I felt like this was the last episode before the mid-season hiatus, and I had somehow missed the first 8 episodes.
There was an incredibly rich and well-formed world that somehow managed to convey itself in short-story length, which is awesome. The downside is that I was floundering.
I eventually settled in on a world of one-shot city-states. Our protagonist comes from a fundamental monotheist city-state and somehow ends up in the technomancer's city-state. Both places might seem worlds apart, but as Varda said in the outro, they fundamentally face the same conflict. And by some miraculous happenstance, Grace manages to resolve the conflict both times.
But he still has some internal demons to battle, so that's alright.
Not sure how I feel about it. In general, I don't like the hero-swoops-in-and-saves-everybody-whether-they-needed-it-or-not trope. But Grace certainly wasn't acting like a hero. More of an antihero. Or (thank you Fenrix), like Mal (for those of you not in the Verse: someone who does things according to his own, rather twisted and sweet, version of what's right and what's wrong).
I can't decide whether Grace saved the boy because he is a genuinely good person, or because he feels that he needs to pay some sort of debt for saving his life. Whether the society he grew up in conditioned him to "do the right thing", or to "always pay your debts".
I want to believe that it's the former, but fear it's the latter.
Either way, that was some rich storytelling, and I'm left wondering about the future (and past) adventures of Bishop and Grace.