WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Snowpiercer Season 2, Episode 1, available now on Amazon Prime Video.

The premiere of Snowpiercer's second season gave viewers a closer look at Alexandra, Melanie's abandoned daughter, who returned on the supply train, Big Alice. Her cold treatment of her mother throughout the episode comes to a head at the end when she ignores her mother's warning, instead following an order from Mr. Wilford that would have decimated the human population. Scarier still is that Alexandra's near-genocide is met with smiles and quickly turned into a bonding moment.

When Melanie stole Snowpiercer from Mr. Wilford, she ended up leaving her daughter Alexandra behind. While these past seven years she has assumed her daughter dead, it turns out that Mr. Wilford rescued Alexandra somehow and that both are safe aboard Big Alice. Because of this betrayal, however, Alexandra doesn't trust her mother, or even really know who this woman is.

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It's no surprise, then, that when Mr. Wilford orders Alexandra to separate Big Alice, leaving Snowpiercer unmoving and allowing its inhabitants to succumb to the cold, she obeys. Even though Melanie warns her of the cost of the maneuver — that she would be killing all of the inhabitants of Snowpiercer and would have to live with that guilt forever —Alexandra only hesitates a moment before pushing the button.

Snowpiercer Melanie Alexandra

This moment is played as a testament to Melanie's trickery. It turns out that while she was outside earlier, Melanie had rigged Big Alice's locking mechanism so that when it attempted a release it would instead effectively permanently lock the two trains together. This means that the trains would have stayed connected whether or not Alexandra had followed through on that order. But Melanie's wry smile and Alexandra's grin of respect can now be seen in the context of the genocide that the latter almost committed.

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Earlier in the premiere, Engineer Javier described Big Alice as carrying perhaps up to 200 people, but more likely 40. While the population of Snowpiercer is left ambiguous, it is nearly 25 times the size of Big Alice, with many suggesting it carries some 3,000 passengers. Snowpiercer makes it clear that no one could survive outside of the train and that these are the only people left in the known universe — and Alexandra was ready to murder 90% of them out of blind faith in Mr. Wilford.

While Alexandra ended up murdering no one, and her near-genocide seemed to actually bring her closer to her mother, her willingness to mass-murder feels like it deserves more speculation and fewer smiles. Whatever happened to Alexandra in her time away from her mother and under the watchful eye of Mr. Wilford, she's come out of it unafraid to bear the guilt of all this death — which makes her a terrifying yet compelling addition to the Snowpiercer ensemble.

Snowpiercer stars Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, Sean Bean, Rowan Blanchard, Alison Wright, Mickey Sumner, Iddo Goldberg, Katie McGuinness, Lena Hall, Annalise Basso, Sam Otto, Roberto Urbina, Sheila Vand, and Steven Ogg. Season 1 is available on HBO Max. New episodes air Mondays on TNT.

KEEP READING: Snowpiercer Season 2: Release Date, Plot, Trailer & News to Know