Give it to Dollhouse: This bizarre series ended its first (could it be only?) season with the mother of all identity crises, as rogue doll Alpha—an “unfortunate technological anomaly,” as the boss lady describes him—absconds with Echo, taking along all of her past imprints as well as the “wedge” containing her original self Caroline, and all metaphysical hell breaks loose. The mind boggles as Alpha puts Caroline’s imprint into another kidnap victim, then introduces Echo to her real self. “The wrongness of this is so large,” indeed. Or as Alpha says: “Her is the old you. Try and keep up.” Hey, we’re doing our best.

We also discover (maybe not really a surprise) that dear Dr. Saunders is a doll, too, and that once upon a pre-Echo time she was the Dollhouse’s “No. 1 active,” the in-demand Whiskey, and we’re talking top-shelf call-brand liquor here. (Amy Acker plays the heck out of these flashbacks, as you knew she could.) Whiskey’s popularity so unnerves the unstable Alpha, who’s smitten by the newly arrived Echo, that his original personality (a “nascent Ted Bundy”) comes to the surface, resulting in the bloody slashing spree that left Whiskey a scarred mess. (Cue the chilling scene when Saunders deflates the newly disfigured Victor, telling him he’ll never be his best again and not to look to her for pity.) And just to remind us what a nasty screw-up Alpha is, we watch him gouge out his handler’s eyes (unnecessarily graphic) during the wipe-gone-wrong that turns Alpha into a fearsome “composite event,” which is the gift he plans to bestow now upon Echo.

Alpha, it seems, managed to destroy his original self, and he’s going to do the same for Echo, telling her that Caroline deserves it because she abandoned and betrayed her by letting her become a doll. He puts Echo in his own creepy chair and implants all of her past imprints in her head, a mind-frak intended to turn her into a superior creature but which instead awakens her to a mega-migraine of an existential dilemma. “We’re not new. We’re not anything. We’re not anybody, because we’re everybody.” And in the strangest of all moments, indicating that the dolls somehow keep current with the outside world, she gives a shout-out to Obama: “I have 38 brains. Not one of them thinks you can sign a contract to be a slave—especially now that we have a black president.”

Back to the carnage. The new-and-improved Echo turns on her Dr. Frankenstein/Alpha and they have one wicked fight, ending with the rather silly image of Alpha training a gun on the “wedge” containing Caroline’s profile: “Do what I say or I will blow your (electronic) brain out,” he sneers. By this time, Boyd and Ballard (still bearing bruises from their fight last week) have tracked them to Alpha’s lair, but not before Alpha shoots the poor Caroline clone in the throat and wounds Echo with a bullet in the shoulder. In the chase that follows, Alpha drops the Caroline “wedge,” but Ballard is there to catch it and bring her/it/whatever home safely. Alpha escapes, and it’s back to the house for everyone else—including Ballard, who signs on as a new “contractor” under one condition, and it’s not what you think. He has Mellie/November/Madeleine released, while it’s back to the pod for Echo. Although as she turns in for the night, she whispers the name “Caroline.” Curtain on one of the weirdest, most surreal hours I’ve witnessed all season (thanks to writer/director Tim Minear for delivering the goods).

Is it curtains for Dollhouse as well? We should find out in about a week if not sooner (Fox’s upfront is May 18). A renewal would be a giant leap of faith on Fox’s part that this provocative but wildly uneven show has room to grow beyond the mild (if vocal) cult that attends anything Joss Whedon creates. I tended to run hot and cold on this show during its 12-episode run, intrigued by the implications of the soul-sucking technology and the tonal shifts from episode to episode but less convinced than usual by the viability of the premise and, more to the point, less compelled by the human mysteries at the story’s core. Still, if this Dollhouse is the arena Whedon chooses to play in until his Next Big Thing, I hope he gets another chance to refine it. (At the very least, I hope we get to see the so-far-unscheduled “Epitaph One” 13th episode, directed by Whedon, which goes way outside the box to imagine the apocalyptic implications of what the Dollhouse has wrought.)