Helstrom Season 1 Episode 7: Scars Recap

In episode 7, Daimon and Ana deal with the realization that they sacrificed their mother to get rid of Spivey, but he wasn’t their father. As they fall into old patterns of blame and withdrawal, Ana returns to San Francisco with Chris, while Daimon sinks further into depression and isolation. Both Helstroms lash out at those closest to them. Gabriella, Chris and Louise try to talk them down. Taker is held hostage by the Blood, who blame him and the Helstroms for the attack on their hotel.

The Blood share Daimon’s talent for having terrible instincts.

Recap

Twenty years ago, Ana had just come back from her time on the run with her father. She sits in an observation room, fiddling with her butterfly bracelet, while Louise and Henry discuss her future as they watch her from behind a one-way mirror. Louise reports that a psychologist observed Ana exhibited “low affect, limited empathic response and sometimes a manner that’s just plain unnerving.”

Henry notes that what she’s been through would mess anyone up. Louise says that Daimon had night terrors for two months. She’s afraid that too much exposure to Ana would cause him to regress. And, Ana did something to one of the nurses that made her faint and feel like she was dying. Henry recognizes that Ana has a supernatural power. Louise sees it as evil.

Daimon must not have revealed his own evil powers to her yet.

Henry says that it’s fear of the unknown that’s the problem. Louise says she’s still willing to help. Henry tells her he was talking about The Blood, who have been hunting Daddy Helstrom for a long time. Henry and Louise are torn about what to do, because Ana and Daimon are both children, who have the potential to do great evil, like their father, or to become their own people and do good. Louise, who is still a nun, feels this isn’t “God’s work”.

Henry: “If we keep them apart, out of sight, maybe there’s hope.”

Louise: “Can you take her?”

Henry: “With the company I keep? I’m as much a danger to her as anyone.”

Louise: “She has to go somewhere.”

Henry: “Ana’s in the system. She’ll land someplace and I’ll check in on her from time to time. Can you handle the boy? [Louise shakes her head yes.] Good. Their lives depend on it.”

Although a normal human child wouldn’t have been able to eavesdrop, Ana has been listening to their conversation and isn’t happy with the outcome. The one-way glass panel suddenly cracks as if a rock hit it.

In a previous episode, Louise told Ana that she didn’t know what she thought she knew, by way of saying that Ana didn’t fully understand why she and Daimon had been raised separately. This scene confirms that, yes, Ana knew and fully understood exactly why they’d been raised separately and exactly whose decision it was. And that Louise owed Ana the apology she gave her in episode 6. It’s also clear that Louise still doesn’t understand Ana very well.

Twenty years ago, if Louise had said she wanted to raise both kids, it seemed like Henry would have supported her, despite The Blood’s issues, because it might have tilted the kids toward a more positive outcome. But he wasn’t going to push her. Putting Ana with someone who was waiting for her to fail would have been worse than putting her in the foster system, where she developed relationships with kindly Uncle Taker and her foster brother Chris. That psychologist judged Ana too quickly and harshly.

To an adult, Louise’s decision is understandable. But she did make the decision out of fear, without even giving Ana a chance to settle back into normalcy or giving Ana and Daimon a chance together. Their effect on each other might have been positive rather than negative. Instead, they both felt punished and literally demonized by being kept apart.

In the present day, the hospital is recovering from Spivey’s demon army attack. Ana and Daimon are going over and over what went wrong. Ana was sure the demon in Spivey was their Dad. It felt just like him. Daimon is fixated on the loss of Victoria. He thinks they mistook the demon in Spivey for their Dad because he was similar to Papa Helstrom.

They keep arguing right past this idea, but it’s actually something to consider. Why did he feel like their father to both of them? Ana seems inexperienced with demons, so Spivey may have been the only other powerful demon she’s met. But Daimon has been around a bit more. Since Spivey also felt like Dad to him, that probably means something more. Maybe that demon is related to their father or equally as old and rare as their father. Ana might reach this train of thought eventually and use it for something, but, as usual, Daimon derails it with his obsession with Victoria. Who needs enemies when you’ve got Daimon?

Ana reminds Daimon that their father is still out there somewhere and he’ll be back. He tells her to get legitimate proof that it’s their father before coming to him next time.

Daimon goes off on a weird rant about Ana needing Spivey to be their dad because of her obsession, as if that’s the only reason they fought him. Like they would have ignored Spivey’s killing sprees and the demon army if he wasn’t their dad? Whoever the demon in Spivey is, he was going to kidnap Victoria anyway, so Daimon’s whole argument is bizarre. It literally doesn’t matter whether he was their father or not. They were reacting to his actions, not searching out their father. The idea that he was their father just made it a more personal fight.

Just before this scene started, a bald patient was brought through the hallway and paused to look at them. The way he looked at the surveillance camera suggests he is a demon. I wonder if he did something to Daimon to trigger this nonsensical argument.

I think Ana is now protected by Chris the fledgling Keeper demon. Daimon has weaker inner psychic guards to begin with and doesn’t have Chris’ help, so he’d be the target. I also think Taker sensed this shift happening and was trying to shift his protection to Daimon, but got unavoidably sidetracked. Daimon could really use Taker as a mentor.

Anyway, Ana and Daimon wander off, still fruitlessly arguing. Maybe they’re both drawing energy from it, the way demons do.

Gabriella and Louise take a coffee break in the parking lot. Louise checks in on how Gabriella is handling Daimon’s moods. She’s gotten used to dealing with him and can see his good side. Right now, Gabby is worried about him because he exorcised the rest of the demon army and his knee is injured, so he’s exhausted.

I don’t remember his knee getting injured specifically- was that during one of the times he dramatically fell to his knees? Maybe Tom Austen was injured in real life and that’s why they keep mentioning it?

Louise goes inside to make sure the terrible twins don’t kill each other- maybe she’s psychic, too.

Gabby hears pounding from the car Father Cross drove to the hospital, which is parked nearby. Jump scare!! Mrs Spivey was locked inside the trunk.

Ana followed Daimon to Louise’s office so she could take her turn berating him for keeping their mom and her demon locked up in an asylum for 20 years. As it turns out, an asylum is the perfect place for a demon to feed on negative human energy and grow stronger. Who could have guessed?

First rule of Helstrom: Ana is always right and Daimon is always wrong. True again.

Everything Ana argues is true, though I don’t think Daimon can be blamed for keeping Victoria alive and hoping he’d eventually grow strong enough to exorcise her. He and Louise just should have kept her further away from other patients Kthara could feed off.

Meanwhile, he keeps yelling that Ana got Victoria killed. But he’s the one who’s all about the science. Where’s the body? He has no proof that his mother is dead. Why so pessimistic? They should check the surveillance footage for information on the truck, then follow those clues.

Do I have to do all the work around here?

Daimon finally has to admit, inside himself, obviously, that Ana’s right when she says they did what Victoria wanted. So he turns to yelling at Ana for calling her Victoria instead of Mom. 😖 Ana twists the knife and says Victoria isn’t their mom any more, which is also a pessimistic attitude. Daimon tells her she’s heartless. Louise walks in just in time to hear him say that, which only makes it worse. That means his blow lands on Ana twice.

Anna shakes her head at Daimon as he says she’s ice cold in front of Louise. She’s probably been reacting to that psychology report and Louise’s rejection for 20 years. He doesn’t know about Louise and Henry’s conversation and the report, but he instinctively knows which buttons to push to upset Ana.

She’s had to live with the knowledge that her parents saw her as a potential serial killer and Daimon’s new mother loves mild-mannered half demon Daimon, but saw Ana as too much like her father to take a chance on. Not only that, but Louise was worried that Ana would contaminate Daimon and ruin his chance at a decent life.

Ana has some very, very good reasons to be angry with the world and with Louise and Daimon in particular. Yet, overall, she’s more well-adjusted than Daimon. And she never told Daimon about what she heard. She’s never used her knowledge to hurt him or turn him against Louise. She suffered alone, in silence, and let him have his happy family. She probably thought he wouldn’t believe her if she told him, which is probably the truth. Louise taught him not to trust her. Maybe Victoria did, too.

Thank goodness Ana has Chris. While Daimon might have needed her, she was better off in th long run away from Louise and Daimon.

Louise tells them to stop fighting and blaming each other. Ana isn’t in the mood to be mothered by the woman who rejected her and tells Louise to stay out of their family’s business. Daimon, who just purposely created Ana’s mood toward Louise, now yells that Dr Hastings is his family and Ana has to respect her. HIS family. Ana isn’t part of that family, apparently.

Ana has had enough. She tells him she’s leaving. Now that he’s driven her away, Daimon yells at her for leaving him alone to find their mother. Ana goes straight to Chris’ room to tell him they’re leaving. He doesn’t need to be told twice. She keeps moving as he rushes after her. I’m assuming she lets him change out of his scrubs before they get on the plane.

Demon Father Crow brings some fresh illegal drugs to Kthara and Spivey in the abandoned ship they’re hiding out in down at the docks. Victoria/Kthara is going through some wicked drug withdrawal and thinks she’s dying. It probably doesn’t help her nausea and dizziness to be detoxing on a boat. Spivey’s demon, who is named Basar, turns out to be Kthara’s oldest son. She’s super angry about what Daimon and Ana did to him. As soon as she’s done with her withdrawal, there will be heck to pay.

That makes it even more interesting that he felt like Papa Helstrom to Daimon and Ana and is powerful/old enough to mark people. Kthara clearly lied when she told Ana that she sent Nurse Spivey to the crypt to kill the demon inside- well, maybe he was meant to kill Keeper demon. Her main goal was the release of her son, Basar.

Has Papa Helstrom ever been involved in this plot?

Anyway, Kthara tells Crow that he should have brought the drug dealer back for Basar. Crow thinks she means Basar could have eaten the drug dealer and says his days of consuming others are over. I thought she wanted him as a new host, but Father Crow says he doesn’t think Basar can reconstitute again.

Kthara throws Crow across the room and informs him that her sweet baby boy is still beautiful and full of life. She croons over Spivey’s mostly burned up remains, which are kept “alive” only by the powerful demon inside. Crow proves his stupidity by saying he doesn’t think Basar can mark anyone anymore, either. Kthara asks, in an even more dangerous tone of voice, why he would need to. We’ll have to wait a minute for the answer…

Gabriella has brought Spivey’s wife inside the hospital for some first aid. As Louise treats her lip, Mrs Spivey says that she felt something strange when Daimon touched the wound. Louise tells her it was a sort of healing. Mrs Spivey insists that the man who hurt her wasn’t her husband, even though he looked like her husband. Louise says she believes her.

Gabriella wonders why Spivey would mark his wife, but leave her in the trunk.

Well, for one thing, no one found her there, did they?? It’s a good hiding place.

Daimon says she was marked for possession. Basar was saving her for someone- probably to be Kthara’s new host. But the demons had to escape in such a rush they forgot her.

Daimon confirms that demon bites are marks to prepare for possession. It sounds like he unmarked Mrs Spivey using a mini exorcism. Did he unmark the priest that Magoth bit/marked after the car accident?

Louise joins the conversation. They realize that Kthara will need to find a new host now. Gabriella asks how many more coma hotels The Blood operates. Louise says Henry would have that information, but he’s still missing. He’s still not answering his phone.

Daimon still has one more possessed person from the demon army to exorcise. They can question him first. Louise and Gabriella fuss over Daimon, telling him he needs to rest and let his knee heal. Louise says she’ll try Henry again. Daimon tells her not to bother. “Caretaker can take care of himself.”

As always, Daimon is wrong.

Caretaker is manacled and hooded in the back of his own van, having been kidnapped by his good friends in The Blood. Demons attacked the hotel and set other demons free, so of course The Blood have turned their considerable resources toward… the guy who’s a lifer in their own organization. Esther’s 2nd in command, Lee, tells Taker that they suspect him of being a spy.

The Blood are just so incredibly medieval and bad at what they do that you have to laugh at them. Daimon is silly and pouty, but very, very powerful. Only Ana gets to laugh at him. The Blood’s only strengths are its numbers and age- you stick around long enough, you stumble into a couple of things that work, no matter how wrong your mythology is. I think they’re working from the same sources that the Spanish Inquisition used. I’m pretty sure they’re descended from the Monty Python version though. No one expects their stupidity.

Taker hasn’t even heard about what happened at the hotel yet. The Blood hooded him and locked him in his own van to take him to… his own house. I don’t think they get why you put a hood on someone. He’s their friend- if they acted normal, he wasn’t going to put up a fight on his drive home, FFS. Or they could have just waited for him to go home to take a shower or a nap.

He’s got a huge, nice stone house, by the way. Didn’t expect that, for a single, nomadic type.

Esther dramatically meets Taker and her people at the front door, establishing that she’s in control.

Daimon wakes up shirtless, at home in his bed, and looks out his window. A shadow moves behind him, which he follows to the living room. Mother’s wheelchair sits in the center of the room, empty. Every time he steps forward, it moves backward an equal distance. Victoria appears behind him, looking like a corpse, with worms crawling under her skin. In her own voice, she says, “You can’t hide who you are son. Let it out.” Then she becomes Kthara and repeats, “Let it out.”

He startles awake in the hospital, where he was napping on a gurney. Gabriella is standing next to him. She says she woke him because he sounded upset. He decides he’s ready to question the last possesed man.

Was that dream message coming from him or Kthara or his father?

The last demon is in the bald man from the beginning of the episode. He refuses to cooperate, but says the coma was like being drowned in mud. it was long term torture. He calls Daimon a traitor and says Daimon will end up alone and hunted, just like the other demons. He says that humans started the demon war. The demons only want what’s theirs, such as their freedom. Daimon promises to give him his freedom immediately. The demon says, “Only Mother can give us that.” Before Daimon can exorcise him, he goes full Regan and twists his head 360 degrees. Unlike Regan, it’s fatal for him.

How will Mother/Kthara give the demons their freedom? Why does he call her Mother?

Louise visits Archbishop Terrazi to ask him to get a message to The Blood for her. She’s growing increasingly worried about Henry and has no way to contact his organization directly. The Archbishop plays coy with her and won’t admit that he knows about The Blood. She has to push him into agreeing to send the message. At the same time, he warns her about her continued association with Daimon and tells her to tell Gabriella that the Church won’t protect her if she continues the work she’s doing.

Ana sits at work and stares into space, remembering the stone knife that her father tried to force her to use on a woman he had tied up. Chris finds her and tells her to go home and rest. She wants to get some work done instead. He only stopped by for his phone charger. He’s tired of skulls, demons and her family. He just spent two hours trying to get Derrick to believe that he was sent overseas at the last minute. His boyfriend is still suspicious, probably because he walked in on her disposing of Tate’s brother.

Okay, Ana is impatient, angry and rude with Chris in this scene, but she’s not the one who left a body lying in a pool of blood while she took a demon skull on a joyride to Portland. Derrick walked in on her and Daimon cleaning up Chris’ murdery mess that time. She had no way of knowing he and the skull would bond with each other the way they did. He’s doing some venting of his own here.

I suppose they both just need to get their feelings out, since both have been through a lot and they are each other’s person. They both were unavailable to each other for days and worried sick about each other. Now, they’re both demons, so they will have especially intense arguments.

This is what Daimon doesn’t have- someone to argue with who can handle the worst he can throw at them and throw it right back at him as an equal without making him feel like a terrible demon. Sometimes, the rage or whatever needs a way out and it’s not going to be civilized. The best you’re going to do is avoid blowing up your life while releasing it. But that can be done.

Ana says she doesn’t care about Derrick and asks if Chris is going to help her finish cleaning up or not. He calls a time out and says he knows what happened in Portland was super wrong, but if it’s going to continue to bother her, maybe she should work it out with Daimon. Chris isn’t interested in dealing with “Ana the Rage Monster” today, so she needs to go back in her cage or find another way to get what she needs.

Ana accepts what he says and asks if he’ll help her get what she needs. He tries to set up a work meeting to distract her, but Ana will only be satisfied with killing someone/draining them.

Killing people also isn’t the most practical option for dealing with stress.

Esther has Henry tied to a chair in his study. She tells him Louise is looking for him and gives him his phone messages. When he hears that Victoria escaped, he says that she needs to let him go do his job. She replies that his job was to control Ana and Daimon and he failed.

What was the failure? Ana and Daimon didn’t attack the hotel or the hospital. All they’ve done is defend themselves and others. Or is her worst fear that Ana and Daimon will get together and invoke the Mystical Helstrom Power of Two? Because right now, it seems like she should be thanking Daimon and Ana for dispensing with the demons who escaped from her custody, rather than harassing Taker.

He tells her that Daimon and Ana are on their side and should be judged on their own actions, not who their parents are. She says that he always picks the wrong side.

She changes the subject and says she’s surprised he kept his family home, bringing up his rebellious youth, when he tried to leave the family business. That led to Henry being away from home when the rest of the family was killed. Now he spends most of his time traveling the world looking for demon-related items.

Sounds like he did manage to at least get some distance, since he’s not with The Blood full time.

Esther tries to guilt Henry by wondering if his family would have survived if he’d been home when they were killed. Then she moves on immediately to asking which of the knives in a nearby display case is the one he found with Ana. He says it wasn’t any of those knives. He buried the knife she’s looking for.

Henry and Esther look each other in the eye in a brief battle of the wills. Esther tells Lee to tear open the front of Henry’s shirt so she can test each knife on the scar on his chest.

As best I can tell, the scar looks like a 3 dot over it- . Another demonic symbol? Was it made by Papa Helstrom with a demonic knife? Daimon has a chest scar with odd properties that was made by his father with a knife. He’s also a half demon. This seems like more confirmation of my theory that Henry has a demonic side.

Or perhaps an angelic side. The Catholic Church believes in angels and associates them with numbers. The number 3 is associated with the Trinity and is significant in many other ways. Mathematically, 3 with an overdot means a repeating 3= 333.

Esther: “We can’t keep putting those things in comas. We need something that kills. A weapon of their own kind. If one of these is his, that scar of yours will tell us.”

They cut through the scar with one of the knives. There’s no unusual reaction.

Chris has lined up a client meeting but Ana is unhappy when the client arrives. Chris tells her they need to lay off of the vigilante work for a while. He’s making a unilateral decision since he seems to be the rational one right now. She tells him that he’s supposed to help her so that she doesn’t get sloppy. He says she’s confusing her search for her dad, which went wrong, with their vigilantism.

Chris: “We don’t do this to fill some kind of void or because we didn’t get what we wanted… When we started this, when I found you with that old b-st–d dying at your feet, I knew I was going to cover for you. I knew how he was with the other foster kids… It was justice. It wasn’t about scratching an itch. That I want no part of.”

Ana uses her power to throw a crate of ceramics off the shelf between them. Chris stays strong and tells her she can be as angry as she wants. Derrick is coming by for lunch. She needs to pull herself together by then.

Daimon is out for a walk and sees wooden boxes in a shop window that remind him of Ana. He tries to write a text apology, but doesn’t send it.

Esther calls him and offers to work together to catch Kthara. Daimon is unforgiving toward Henry and The Blood. Esther reveals they caught up with Papa Helstrom during his last killing spree. Daimon points out that they were unable to stop him. Esther agrees that it’s harder to kill demons than to find them. She asks for his help killing the thing that was once his mother.

Since he’s seen that “thing” become his mother again quite recently, he has no incentive to help kill her body if he can find her alive. Esther can’t even begin to fathom that Daimon, who she sees as pure evil demon, might feel love or devotion, never mind that other demons are motivated by love of family.

Honestly, I’m not sure that Esther is capable of those emotions.

Instead of offering to help him exorcise Kthara, she goes in a different direction.

Esther: “I understand the lack of trust. But if Caretaker and the good Dr Hastings can play ball with us, why can’t you?”

Daimon: “I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

Esther: “The decision they made to split up you and your sister. We’ve respected it for years. When it came to you two, we always looked away. You know that, right?”

She thinks she’s just reminded him that The Blood did him and Ana a favor by allowing them to be separated instead of killed when they were kids. Instead, she’s blown his world apart. Louise has been his rock. He thought he could trust her to have his best interests at heart. It shatters him to discover that she put fear and the needs of The Church/Blood first.

An emotionally shattered, even more distracted Daimon is just what we need while Kthara is looking for a new host for her baby boy. Good work, Esther. Sometimes, it really is hard to figure out who’s on which side.

Nobody expects The Blood’s stupidity.

Derrick is still tense and hurt during lunch at the shop. When Chris left town so abruptly, Derrick thought he’d changed his mind about moving in together and was ghosting his boyfriend. 👻💀

He’s so close. The emojis even live right next to each other. Ghost. Skull. Demon.

Chris asks what he can do to make it up to Derrick. But Derrick is no pushover. Really good sushi isn’t enough. Chris is shocked. Ana has been buying him off with stuff like this for years.

Derrick wants Chris to improve his work-life balance. Chris agrees that he needs to make changes. Derrick asks what Ana’s hold over him is, wondering if she has a sex tape or a video of Chris murdering of someone. Well, actually… Chris explains that he and Ana have been close for a long time. “It’s hard to pull away.”

Derrick tells him to pull away.

Ana should take that well.

She comes around the corner at that moment and impatiently asks how long Chris is going to take for lunch. Chris reminds her that he told her about his lunch date. She assumes that’s confirmation he’ll be taking a long lunch.

Derrick makes a speech about how unacceptable the way she’s speaking to Chris is right now. She should find a better way to work off her stress, like hitting things. Ana says that’s a great idea and walks away.

I feel so stressed for Chris right now. ANA IS HIS FAMILY. I like Derrick and his well-adjusted, no nonsense take on life, but this feels like he wants to separate Chris from his family. Hands off, Derrick. But Ana isn’t exactly making it easy for him to have a normal relationship, either.

Lee continues slicing Taker’s scar with the knife collection. Taker tells him the story of each knife and why it’s the wrong one- in other words, why Lee is ignorant for not realizing already that this or that isn’t the right knife.

Taker is still my favorite.

Just as Esther returns, Taker mentions that war wipes out innocent lives. She asks if he thought Ana was innocent.

Taker: “We all are, until we make our own mistakes. She shouldn’t have to pay for the ones her father made.”

Esther says that Ana is her father’s big mistake. Taker replies that Ana isn’t the same as the demons they hunt. But Esther just can’t understand why he sees Ana differently.

It seems like she’s never even met Ana and Daimon. She just prejudges everything demon related as evil. That keeps life simple for her and her hatred.

There are only a few knives left. Esther shifts them a little and finds the stone knife that Ana has flashed back to a few times. The blade is broken. She quickly guesses that Taker only kept a broken knife because it’s important. When she stabs his scar with the blade, his skin hisses and steams.

Clearly meant to be evidence of a demon. But is it just that a demon made the scar or is there a demon in Caretaker? (Or an angel?)

Esther gloats and Taker begs her not to use it on Daimon and Ana. She says they both “took an oath to protect our kind from theirs.”

Taker: “There is good and there’s evil in every kind. Now do you want to bring out the best in them or the worst? I’ll help you do one, but not the other.”

Esther tells Lee to untie him.

She obviously wants to bring out the worst so that she can have the thrill of killing them and the murders will be justified. She’s figured out from reading Gabriella’s reports to the Vatican that it’s easier to provoke Daimon, so she’s going for him first. That will be enough to provoke Ana to come after them, justifying killing her as well.

The Blood let the Helstrom kids live in peace until a few weeks after Gabriella began to see and write reports about what Daimon and other demons could actually do. They were ready to go after Daimon and Ana even before the hotel attack. That’s probably why Taker showed the hotel to Gabriella. He wanted to shake up the status quo and give Daimon some leverage. But Basar and Kthara got in the middle of things. Esther’s using them as an excuse to move up her plans against the Helstroms rather than going after the real demons, who she knows are too powerful for The Blood.

Taker knows that Daimon and Ana are the best weapons they have against Papa Helstrom.

Daimon has already confronted Louise with his new knowledge. Now she’s trying to explain herself. She says she was waiting to tell him the truth until the right time, but he’s at least 30 and she’s had 20 years- the right time was never going to come.

One of the characteristics that Daimon and Louise have in common is their tendency to avoid difficult confrontations about personal matters if they can. Daimon will fuss and fight about obvious things, but he doesn’t want to face scary, uncertain emotions, ever, and neither does Louise, when they’re her own issues instead of a client’s. That’s specifically why she thought Ana would unsettle her household, which had just settled down.

And she was right- Ana has a gift for cutting right to the heart of things, often without even realising she’s doing it. Daimon needed Ana to drag him into dealing with his issues and away from living in the past. And Ana needed him as an anchor for her intensity and tendency to rush forward blindly. With both kids, her house would have been more emotionally messy, but Daimon and Ana probaby would be happier adults. Ana replaced Daimon with Chris, but Louise isn’t as comfortable with Daimon’s powers as Chris is with Ana’s and he’s flailing. Maybe Gabriella will be the one who can help balance him.

Louise is truthful with Daimon now. She admits that she could have taken Ana in, but she felt that Ana’s issues would be too much for her and she was worried about how Daimon would be affected by his sister. Daimon takes this to mean it’s his fault that Louise refused to raise Ana. That’s a twisted way of looking at it, since without him Louise would have never considered taking Ana in to begin with, but a martyr complex like Daimon’s does weird stuff to your thinking.

Daimon argues that Ana’s issues were the reason to take her in, not to reject her, since they showed that she needed compassion. I think that’s the nicest thing we’ve ever heard him say about his sister.

By that time, Louise had bonded with Daimon and only cared about saving him. Now Daimon knows that he was purposefully chosen to be left behind/saved by parents twice, while Ana got taken away and abused twice.

Louise apologizes again and says she’s already apologized to Ana.

Daimon: “Did it ever occur to you what it was like to lose her or what it would have meant to get her back? That maybe you robbed both of us of a better life? Why would you do that?”

Louise: “The truth? She scared me. Still does.”

Great acting from Tom Austen and June Carryl in this scene. Deep inside, Daimon has always known that he scares Louise, too, and her love depends on him not being as scary as Ana. During that last bit, they look each other in the eye and are teary. It’s a very honest moment. But he looks away at the last second, because he knows he’s at least as scary as Ana and Louise is in denial about it. He’s held himself back for at least 20 years so that he wouldn’t be seen as a budding serial killer, even by himself.

But now his family is in a fight for their lives and he needs to become scary. Power is scary, but it’s also how you survive when there’s no one else to protect you. Ana became a scary person when she was young because she had to protect herself. It’s finally Daimon’s turn. He’s been that victimized boy on the basement floor with the bloody red hands for 20 years. Now he has the chance to make things right in his own mind, if he can step up as a full adult, ready to face whatever comes and accept the consequences.

Chris finds Ana logged into the password protected police homicide database that he uses to develop candidates for their vigilante activities. She says she’s watched him do it so many times that of course she knows how to do it. He reminds her that he spends weeks setting up their kills in order to be sure they won’t be caught. They get sidetracked on a grammar question for a minute, then the doorbell rings.

Ana answers- it’s Derrick, who’s upset because he logged into the database at home and noticed that he’s already logged in at his boyfriend’s work. He’ll get in trouble for the unauthorized access and will have to give the department detailed answers about who accessed which case files and why. He noticed that Edward Tate’s file was one of those accessed, so now he’s extra suspicious and says he plans to find out what they’re really up to at the warehouse.

That night, Daimon drinks alone in his kitchen. Gabriella stops by to check in, since they missed each other at the hospital that afternoon. Daimon tells her he’s not in a chatty mood. She replies that she’s literally never seen him in a chatty mood. 😂 He concedes the point and lets her in.

Gabriella says that Louise seemed upset when she saw her and asks if he’s heard from Henry. Daimon turns into a demon who lies and says that Henry is fine and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with Louise. He pretends that he’s just upset about the host who was killed by the demon earlier in the day. Gabriella reminds him that he tried to save the host.

Gabriella: “Our intentions have to mean something.”

Daimon: “Doesn’t do the dead man much good, does it?”

Words to live by in these troubled times.

Gabriella decides to share her truth with Daimon.

When she was nine, she became very ill with “convulsions, high fever, hallucinations.” Her deeply religious parents thought she was possessed. It was the exorcist who recognized that she has epilepsy and helped her get the medical treatment she needed. Now she’s been seizure-free for years. Daimon is shocked that her parents could be so mistaken and assumes she must be angry at them. Gabriella says that she was angry with them, but now she understands that they acted out of “fear and faith and love.” She forgave her parents and thinks he should forgive himself. She takes his hand.

Daimon says that he accused Ana of being too harsh, but in reality, she made the hard choice for their mother that he couldn’t make. Gabby says that he’s too hard on himself. Ana walked away from him and their mother. Daimons thinks she was right to, because he was a jerk to her and says maybe Gabby should save herself, too. She tells him she isn’t going anywhere. They both look at her hand on his and she pulls it away.

Oops. Moment of sexual tension between the nun in training and the half drunk half demon.

Quickly changing the subject, Gabby decides they should make a plan to find Victoria. Daimon says it’s going to take more than the two of them to find his mother. He’s decided they need to work with some people they aren’t going to like.

That’s right. He’s taken Esther’s bait. Dammit, Daimon.

Meanwhile, Ana is following her own temptation to the dark side. She watches Derrick leave the police station, then follows him at a distance for several blocks until she can get him alone in an isolated alley. When he notices her behind him, she confesses to him that Chris didn’t know she was using the database. She says that learning Tate, one of their potential clients, was a criminal, scared her, so she used the database to help her feel safe. She promises not to do it again and they hug it out, at Ana’s request.

Ana’s drains him while they hug. He starts to feel dizzy. She flashes back to her father’s hand over her own on the stone knife. He’s trying to force her to stab a woman. She breaks free and stabs him in the leg instead, then runs. There’s a lit candle sitting in the room.

Does their father share Daimon’s fire energy? Can demons also feed from fire? Is the knife calling to Ana? Or are these memories coming from her father? At the very least, the current period of time is the greatest test of her strength and discipline since she was with her father, so it’s bringing up memories of the last time she was tested.

She pulls away from Derrick and checks to make sure he’s okay. He’s confused and woozy, but conscious, so he’ll be okay. As she rushes away, she remembers running from her father.

Back to the cosy family scene of Kthara cradling what’s left of Basar/Spivey while Demon Crow gives her an injection of heroin or fentanyl or whatever. As she comforts her son that none of this is his fault, he maneuvers so that he can dip one of his remaining fingers in his own blood, then draw a spiral on the wall. Kthara gets excited. She says, “From the mouths of babes, or the stump of one… There is another.”

The one significant spiral I remember in this show is the coiled snake on the disk made from Keeper demon remains that Taker used to subdue Father Crow. Since we go from Father Crow and the spiral to Chris, whose Keeper demon bite wounds have reopened, I’m guessing Kthara and Spivey mean there’s another Keeper demon and they can use that to their advantage somehow. They could also be saying that Spivey still has spares marked for possession. The coil/spiral could mean demon or possessed by a demon- my assumption is that Chris is now possessed by the Keeper demon.

Ana returns to the warehouse and goes straight to her trinket box. She stares at the box like one of them is possessed while she continues to have flashes of memory. After stabbing her father, she ran outside, but he caught her, and buried her alive, with nothing between her and the dirt. Henry found her and dug her back up, saving her. When he found her, he hugged her, humanizing her again.

Adult Ana holds the box as if the sensations of pain she gets from it are the only sensations strong enough to blot out her own pain. But then she smashes the box to the floor and crouches down next to it, crying. The butterfly bracelet falls to the floor, separate from the rest. This pain is terrible, but she’s dealing with it and can be reborn from it. Just as Henry helped her be reborn from the dirt, Chris finds her to guide her through this crisis.

Ana apologizes and says she almost did what her father always wanted her to. Chris tells her that “almost” means she didn’t do it. Ana cries harder. 

Chris: “Because you’re not him.”

Ana: “My family. They need me.”

Chris holds her: “You’re right. We do.”

Ana doesn’t necessarily reveal everything, but she’s honest enough. So is Chris. So is Taker. They accept and save each other, without fear. That allows Ana to have two trusting, loving relationships in her life. Even though it appears from the outside that Daimon had the better young life, his mother was possessed by a demon who belittled him, while Louise was afraid of him. Even though he was loved more consistently than Ana, he didn’t have the security of knowing that love was unconditional and it’s left him a resentful, neurotic mess.

That deep insecurity is tough to overcome.

Ana is able to make decent decisions because she has better mental and emotional clarity. Daimon doesn’t and he makes bad decisions because he doesn’t recognize what his instincts are telling him. And maybe part of him wants to punish himself. As we are about to see.

Daimon and Gabriella pull up to their meeting place with The Blood. He says that Caretaker will be there to broker the peace- he’s good at brokering things. 

He’s still blaming Taker for separating him and Ana, as well, then.

Let’s note that Taker has been missing for days and no one has talked to him yet, but Daimon took Esther’s word that he’d be at the meeting instead of demanding to talk to him. Daimon’s judgement was poisoned by his resentment.

Daimon takes a shot at convincing Gabby to stay alone in the dark car in the abandoned parking lot, because that would be safer in his mind than sticking with the guy who sets people on fire with his mind. She gives him a look and gets out of the car.

Gabby is nervous- this doesn’t feel right to her. It feels even less right when they get inside and find members of The Blood with Taker’s van, but he’s not there. Daimon assures her that they don’t attack innocent people.

He might want to read the fine print on who they consider innocent.

He says they won’t try to put him in a coma. But when he realizes how many of Esther’s goons there are and how menacing they look, he realizes that maybe they are stupid enough to take him on. They tell him that they need to frisk him for weapons or whatever before they take him to Esther and Taker in the van. Daimon reluctantly agrees.

Once they’ve made sure he doesn’t have any conventional weapons, Lee pulls out the stone knife. It’s the knife that his father used to create his scar, so it brings back some traumatic memories, just as it did for Ana. Unluckily for The Blood, Daimon doesn’t have the control that Ana does.

Since they’re trying to kill him, why should he?

Daimon is momentarily frozen and asks where they got the knife. They don’t answer. He tosses one goon against a wall. Another shoots him with a normal gun. Esther looks on as he roars with pain. 

Then his scar burns through his sweater (RIP, cosy sweater 😢) and two goons burst into flames. Esther and Lee jump back in the van and drive away. Daimon drops to his knees again and picks up the knife. He looks at Gabriella. She’s a little freaked out that things got so out of control so fast.

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Commentary

This episode used a notable combination of outdoor settings and brightly lit windows, along with distorted views that fit with the quote, “Through a glass darkly”. We saw people through a cracked, one way mirror; in reflections; through rain covered glass; backlit by bright sunlight or fluorescent light; and emerging in the dark from strange situations, like an early grave or a killer hug. But important truths were also revealed. It’s just that on Helstrom, every truth also leads to another layer of lies. 

This show loves to put Daimon on his knees in front of Gabriella. Not even going to go there. 🤐  Let’s just say that I don’t think that Louise was firm and straightforward enough in the way she handled him. Some people are only able to feel secure when they know that a significant other is willing to reign them in when they lose control. Guessing that the child of a serial killer might have been looking for that help.

Victoria and Ana were both strong presences who weren’t afraid of Daimon and he wasn’t afraid of hurting them. That’s what Daimon lost. While Louise is amazing, she wasn’t fearless enough to give him that and the strength and confidence that go with having those equal relationships to butt up against. Paradoxically, constantly being told that you are too much/too intense and need to tone yourself down weakens and diminishes you. 

Even as Daimon was in pain and lashing out, he only hurt the two people who directly touched himself and Gabriella. He didn’t even hurt Lee, who was the one holding the knife, or Esther, who created the situation, then cowardly stayed next to the van. He may not have perfect control, but I think it’s impressive that he didn’t take out every member of The Blood in that room. He could have used telekinesis to seriously injure them, even if he wasn’t strong enough to burn them all. Esther is guaranteed to interpret this as an attack, but realistically it’s a sign that Daimon only hurts people who directly threaten himself and the people he cares about, just like any normal person.

Based on when Esther gives Henry his messages and what the messages are, it sounds like he was out of contact for a day or two before The Blood kidnapped him. What was he doing during that period?

Ana wasn’t bothered by Keeper demon’s energy until they were all in/under the hospital because it wasn’t bound to her family, as Taker thought. It was bound to Basar and reacted to his mother, Kthara’s, presence once it got near her/Victoria. Which brings me back to wondering what her blood activated in the skull. Is it also bound to protect family line now and in what way?

Ana freed it and found it a new host host, which suggests that Keeper would owe her bloodline a debt of gratitude and protection. My guess is that the cyclops host was bound to Basar’s line as a prison guard, but Chris is now bound to Ana’s line as a protector- to keep them alive and out of trouble. The binding to Basar’s line was broken with the destruction of the skull. That was part of Kthara’s plan in sending Spivey to the crypt.

Was it part of Taker’s plan when he took Ana there? I have to wonder, again, if he’s a Caretaker/Protection demon and who he ultimately works for. Did he survive when Papa Helstrom killed his family because he has a demon in him or did Papa make him a demon? Maybe he’s been grooming Ana and Daimon to help him get revenge on Papa Helstrom. Or maybe he hated his family because they were as awful as Esther and wanted them dead. He’s playing some long game.

It seems likely that Daimon is a succubus/incubus like Ana, who needs to draw life force/ energy from people, or some external source, but either he never figured out how to do it effectively or Louise made him stop. So he’s always draining people by aggravating them and he’s always aggravated because he doesn’t feel right and he doesn’t know why or how to make himself feel better. Or maybe he does but he refuses to give in. Maybe he’s able to absorb the energy that’s burns out of people when they’re on fire and that just completely freaks him out, so he blocks himself. Maybe he could draw energy from starting fires, but that also freaks him out.

Maybe he’s a more traditional half demon, known as a cambion or changeling. These can manifest as anything from powerful wizards such as Merlin to babies with severe birth defects who die young. Cambions are known for always being hungry. 

If nothing else, Daimon secretly revels in being a cranky evil demon lite, which he seems to think he hides from people. Ana is sharp-tongued, but she also usually cooperates and shows compassion. Daimon really only shows compassion toward his two mothers and now he’s softened toward Gabriella. He has a sense of duty toward exorcising the possessed.

With everyone else, he plays impatient, pouty, put upon victim, which sets up a negative cycle for him to feed on. He didn’t seem as drained after the end of the episode when he finally went all out using his fire power. Maybe burning through the scar on his chest suggests that he got a strong enough energy flow going to pull from a secondary energy source, which will revive him.

What was interesting about the dream he had in the hospital was that both mothers, Victoria and Kthara, told Daimon to go ahead and let out his full self. That has to mean that he should learn to use his full range of powers, rather than holding back, which he’s done at least since he went to live with Louise. I think he needs to do that to be a whole, happy person and Victoria knows that from what she’s learned from watching demons for all these years.

Ana may not have come into her full power quite yet, but she uses her powers enough that she should get there eventually. The issue for both Ana and Daimon is that they could be like their father. Daimon is worried he’ll burn down the world with the selfish, indiscriminate use of his powers and he has no idea how to find balance. Ana is worried she’ll become a wanton serial killer. They desperately need to find ways to practice and explore their powers without hurting anyone. Now that Taker’s truce with The Blood is over, they need to be able to protect themselves and the rest of the family.

In Daimon’s dream, we could see that his scar looks roughly like like the pentacle he has on his chest in the comics, but Daddy must have been jostled, then interrupted before he could finish. The tattoo appears to be a tree a life, like the one on the Helstrom front door, but much more intricate. Daimon is attempting to change the occult sign his father gave him into a positive symbol associated with ancient religions all over the world. Drawing energy from the earth and sky, as trees do, would also be much more convenient than draining humans, as Ana does, if he could figure out how to do it. Actually, we have seen Ana draw the life force out of plants. Now if they could both transfer that to even broader energy systems.

With all of the knives and fire in this episode, plus two characters with prominent scars roughly over their hearts, I need to remind y’all of St Teresa of Avila again, the mystical Catholic nun Louise’s hospital is named for. St Teresa fought long and hard to bring spirituality back to the 16th century secularized church and had many personal encounters with angels and Jesus, in the form of ecstatic visions. In her most famous vision, an angel pierced her heart with a flaming sword, filling her with love for God so intense that she felt she was on fire.

I know Daimon’s scar is straight from the comics. But comics Daimon was also on the side of good, for the most part, so having his power convert to angelic power on his own merit would be a cool way for the TV show to go. The archangels frequently serve as warriors, so he wouldn’t have to become pure or anything. Taker could easily be a guardian angel or archangel. Caretaker practically means guardian. I would love it if they used the mythology that demons are fallen angels- the same form of energy, from a higher realm, but one is oriented toward the positive/creation and one toward the negative/destruction. And humans just haven’t figured that out yet.

Images courtesy of Hulu.