The Insubstantial Pageant

"**The Insubstantial Pageant**" is the third episode of the first season of *The I-Land*, and the third episode of the series overall.

## Synopsis

Waking in strange surroundings, Chase learns the disturbing truth about the island, and what she and the others are doing there.

## Plot

**SPOILERS AHEAD**
Episode 3 of The I-Land sees Chase awaken to a nurse standing over her. Panicking, she mentions the island but is met with a blank expression before she blacks out, awakening again to find Dr. Conrad standing over her. He tells her the paralysis she’s experiencing is really just a magnetic field to help keep the prison population under wraps. After freeing her from her restraints, he rushes out the room where he leaves her stuck in the room.

Guards arrive with guns soon after and tell her to follow them and brought her before Warden Wells, he tells her about the new experiments they’ve been doing. She asks why she’s imprisoned but he turns the questions around to the island itself. It turns out she wasn’t really there and the island was all just a simulation. Leaving her to stew over his words, she fights off two guards effortlessly before knocking one of them in the chair she awoke in. Charging through the corridors, she fights past numerous guards, dodging bullets as she goes, before eventually being knocked out and thrown into a holding cell underground.

After being given some time to cool off, she’s taken to a room full of high-ranking officials (jurors), along with the Warden and told more about the island. It’s a battle of nature VS nurture and the whole concept is around whether you can you change a person’s moral compass and innate desires. As she sits, listening to them talk, the group discuss whether they should allow her back into the simulation.

The Warden hears enough and takes Chase outside and discusses matters with her alone. She asks him about Brody and he tells her that when you do something bad on the island, it pays you back. Whatever happened, the Brody inside and outside the game is death. The Warden tells her he’ll be keeping his eye on her if she goes back inside, especially given how peculiar she’s been reacting to the game.

The board come to an agreement and decide she should be put back in the simulation. As the guards grab her and take her away, the Warden takes her outside and antagonizes her again, this time with a noose around her neck. Despite a valiant effort to fight them off, Chase is eventually electrocuted with tasers and knocked out.

Bloodied and bruised, after a cryptic talk with Doctor Wyss who talks to her about the island, she manages to escape capture. She hurries across to another area of the facility where she finds a control centre full of scientists and guards. The nine other islanders are floating in tanks while dressed in a strange cocoon-like suit. It’s here the Warden finds her again, sneering and informing her that none of them have a chance in the game if he has anything to say about it. As he tells the guards to “light her up”, the game begins again.

## Cast

* Kate Bosworth as KC
* Ronald Peet as Cooper
* Kyle Schmid as Moses
* Sibylla Deen as Blair
* Gilles Geary as Mason
* Anthony Lee Medina as Donovan
* Kota Eberhardt as Taylor
* Margaret Colin as Dr. Stevenson
* Dalia Davi as Dr. Wyss
* Victor Slezak as Dr. Dafoe
* Caroline Hewitt as Nurse Golding
* Bruce McGill as Warden Wells
* John Earl Jelks as Professor Verne
* Subhash Mandal as Doctor Conrad

### Minor

* Adam Lytle as Guard 1
* Jeremy Marinas as Guard 2
* Chad Crumley as Guard 3
* David Conk as Guard 4
* Sebastien Berube as Male Worker

## Gallery

### Images

* Screencaps
* Behind the Scenes