Orphan Black: Echoes Reveals Major Clone Twist

Eleanor Miller's fate gets a lot more complicated in Episode 6.

By Jenna Anderson

We're more than halfway through the first season of Orphan Black: Echoes, the AMC and BBC America series that has surprised fans throughout its run thus far. Set decades after the events of Orphan Black, the series has chronicled a different kind of cloning conspiracy — and with the series' sixth episode, the show just rewrote everything we knew about it. Spoilers for Episode 6 of Orphan Black: Echoes, "Unless You Trusted Someone", below! Only look if you want to know!

"Unless You Trusted Someone" picks up on the various bits of information revealed in the previous flashback episode, as Kira Manning (Keeley Hawes) is motivated to create a genetic printer that can clone an entire human being after losing her wife, Eleanor Miller (Rya Kihlstedt) to Alzheimer's. Kira's initial printing of a younger Eleanor became Lucy (Krysten Ritter), but was not involved in the printing of her teenaged counterpart, Jules (Amanda Fix), as Kira thought she had destroyed the printer altogether. We do learn, however, that one clone was printed before then — an identical clone of adult Eleanor, who remains at home in the present day, completely unaware of her origin or what Kira has done to keep their relationship alive. This completely remixes the "Clone Club" dynamic fans will recognize — instead of being the group of Leda clones who are all close in age, we now get to see snapshots of "Eleanor" at different points in her life. 

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"I think as the show goes, as you hit [Episode] 5 and 6 and you build through, the clone aspect comes forefront by the time you get to the end," Kihlstedt told ComicBook in a recent interview. "Suddenly, you have three of us and you realize there had been a fourth. There's original Eleanor, and then new Eleanor. You have no idea who else is out there, how many other versions of Eleanor that actually Kira didn't build. I think it's fascinating. I think there's something about the part of our world, of connective tissue between people. Whether you've met, whether you haven't met, that I think the clone idea picks up on, in a more actual DNA-linked way. But in some ways, the part of it that I love the idea that there's somebody around the world who maybe you will never meet, never cross, and you have the same build, the same makeup, in our crazy big, small world in life. I think the clone part of it is absolutely fascinating."

New episodes of Orphan Black: Echoes air Sundays at 10/9c on AMC, BBC America, and AMC+.

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