a surrogate one and that when she discovered that the Dyad Institute was shady as fuck, she gave them both their best chance of survival by splitting them up, and going into hiding herself. Helena doesn't believe it at all.

Not much later, she poses as Sarah and visits Amelia at Beth's old apartment where she's staying. Just as Amelia is telling her to watch out for Mrs. S, Helena begins to speak with a Ukrainian accent and then guts her with a knife. Zoinks!

When Sarah finds Helena with Amelia, nearly dead, Sarah understandably loses her shit and gets into a major fight with Helena. Sarah eventually shoots Helena as she tearfully says, "You killed someone I've been dreaming about my whole life." Helena is presumed dead.

Also worth noting: before Amelia dies, she gives Sarah—the real Sarah—a picture dated 1977, featuring Mrs. S herself as a scientist working for the Dyad Institute. That's suspicious!

Oh, yeah, and the clones are patented by the Dyad Institute. And that's kind of a big deal, considering they're still human beings.

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Wait, there's one more major revelation to remember from season one. Moments before Sarah heads down to meet Rachel and sign the "contract" that will supposedly protect her and Kira, she gets a call from Cosima:

So, that's why The Dyad Institute is shady: they own human beings. 

Sarah emails Rachel a short note: "Up yours, proclone," then rushes back to Mrs. S's home, only to discover that Kira and Mrs. S are missing. It's presumed that Rachel is behind this.

SEASON TWO, COME AT US, BRO.

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