“The Moroi” of Impulse’s season two is about Nikolai, the teleporter on the trail of Henry Cole. This broadcast gets into his origins as a teleporter. Apparently, he grew up in Bucharest, Romania. It should be mentioned that none of Impulse’s cast appear in this airing, because it’s just about Nikolai.
Growing up as a child, Nikolai starved in Bucharest, Romania. We learn his family had to rely on government issued rations in order to survive. In fact, at a local church where Nikolai’s starving family would gather, they would be ripped off by those issuing rations. It was this time when Nikolai was constantly sick due to living in poverty.
In this episode, we learn Nikolai, as a child, believed his ability to teleport was the result of angels. Not only that, his uncle, too, believed angels were transporting and saving Nikolai. Obviously, Nikolai had deeply religious roots.
As a youth, Nikolai believed he was stuck between heaven and hell. Given his situation, he believed he could never get to heaven. With that, Nikolai did not realize that it is a genetic mutation, which allowed him to teleport.
This segment touches on some of the events happening in Bucharest, Romania, when Nikolai was growing up. During the 1970s, Romania was in a war, so there was a curfew. As well, the borders were often closed, and Romanians could not get out of the country. Many bombings occurred at this time in Romania.
Sometime during the war years in Bucharest, Nikolai rescued the son of a rich human trafficker. Though the rescued son never made it out of Bucharest due to being shot by Nikolai’s uncle, Nikolai did manage to get out, and he went straight to Canada to deliver personal letters of his dead friend to his father, the trafficker. It was this rescue that paved the way for Nikolai to come to the US.
As well, this episode gives us a glimpse of some of the strange ideas Romanians believe about the US. For example, in one scene, Nikolai says in believes in the American dream. Plus, he believes in freedom. Not only that, he believes you can do anything in the US. Although it’s debatable how true these ideas are, Nikolai believed these ideas when he was growing up.
At the end of “The Moroi,” we learn Nikolai’s mysterious employer is actually his adopted sister. His sister turns out to be the same CEO of the mysterious corporation who wants Henry. Nikolai’s sister wants Henry because she will guarantee the corporation’s survival with much needed investment.
In brief, “The Moroi” is a good name for this episode. If you consider Nikolai’s origins and what Moroi actually means in Romanian, you’ll under stand why this episode is called “The Moroi”. Nikolai grew up in a very Catholic family, and he believed himself stuck between heaven and hell; on top of that, he had to deal with his teleportation powers alone since his family was murdered in a Catholic church. Given what Nikolai thought about himself, it’s a good name for this broadcast.
