Castle Rock Season 1 Episode 8: Past Perfect Recap

Episode 8 of Castle Rock season 1, Past Perfect, is the beginning of the third and final act of the season, and it asks a very important question: Is it better to bury the memories of traumatic events, or to dwell on them? The show has a firm opinion on the matter, in the form of Jackie Torrance, taxi driver, real estate assistant, local history buff, and ax aficionado.

While Henry has buried his memories, and new Castle Rock resident Gordon has become obsessive and angry about his, Jackie uses history and her past experiences to inform her decisions. The memories aren’t dangerous if you’ve made your peace with them, as Jackie has. We’ve seen this throughout the season with other minor characters as well.

Kid isn’t turning anyone evil, he’s bringing out whatever demons were already there. The characters are doomed when they become emotionally involved with a situation and lose perspective, or don’t pay enough attention to a situation until it’s too late. They haven’t learned from past experiences. As long as they maintain their balance and sense of self, they can withstand the evil in the town, wherever it comes from.

Except for Henry, who walks around half awake, with no sense of self, ends up a damsel in distress on a regular basis, and has an entourage of heroes who save him: Molly, Kid, Ruth, Alan, now Jackie. You have to wonder why they all want to protect him so badly.

After this episode, a case could be made that the Lacy’s house is evil. Maybe it was the portraits of Kid that tipped Gordon and Lilith over the edge, but that doesn’t explain the murders that occurred in the house during the first half of the 20th century. Unless Kid really is a malevolent immortal spirit who’s playing games with Henry’s family, but I don’t think that’s true.

Past Perfect begins with a flashback to the previous job of new Castle Rock resident Gordon. Gordon and his wife, Lilith, bought the old Lacy place from Molly and the Widow Lacy a few episodes ago. Here, he’s still a history professor, sitting on the thesis committee for a graduate student.

Student: The fundamental problem is that repression has become a dirty word, it is, in fact, a crucial Darwinian tool. The human mind is expressly designed to forget much of its past suffering, as the body is designed to heal its wounds.

Gordon: Yes, but don’t the evolutionary psychologists want to have their heuristic cake and eat it, too? Surely You’re not suggesting that we ignore the lessons of history.

Student: Huxley and Rogers have empirically demonstrated that fetishizing cultural memories is both dangerous and foolhardy.

Gordon: Well, then perhaps I’m a fool. But, a fool with tenure. But, you know what I just can’t forget? That you f—-d my wife.

He hits the student in the face with a hard plastic binder, repeatedly. That kind of attack would be enough to revoke his tenure and fire him.

In the present, Gordon and Lilith move into the house, using Out of Dodge Movers. Gordon hangs a sign out front, showing that the house is now the Castle Rock Historic Bed & Breakfast. Gordon and Lilith get to work redecorating and remodeling. Gordon has a collection of mannequins to assemble in various rooms. Lilith is filled with anxiety as she watches him work.

Lilith finds the missing key to that giant lock on the basement door. Downstairs, she finds dozens of paintings of Kid done by Lacy. She brings them upstairs and uses them to decorate the house. Thankfully, it looks like they’re all portraits, no nudes or kinky stuff.

Late that night, Gordon is still working with his mannequins, now having moved on to painting blood on them. Lilith, wearing a negligee, tries to entice him upstairs. He hesitates, then asks for 5 more minutes. Lauren tells him she wants to have sex, and suggests they forget her affair. Gordon, looking intense, says he’s trying.

The phone rings, so Lilith answers. When she hangs up, she excitedly tells Gordon that they have their first booking.

When their lodgers arrive, they become the hosts from hell. The guests are seated in the parlor on a couch alongside a bloody mannequin with an ax sticking out of his head, while Gordon and Lilith ramble on about their love of the macabre and true crime. They created the B&B as a chance for other true crime fans to stay in a house where so many crimes occurred and stay amongst detailed recreations of the murder scenes. They plan to buy other properties in town and do the same thing, making it an immersive experience.

The guests aren’t impressed, but try to be polite, even though they’re being held hostage instead of being allowed to go to their room. Gordon is offended. Lilith asks how long they’ve been married. They give two different answers. They’re not married to each other. They explain that they just needed a place in a sleepy little town, leaving unsaid that they didn’t want to run into anyone they know.

Their lack of interest in his brilliant concept is one emasculation too many for Gordon. Later that night, they’re having very loud, spectacular sex, and keeping him awake. He goes to their room with a knife, and slices them to ribbons. Killing someone who’s cheating on their spouse has to be satisfying for him as well.

Molly is asleep on top of her bed when she gets images from Henry, showing him being captured and put in the Filter. There are other images in there, too. Some kind of bright psychedelic image, another bright-colored image that’s like fireworks or stars, Kid dressed up and shouting No, the basement cage Henry was in when was he was a child, a furnace in a basement, Odin.

Molly finds him in the anechoic chamber and lets him out. He’s disoriented and confused. As they leave the RV, the camera pans down to show Odin’s dead body hidden behind a tree, with a fire poker sticking out of his eye. Willie is gone.

Who killed Odin? Kid disappeared for a while after he sent Alan to his death. Willie looked nervous in episode 6. And Molly has killed for Henry before. A guy like Odin could have many more enemies. Or Odin and Matthew both could have been ready to leave their corporeal forms behind when their apprentices reached a certain stage of development. That could be the meaning of “Henry did it.” Henry reached the next level, so Matthew could go be with God.

Molly and Henry talk when she drops him off at his house. She says what she received from his head was weird and confusing. He says that even though it was only a few hours, it felt like years. He not sure he knows how the world works or what’s real anymore,.

Henry feels like he sounds crazy. Molly says you get used to people thinking you’re crazy. Henry takes her hand and tells her she’s not crazy, and apologizes for thinking she was. Then he goes inside, to the craziness that awaits within.

The house is too quiet. Wendell doesn’t answer. Henry hears the spooky drone of the schisma as he walks down the upstairs hall. When he steps into Ruths room, it becomes absolutely silent, as if he’d stepped into an anechoic chamber. Ruth is in bed, sound asleep.

Downstairs, he finds Kid in the kitchen. Wendell comes home right after. Henry orders Wendell to go upstairs and lock his door. Wendell does, but he calls 911.

Kid leads Henry to the barn, where he reveals Alan’s body. Henry assumes Kid killed Alan, but Kid explains that Ruth was scared and confused when she shot her lover.

Kid: I cleaned up. If we take her body into the woods…

Henry: What’re you talking about?

Kid, looking determined: We have to protect her.

Henry turns away, muttering to himself, upset.

Kid, looking hopeful: Do you hear it? Finally. We have to go. We have to go to the woods.

Henry: Who are you? Why did you ask for me?

Kid: I waited for you. I waited for 27 years. (The police arrive and order them out of the barn. Kid goes from hopeful to irritated.) I rescued you from that basement and I didn’t ask for any of this.

He walks out the back door and runs into the woods.

That was more emotion and personal information than we’ve gotten from Kid all season.

Henry goes out the front door and faces the police.

Gordon is dismembering bodies then putting them in trash bags. Then the trash bags go in the back of his car. No idea if he’s taking the bags to the dump, or someplace more creative. The Castle Rock dump might have a section set aside for human remains.

Jackie drives her taxi over to the new B&B. On the radio, The DJ says that it wasn’t just Kid who instigated the fire and breakout. Several residents set fire to their mattresses at once.

Gordon and Lilith are wearing identical track suits. He apologizes for the murders, saying he’s not a murderer, he doesn’t know what happened. Lilith says they’ll pretend it never happened.

They’ve got their priorities a bit mixed up as a couple. The affair would be the thing to try to forgive and forget. The double murder is the one to get the h–l out of the marriage over. But sharing the business was supposed to save their marriage, and now they share this giant secret that they can never tell anyone else. Mission accomplished.

Jackie lets herself into the B&B, hoping that she and the B&B owners can send referrals to each other. She’s impressed with the true crime theme. She had the same idea 5 years ago, and wishes she’d done it now. While she’s there, she notices that they have the wrong type of ax in one of the heads.

Lilith hurries Jackie out with an excuse. Jackie snoops around the yard a bit and finds a bloody bracelet in the front yard. She makes a fast get away, wondering what the B&B is really up to.

Wendell asks Henry if he was close to Alan. Henry gives Alan a great obituary, saying, “He took care of your grandmother, for a long time. He tried to be a good man. Sometimes he was.”

Wendell wants to know where his father was the night before. Henry gives him a nonanswer. Wendell has had enough of being shut out of his father’s life. He also slept on a church pew last night.

Ruth calls Henry upstairs. She wants to explain the body in the barn before the police take her away. He followed her, and she hid, but somehow he found her, so she had to shoot him. She had to do it for Henry, because she’d never protected him from this abuse before, and for Wendell. Henry doesn’t remember what he was like before, but deep down he knows. She had to stand up to him this time. And she did. She protected them. He should find Alan. Alan knows the police. They’ll listen to him.

Henry gradually realizes that Ruth thinks Matthew came back and she shot him. Her mind can’t accept that she shot Alan and he’s gone.

The police have accepted Kid as the suspect, but one old bat decides to let Henry know that he’s still the Black Death, the name used to mock him in high school. She blames him for everything, ever. The Castle Rock police officers are as mature as a bunch of immature high schoolers. Nice.

Henry takes Wendell straight to the bus stop, explaining that Castle Rock is messed up and always has been. That’s why they’ve never visited before. Wendell says that he’s learned a lot about his dad. His grandma with dementia has taught him more about Henry than Henry’s told him in his whole life.

Henry promises to do better, as soon as this crisis is over. He just needs a few days. You can see that Wendell has heard this promise many times, and doesn’t believe it any more. He begs Henry to come with him to Boston now, but Henry can’t.

He legit does have to make arrangements for Ruth, though I think that’s at the bottom of his list right now. He fails at taking care of anyone else, even as a friend. He gives Wendll some money, the absentee dad’s favorite way of showing love.

Wendell gets on the bus and watches Henry drive away. After Henry leaves, a dead raven hits the bus. Then Wendell hears a loud feedback noise. He’s started hearing the schisma.

One the phone, Henry tells Molly that people keep dying around Kid. He doesn’t kill them himself, but he inspires them to kill or die. Molly says she’d never felt anything like his mind before. Henry tells her that Kid said he’d rescued Henry from a basement and waited 27 years for him. Molly sees flashes of Henry in the basement cages as a kid.

Henry asks if she ever went into Lacy’s basement. Molly says Martha Lacy didn’t have the key. Henry waits until it’s almost dark, then drives up to Lacy’s house. He knocks on the door of the B&B, but no one answers. They must have taken the remains a couple of towns over.

So Henry does the only sensible thing for a black man who’s hated by the entire town, including the police, and breaks into the basement via the storm doors. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ The basement is empty now, so he goes upstairs and wanders through the house.

He finds a room with Kid portraits covering the walls. Kid looks the same age in every painting. Henry checks the dates on several paintings, going back to the 90s. He searches for and finds the oldest painting, signed in 1991, 27 years ago. Kid is wearing the same shirt Henry was wearing in his “missing child” newspaper ad. Does he have the same shirt because Ruth was shopping for his clothes too?

Henry is mesmerized by what he’s found, finally unable to deny that Kid hasn’t aged in 27 years and is more than just an undocumented prisoner.

He doesn’t hear Gordon come into the room.

Molly is having continuous disturbing flashes, including visions of herself dying in the woods. She takes several whole oxy tablets, then leaves a message for Henry saying she can’t be alone right now and will be right over.

Henry snaps some photos of the original Kid portrait. Gordon interrupts and asks if he can help Henry. Henry tries to explain what he’s doing in the house, but there’s no reasonable excuse for breaking and entering to look at art. He decides he’ll just leave.

As he backs away from Gordon, Lilith stabs him in the back. A fight between the three of them ensues, which ends with Lilith cutting her own jugular and bleeding out on the bathroom floor. Gordon is on the floor with multiple wounds.

Henry runs out of the house and gets into his car, but Gordon catches up with him and pulls him back out. They lie on the ground, fighting over the knife. Henry is about to lose when Jackie appears and buries the hatchet in Gordon’s skull. ⚔️⚒

Molly drives to Henry’s house in a very unsafe condition, and way too fast. I’m not prepared for Molly to crash in a fiery ball of metal, seconds after that knife fight. ☠️

To make matters worse, the bus stops in (Jeru)Salem’s Lot, which shouldn’t even have a functioning bus stop, unless drivers have been hypnotized into bringing fresh victims to town. Henry decides to get off there and walk the two dozen miles back to Castle Rock. This is just not okay. This is why you shouldn’t shelter your kids too much. They won’t know when to avoid the monsters. The Voice of God may also be talking to him. 😱

There is weird audio happening, with vocals skipping, harkening back to last week’s skipping Elvis, and the schisma is in there, along with vocals fading in and out. Most of it is actually this song. I think the schisma is just the schisma.

Jackie and Henry sit on the back bumper of an ambulance. Jackie says that the couple and the inn were so creepy that she had to drive by again. Maybe she was snooping a little. Then, she says she wasn’t herself anymore, you know?

Okay, stop right there. Are we talking about feeling extra brave from a giant adrenaline rush, having a dissociative experience, or some form of mind control kicking in at that moment, like, say, the Kid protecting Henry through Jackie. We don’t get any more information right now, but this could be another version of the Voice of God working through someone.

Molly makes it to Henry’s house, but goes into her parents house, since it’s occupied but not supposed to be. She’s very drugged, to the point where her power is turned off. Her judgement is bad, especially because she’s always used her power to navigate sketchy people and situations.

Kid is sitting inside, on the stairs. Molly asks where Henry is. Kid says that, “Henry isn’t ready yet.” Molly asks, “Ready for what?” Kid ignores that and says she can help him, because she knows him. Molly protests that she doesn’t. Kid tells her that she does, and he knows her.

He proves that they know each other. He describes scenes from her childhood, when she’d watch TV with her parents or sit in the big chair, listening to music.

Henry gets a call from Pastor, who finally gets a name- Reverend Appleton. The reverend is worried about Ruth, who came to his church and asked him if Alan was alive or dead this time. She left in a hurry and wouldn’t let him take her home. He doesn’t know where she went.

Henry’s waiting to be questioned by the police, but he forgets about that. He runs to his car and drives off to find his mom. The schisma is loud in his ears as he drives. Jackie watches Henry leave.

Kid takes Molly upstairs. He tells her what the layout of the room was, that she played with a flashlight, and painted her nails with White Out. This is powerful stuff for someone like Molly, whose head is full of other people all day, everyday. She knows everyone, but no one knows her. The love of her life, Henry, forgot her.

To find that someone knows her intimate details warms her through the drug haze, instead of scaring her, like it should. She can’t feel how wrong he usually feels to her. That’s likely why he chose tonight to approach her.

Molly asks how he can know all of this, when he wasn’t here. He says he was, out in the woods. They look out the window. It’s lightly snowing.

Kids says, “That’s where you die.” Then he stares deeply into her eyes.

---

 

Henry was disturbingly out of it for the entire episode, even more in his head and less in reality than usual. He kept leaving Ruth to fend for herself, after she’d just killed someone the night before. You’d think that would warrant a call to a home health aid agency, at the very least. He could only concentrate on Wendell for a few minutes at a time. He broke into someone else’s house, in a town that’s been out for his blood for decades.

Some of his distraction was lack of sleep, some was his brain trying to process everything he experienced in the anechoic chamber. Some was because of his family situation. But he seemed to also start seeing people who hadn’t broken through his foggy armor before, like hearing Reverend Appleton’s name.

Henry has used his amnesia to protect himself for decades, and it was mostly okay, or so it seemed. As the season has gone on, we’ve discovered that it actually has ruined his relationship with his son and probably his marriage, put a huge burden on his mother as the keeper of both the memories and the secrets, given the town license to assume he’s guilty and hiding things, and destroyed his close relationship with Molly, also burdening her as memory and secret keeper, in addition to leaving her without the support of her best friend and possibly boyfriend. Henry has isolated himself, so that no aspect of his life is fulfilling, all to protect himself from these childhood memories.

In the last few episodes, Henry and the people he cares about have come into immediate danger because he doesn’t have the memories that should warn him, and because of the distance his amnesia has caused in his relationships. If he could remember what happened, he would know who to trust and how to react. He’d be able to regain the confidence of his family. He might be able to predict the actions of his enemy.

Henry’s ready to get his memories back, and it’s time. He needs them now, for whatever final battle is coming. The anechoic chamber brought them to the surface. He only needs to accept them as memories, and organize them in his mind. Say, in episode 9, titled Henry Deaver.

Going back to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse reference from ages ago, I currently think the horsemen are Molly, Henry, Jackie and Ruth, with Kid being Death, who comes with the fourth horseman. They are the people who are actively making things happen in town, even though not everything they do is consciously chosen. I have no idea if the show will go back to the reference, or if it will mean anything.

Ruth thinks that Matthew is back from the dead and the other characters are sure that it’s a symptom of her dementia, but I’m not so sure. Molly has seen apparitions of him too. The camera is only showing us what it wants us to see. It’s not showing us potential times that Ruth is seeing the same apparition. That could be Matthew from another timeline or the spirit world trying to cross over, or accidentally being pulled over.

I theorize that when Molly, Henry, Ruth and possibly Kid are in close proximity and all thinking about the same emotional subject, it activates their powers, and they have the ability to create a portal. With Jackie’s interest in history, she may be a burgeoning timewalker, getting ready to replace Ruth. It could be that it was Ruth who momentarily took over her mind, since Jackie protected Henry the way that Ruth wants to. Molly and Kid see into people’s minds, with slightly different skillsets.  Henry is the one who’s required to open a portal. His psychic broadcasting energy can pull people to him or push them away. Kid waited for 27 years for Henry to reopen the portal and send him home.

Ruth stops the schisma when Henry steps into her bedroom. She asks Appleton if Alan is dead “this time”. I think she acts as a field dampener for the schisma and can navigate different timelines. She can have dementia and still have those powers.

Kids says that he saved Henry from the cage and that Ruth needs to be protected. Everything he did for Ruth in episode 7 can be interpreted that way, if you take away the lens of fear. We viewed his actions from her terrified perspective, and from our own perspective that whenever he’s near, bad things happen. Therefore, he must cause the bad things. Except correlation isn’t cause, especially in a horror show. This is one time that forgetting the past for a while might have been a good idea. This is the same way that the town views Henry, and we don’t think he’s the one causing the deaths. It could be that kids knows what’s coming and that’s why he looks unhappy, or he could be causing some, but not all. The cancerous prison roommate comes to mind as questionable. He could also have an enemy who’s causing chaos around him.

Or the fact that he’s out of sync with this timeline could interfere with the function of others’ brains and bodies. That brings up the question of whether Henry is also out of sync. We know he was in foster care at five, but we don’t know anything before that. The schisma and the strength of it in Castle Rock could drive some susceptible people insane.

The basement cage that Kid referred to has appeared in Henry’s and Molly’s flashes. It’s probably where he was during the lost 11 days. Other flashes have shown Kid there too. My current theory is that Kid is Ruth and Matthew’s lost child from a different timeline. He’s force sensitive, while Henry is a powerful broadcaster. When the schisma thinned, Kid could hear his timeline counterpart, Henry, calling for help. Ruth, Henry, Molly and Kid were able to join their powers to help him cross over into this timeline for the rescue. But then Kid was captured and couldn’t go back to his own timeline, leaving him frozen in place.

Someone was against Kid rescuing Henry and the way it unbalanced the schisma/universe. It makes sense for that to also be the person who kept Henry in a cage. That person found a way to communicate to Lacy as the Voice of God, telling him when and where to find Kid and how to build the cage. Best guess right now would be Odin. He’s ruthless and he has a thing for working with young men. With Matthew gone, capturing Henry would seem like a good idea to him.

My only other possibility is Matthew’s spirit, but there has to be someone I’m overlooking. Since Lacy didn’t mention a female voice, I’m assuming a male Voice of God. Maybe they’ll surprise me. Alan is the only other male character with means, motive and opportunity. If you look back on his actions and ignore his words and his past in the books, he’s made some sketchy moves with regard to the kid and Henry that could have alternative explanations from the one we’ve been given.

Lacy’s wife, Martha, played by the criminally underused Frances Conroy, could know more than she’s let on, and could use more screentime. In fact, why is she blind? Did she give up her sight for some special power, the way Odin gave up his hearing? Did they know each other?

Martha was referred to twice in this episode as “the widow”, to discount her as someone who could matter, but we saw some strength and anger in her when she threw Henry out of her house. She had an unreasonable hatred of Henry. She’s the kind of character whose importance is revealed in the third act. It might turn out the she’s the head of the cult or coven. Otherwise, why hire Frances Conroy for that role?

Which takes me to a couple of little overdue side trips. Odin Branch is named for the Scandinavian god of wisdom, poetry, war, death, divination, and magic. He is the king of Asgard and known as the All-Father. He has as companions two ravens and two wolves, who stand ready to devour anyone who lies to Odin. He carries a spear that never misses and sits upon a throne that allows him to see everything within his realms. He sacrificed his right eye in order to receive the knowledge of the universe. He’s the father of Thor, the god of thunder and is the Scandinavian counterpart to Zeus and Jupiter.

So, Odin is named after an all powerful father god who gave up a sense organ for more power and has pet ravens. Henry has unknown parentage, and ravens appear frequently in Castle Rock just before something terrible happens. It could be that Odin is Henry’s father. Henry and Wendell could’ve inherited their ability from him. Odin could be sending the ravens to attack Kid or they could be sent as a warning, since Kid wasn’t on the bus, that we know of. People who master the schisma may be able to use it to act in this world from beyond the grave. In other woeds, the schisma could be the Force.

Other possibilities for Henry’s parents, besides Ruth and Matthew (one or the other could be a biological parent), are Martha or Dale Lacy, Alan Pangborn, or Molly’s parents. There is the off chance that Odin is also Kid’s father, either as a human or a god.

Odin captured Henry again in episode 7. In episode 8, when Henry and Molly leave his RV, he’s dead. Kid didn’t rescue Henry from the RV because he knew Molly was coming, but in another timeline, possibly Kid’s home timeline, Molly didn’t survive the rescue attempt. Maybe because Kid isn’t there. That could be his hook with her- he needs her help to jump back to his own timeline before his Molly dies.

In addition to Ruth, Odin may have been doing something to control the timelines. More images seem to be coming through now that he’s dead. Or maybe Ruth is frantically sifting through timelines, looking for the right one, and Molly is picking that up. I’ve wondered all along if sometimes Molly is picking up Ruth’s thoughts instead of Henry and doesn’t realize it.

Wendell can now hear the Voice of God and is walking through ‘Salem’s Lot, home of vampires, witches, revenants, and things that go bump in the night. He’s had all of his anger and resentment stirred up, which is probably what triggered his ability to hear the schisma. People tend to be overcome by evil in that town. Is he going to bring some of it back to Castle Rock?

Young Willie is still on the loose. He could have wanted to escape an abusive situation with Odin. (It’s hard to imagine that it wasn’t an abusive situation.) Or he could want revenge for Odin’s death.

David Selby’s character, Josef Desjardins, is still dangling in the wind, waiting to be involved in an incident or proven guilty of a crime.

The female proprietor of the Castle Rock Historical Bed & Breakfast is officially referred to as “Gordon’s Wife” by IMDB and closed captioning. However, Gordon very clearly calls her by the name Lilith during the episode, so that’s what I’ve done here. For once the show’s habit of leaving characters unnamed may have a purpose. Lilith is Adam’s first wife, created at the same time as him and in the same way, while Eve is created later, after Lilith leaves Adam. Lilith and Adam fight a lot because Lilith sees herself as equal to her husband. She becomes an immortal demon and flies away.

Lilith’s story was passed on through Jewish oral tradition, but banned from being included in written canon, other than fragments which appear in Genesis. Lilith was also associated with sex demons called succubae and Sumerian female vampires called Lillu. Yup, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, women who aren’t submissive are literally monsters. That horror story correlation is at the very roots of our culture. And, of course, they found they couldn’t control Eve either, and have used her story to raise women to feel guilty and self-loathing for millennia.

Lauren Bowles, who plays Lilith, played a powerful Wiccan witch on True Blood, a vampire show, for several seasons. And Castle Rock Lilith died from a small cut to her jugular vein, but was otherwise untouched. If she’s any sort of immortal, she’s not dead. She’s resting. And slowly healing. Maybe she’ll need to find someone to suck the blood or sexual energy out of. If she’s not immortal yet, one of those ‘Salem’s Lot vampires might take a shine to her. Or maybe she knew about Castle Rock because she’s from ‘Salem’s Lot.

That could be a storyline for another season, but the set up is there. Henry drove away from the house, leaving Jackie and a bunch of Castle Rock cops, who we’ve been trained to hate, at that isolated house with the corpses. It could be a story for next week.

I could see Jackie and Lilith the vampire or succubus running the B&B together next season. Jackie and I would be totally up for that, with some ground rules established, obvs. Jackie’s dream of being where the action is has come true. Will she let it affect her, or will her laid back, hipster vibe continue? She can be part of the attractions at the true crime murder theme park town now. I’m really happy for her, especially since it means Henry’s alive. And Gordon’s dead. I never liked that guy.

Jackie has been a superfluous character until this episode, and even this episode didn’t make her essential. I’ve been worried that she was a last minute addition because they got script notes that there weren’t enough female characters, so they shoehorned her in. She could be vital to the last two episodes, or the one writing/narrating this show, and will be the main character connecting the seasons together of this anthology series. Her uncle was a writer, after all. And he had a thing for axes. 😘

Now that I’ve said that, she’ll be dead by the end of the season.

 

This reviewer has some interesting theories about the nature of the schisma and the Kid. I should have realized that the birthday party murders were probably a memory. I think they’re a memory of the house, instead of the Kid’s childhood, though. He got his memories back when he played Matthew’s piano. That’s too big a clue to overlook. According to this reviewer’s theory, Lacy would have told Kid to ask for Henry because it would help him be recaptured and caged, maybe by Alan. We still don’t know what Lacy’s entire letter to Alan said.

 

Images courtesy of Hulu.