SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Utopia on Channel 4. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode two.

Catch up with Richard Vine's episode one blog

"I pulled up the ladder"

She certainly did. Our first proper introduction to Jessica Hyde comes bundled with a massive data dump of backstory and a huge leap down a dark rabbit hole: "My name is Jessica Hyde. Come with me now, or you'll all die." There's no turning back for the characters – or us – by the end of the episode. It's a sign that the writers aren't interested in playing one of those Lost-style games with a story arc drip-fed in tiny moments over the next five years – one of your concerns from the comments last week. Maybe that's because we've only got six episodes to play with (for now – here's an early vote for a series two), but still, it's exciting to see a story being told at this kind of pace. Unless of course you take the Wilson Wilson view, in which case everything that has been revealed tonight will turn out to be a cover story for a much larger, much more twisty conspiracy that we haven't even got to yet..

Network download

"Basically, that's who's after you," Jessica helpfully explains to Ian, Becky and Wilson (now sporting a "pirate chic" eye-patch). So let's see what we know so far:

• The Network was established during the cold war as a black-ops unit run by geneticist Philip Carvel and "Mr Rabbit" (yes, that's his code name) to combat Soviet plans in the 70s for germ warfare – they were busy weaponising anthrax, ebola and smallpox.

• After the cold war, the Network had no intention of winding down their international operations. Carvel wanted out, but was tortured to keep him working.

• Carvel ended up in a psychiatric hospital where he was given a new name – Mark Deyn – and started drawing as part of his art therapy: the Utopia Experiments is the result.

• Deyn is also Jessica's dad: she's been on the run from the Network since she was four.

• The unpublished manuscript (currently hidden under Alice's bed) came to Doomsday Comics via Jack Tate – Utopia's publisher.

• Tate walks into traffic on the A22, and his wife is taken for interrogation.

• A CIA agent is installed in the Tates' house – another loose end mopped up by Arby, who's now working solo.

"Back soon. Don't have a bath"

Jessica comes across like a mix of Tank Girl and Nikita – with the same deadpan lack of social graces that made Summer Glau's high-school Terminator so entertaining. After a lifetime spent fighting the Network, she's in a good position to let our Utopia fans in on some of the pertinent details. "Adjust or die" is her cheery motto and it's one that Ian takes to heart this week. By the end, he has become (at the very least) an accessory to car theft, kidnap and murder, with Becky and Wilson not far behind with their breaking and entering/kidnap combo.

"Who are you and what's going on?"

At the start, this is the question everyone wants Jessica to answer; by the end it's Becky who should be answering it. She slipped off to buy the gang some water – and then spilled the beans about Grant having the manuscript in a mystery phone call. "It's me. The manuscript exists … the Boy knows where it is." A big question to finish an episode that seemed to be full of answers: deep-cover double agent, or seriously pissed-off fashion lover? The pink tracksuit "disguise" that Jessica made Becky wear really didn't go down well. But surely it wasn't that bad?

We've seen Jessica be very clear about her worldview: there are no "sides", just people able to help or not. But could there be more players here than the Network and their prey? Did Becky call someone outside of the Network? Dismissed by Jessica as a "bit player", Becky has seemed pretty well informed, with her knowledge of the company responsible for Deels syndrome and close reading of the graphic novel. But is she really going to give up her new friends quite so quickly? She lied to Wilson but only because she couldn't tell him about his dad. The jealousy that bubbled up as soon as Jessica started taking control of the group – and especially Ian ("got a thing for tough women is it?") – also seemed too genuine to just be be part of her cover. Didn't it?

Notes and questions

• "Do you think your wife will understand?" Poor Dugdale. He seems to spend his whole life looking round, trying to see if anyone else can hear the crazy conversations he finds himself having, or listening to people tell him he's a hero – the last thing he feels. Especially when he watches, helpless, as Stephen Rea and James Fox casually turn up the TV news to reveal that Anya has been framed for the journalist's death.

• Grant came so close to healthy eating this week – what a nice array of fruit there was waiting in Alice's fridge. Her family definitely watch Jamie's School Dinners. But instead, it's a can of pop: maybe all the E numbers will save him if Russian flu makes it down from Shetland.

• Interesting to see some cross-channel pollination – the citizens of Utopia seem to be tuned to BBC News 24 – not Channel 4 News. I can't remember the last time a drama didn't rope in its own anchors.

• Has Grant inadvertently been making a copy of the Utopia manuscript in his sketchbook? Nice of him to leave the real one with Alice, althought it remains to be seen whether hiding it "under the bed" is the kind of security measure that will fool the Network.

• I'm not sure Wilson would recommend answering any of the questions in the survey on Channel 4's Utopia site – surely it's a Network ploy?

• "I'm a specialist." So neither Lee nor his quiff made it out of Wilson's bunker. Blank-faced killer Arby is left to stalk across Britain on his own, looking almost wistful as he picks up the gas cylinder to finish off that hapless family tied up in their own garage.

• As ever, theories, comments and pop culture spots are welcome below. Unless you don't want the Network to find out what's on your mind.