‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Reveals Moll & L’ak’s Backstory — Plus, What’s Next?
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Where No One Has Gone Before
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 5 “Mirrors.”]
It’s far from a meet cute and in no way the start of a rom-com, but Star Trek: Discovery does offer a look at how Moll (Eve Harlow) and L’ak (Elias Toufexis) first crossed paths and what led them to become Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and her crew’s foes in the latest episode.
“Mirrors” takes Michael and Book (David Ajala), who has realized Moll is the daughter of his mentor, into a pocket of interdimensional space and onto the abandoned ISS Enterprise, where they try to get through to Moll and L’ak with both pairs after the same thing: the next piece of the puzzle that will unlock the ultimate power everyone’s after this season. Book tries to get through to Moll, and L’ak ends up injured. But rather than turn themselves in, as Michael and Book try to convince them to do, Moll and L’ak set off as soon as they get the chance.
Read on for insight from Ajala, Harlow, and Toufexis about this episode, filming on the ISS Enterprise set, and more.
When L’ak Met Moll
As flashbacks detail, Moll was a courier who met L’ak on one of her deliveries; he was the primarch’s nephew who’d been demoted to shuttle bay duty and ultimately took her side, leading the two to flee and now there’s a blood bounty on them. Both Harlow and Toufexis had hints about their characters’ backstory, but it wasn’t until the script for this episode that they got the full picture.
“I was bugging them for the script to 505 because they told me [the backstory] was [that episode],” Toufexis tells TV Insider of what he says is his favorite episode he’s in. “They gave me a little bit of background so I could play it in the other episodes, but when I saw the episode, I was so happy because I play a lot of bad guys on TV, and more often than not, you don’t get to find out why they’re bad or why they’re doing what they’re doing—not that these guys are bad inherently. The fact that we get to go back and literally show and play everything, almost everything, at least for the reasoning why they’ve made these decisions and why they are who they are—that combined with the love story was my favorite thing about these characters for sure.”
Playing a love story as an antagonist was different for him, he explains. “They very rarely have a counterpart,” he says. “I was really happy that I have this to play, this reason to go on is Moll for L’ak. And that love story is the most interesting part of it for me, just being in love. Especially in sci-fi, it’s really rare, especially for antagonists. I just want to be in love and free is original, I think.”
Harlow, too, enjoyed getting to “run around being in love” as what she calls her favorite character she’s played. She recalls that the sides she auditioned with, while fake scripts, are situations like in Episode 5. “Every episode that came out was really exciting because we didn’t know what we were getting and [we were] seeing it unfold in such an interesting way and getting more layers,” she says. “These characters are nuanced.”
Can Book Get Through to Moll?
When the episode begins, Book thinks Moll can turn things around and he might be able to reach her, and he does try to do so when they’re split off from Michael and L’ak. But while her father was his mentor, to Moll, he was just the person who left her and her mom.
“It’s like Moll has now offered a bit of a lifeline, someone who’s known Cleveland Booker, who was this Cleveland Booker’s mentor, to kind of understand more about his character, which Book assumed would have been positive,” says Ajala. “But then to hear Moll speak so negatively about Cleveland Booker gives him pause for thought.”
Book wasn’t able to get through to Moll, and Harlow doesn’t think he stands a chance of ever doing so. “Anyone who has mommy or daddy issues knows, it’s years of therapy. I think that those parent relationships are really difficult and I think that always the knee jerk reaction is, ‘No, I don’t want to face it,’ until you’re forced to face it. It’s her own resistance and the way that Moll has survived is with this hatred and pushing away of her father. It would require a complete 180 [and] years of therapy,” she says with a laugh. “Spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery–Moll in Therapy.”
But even so, is that connection to Book something that L’ak might be worried about? Toufexis admits it’s not something he had to consider. “L’ak is very untrusting of anybody, especially people that show particular interest in Moll,” he shares before teasing, “The trust grows more between Moll and L’ak because of her decisions towards Book.”
John Medland / Paramount+
Still, Book isn’t willing to give up on Moll. “This season is all about second chances,” Ajala points out, adding that his character has received one. “He now wants to afford the same grace to Moll. It does get more challenging as the season progresses and it gets more complicated, but I feel that Book just has to try and see it through to make it worth it.”
For Book, the best-case scenario is this ends with “Moll finding favor amongst Starfleet and not going sown a destructive path,” says Ajala, but just because he wants this to work out doesn’t mean that it necessarily will—or that he doesn’t have a line when it comes to her. “If she makes a decision that she would never be able to come back from, that would be really, really sad.”
What’s Next for Moll & L’ak?
Last we saw the two, they were heading off with medical supplies and L’ak was injured. You’ll have to watch to see exactly what’s next but, “he’s fine,” says Toufexis.
As for the next time Book encounters Moll, “there will be drama,” Ajala teases. “It’s a very nuanced, complicated situation, and I think they’re both in very unfamiliar territory, but it’s going to be very important that they make the right decision or it will have a dramatic effect.”
What he’ll probably have to keep in mind is that there doesn’t seem to be anything that could make Moll or L’ak turn on the other and there isn’t a limit to how far they will go for one another. “This sounds so corny, but we only have each other,” says Harlow. “It’s us against the world.”
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t surrender. At one point, Michael tries to convince L’ak to do just that, and he asks if he and Moll would serve their time together.
“I remember specifically playing that and thinking, ‘Okay, he’s looking for at least a way out, recalls Toufexis, “but the end result has to be they’re free and together, or at least they’re together and safe. There are some rules that they both really need people to accept if they’re going to give in, and I don’t think they are.”
Harlow agrees that it would take “freedom and safety” for them to surrender, “and no one’s giving us that, so we have to get it ourselves in whatever way we can.”
Marni Grossman / Paramount+
Filming on the ISS Enterprise
Most of this episode takes place on the ISS Enterprise, and as a big Star Trek fan, Toufexis was thrilled. Before getting the script for Episode 5, “I had heard a props guy or maybe a set deck guy talking [about] the Enterprise, and I was like, ‘I’m sorry, what was that? We’re going to the Enterprise?'” he shares, admitting that he did take photos on the set that he will never publish. “I love being on that ship. I was texting my family, ‘Can you believe this? I’m on the freaking Enterprise. This is crazy.’ There’s footage of me at 15 years old doing a Star Trek TV show in my friend’s basement where we built an Enterprise out of cardboard. So the fact that I’m on the actual Enterprise now, that’s pretty crazy.”
Harlow chimes in to share that Toufexis surprised people on set by knowing what all the props were in the first episode of the season (see photo above).
Ajala chose to wait until he stepped on the set to film to see it. “I was quite intentional about that because I didn’t want to become too familiar and take this wonderful set for granted,” he explains. “I literally laid eyes on it when the camera was rolling. One would say that’s a slightly unorthodox way of working, but I found it really, really informative and it was a super special moment to just be in that space.”
What did you think of Moll and L’ak’s backstory? Let us know in the comments section, below.
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