The boss of Echoes on the return of the star from the original series and an update on Sarah and Kira

(Warning: The following contains HUGE spoilers for Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1, Episode 2 “Jules.”)

Now that it has been announced that Keeley Hawes will play an adult Kira (!), the door is open for Echoes to bring back characters from the original Orphan Black in an organic way, and that’s exactly what happens right in the second episode, with Jordan Gavaris (aged by makeup) back as her Uncle Felix! (Yes, he still calls her “Monkey.”) And he’s the perfect person for her, now that we start to delve deeper into what she’s done.

“I think because her relationship with her mother was so troubled, her Uncle Felix was always kind of there for her in this loving, supportive way, and I think in some ways there’s just less conflict with family members who aren’t your immediate family of origin,” creator, writer, showrunner and executive producer Anna Fishko tells TV Insider about the return of the character Felix. “He was really there for her in this more straightforward way than her mother was. So I really liked the idea that he would still be in her life and be there for her and help her when she needed help.”

Felix visits Kira because she’s worried about Lucy (Krysten Ritter), the expression she made, who escaped the facility after waking up two years ago and is now being hunted. Kira had called her aunt Cosima (one of Tatiana Maslany’s many roles in the original series) at the end of the premiere and she knows she called him. Cosima is worried about her, thinking she might get a glimpse of her, and Kira’s mother Sarah would beat him with the pickaxe if he didn’t stop by while he’s in town, he admits.

Felix gives us an update on Sarah (she couldn’t be happier working in a home helping women), and Kira admits that while she loves her mother, things were never good between them after what happened. And yet she still has Dr. Moreau’s book, he points out. She says she hasn’t opened it in years. He suggests Kira needs a break, but she’s against going to a bar at her age (Felix describes it as “Neolution without the dicks” once they walk in) — until she hears she might get cocaine for her experiment. Felix intervenes as she tries to figure out how to find and buy the drugs, then Kira’s son Lucas (Jaeden Noel) joins them (Felix called him). He’s part of this spiritual community that’s not a cult, he insists, and quit school because he thinks it’s pointless. He knows something is going on with his mother, and Felix says he’ll get it out of her, but she remains vague when they talk in her office afterward.

Kira says she’s always tried to be good – a good mother, a good scientist, a good person – but now she’s worried about this project she’s working on. What if all the horrible, painful things they’ve lived through haven’t made them better, just made them selfish? Since he only knows about the organs she’s printed, he points out the lives she’s saved. But how would he react if he knew she’d printed a human?

Meanwhile, that expression has tracked down another, younger version, Jules (Amanda Fix); she has no memory of her parents, who died in a car crash, and they share the same scar. Lucy basically kidnaps her, and Jules stabs her in the shoulder and escapes. Lucy then turns to her boyfriend Jack (Avan Jogia), who is involved in everything with his daughter Charlie (Zariella Langford), to get her back on her feet. But if she can’t be honest with him, their relationship is over, he says, so she takes him to the warehouse where she woke up and tells him everything. After taking some time, he tells her he believes her and loves her, so why did she trust him with the truth?

Sophie Giraud / AMC

“He’s pretty much all she has, right?” Ritter states. “She loves him and she has no one else. This is her chosen family. Jack and Charlie are everything to her and she doesn’t want to lose that. So I would hope that if you love someone, you would tell them your secrets. Yes, I think it was because she loves him.”

What did you think of Felix’s return to the world of Orphan Black? Do you think Lucy was right to trust Jack? Let us know in the comments section below.

Orphan Black: EchoesSundays, 10/9c, AMC