Recap:
Henry reveals he was undercover with the vampires and helps Aidan fight them off. He tries to convince Aidan to leave Suren behind, because the vampires will keep coming after him until she’s back. Aidan refuses, and stabs Henry with the stake—without killing him—to send him back of Boston without suspicion. Suren isn’t doing so well without blood and considers leaving, but Aidan promises that they will eventually make it to an isolated place out of Mother’s reach. Aidan goes to the Dutch and confronts Hadley, referencing his cowardice in “The Ties That Bind” and what Aidan did for him, and using it as leverage to get the Dutch to help him. However, Hadley agrees only if Aidan will bring the Dutch food. Meanwhile, after remembering everything Aidan has done for her, Suren decides she can no longer keep hurting him and goes back to Mother.
Sally tries to make amends with Zoe, who has stopped helping ghosts and protecting the nursery, because being a medium and helping ghosts has kept her alone her whole life. Sally tries to get through to Zoe, who’s ignoring her, asking her not to turn her back on her gift because of Sally’s actions. An eclipse suddenly occurs, and Walter, a ghost Sally shredded, reappears. Zoe explains that the state of the sun and moon during an eclipse merges different plains of existence, causing shredded ghosts to reappear. Nick reappears where Sally shredded him…at her house, with Danny. Sally teleports to Nick, and he reveals that when she shreds ghosts, their minds are trapped in “limbo,” where they are stuck in eternal nothingness and in constant pain. Zoe is able to get to the house before the eclipse is over, and Nick lies and tells her that he’s at peace and in a better place. Sally talks to Danny, who tells her he deserves where he sent her—a place filled with ghosts who were shredded or just went through the wrong door. The eclipse ends, and they disappear again, back to limbo. Zoe says she’s happy that Nick is okay, and thanks Sally.
Julia’s friend Chelsea is in town—but Chelsea hates Josh because of what he did, and is a huge enough gossip that she’d likely get the word about Josh and Julia’s relationship back to their parents. They discuss whether or not the word should get out yet, and while they don’t come to a decision, Julia expresses how much she’d like Josh to come. Josh tracks down Ray, and discovers he has his wife and child back. Ray spots him and Josh tells him he was right about denying the wolf, and that he thought it was worth reaching out to another wolf now that he has a human girlfriend. Ray actually accepts him with open arms, and reveals his life has improved after going back to his family and telling them the truth. Josh asks Sally for advice about telling Julia the truth—he’s serious about her, and once this to work for real. Josh meets with Julia and Chelsea, who makes sure to get in some pointed jabs. Chelsea lets Josh know how much he hurt her the first time, but can tell that Josh really wants her back, and warns him to make sure whatever secrets were between them get fixed; there are very few people left back home willing to give him another chance. However, after Chelsea leaves, the eclipse affects Josh by causing him to transform, and he runs. Julia chases after him and witnesses him transforming, but as she backs up in shock, she gets hit by a car. After the eclipse, Josh returns to normal and finds Julia alive. He tells her the truth about his lycanthropy and says he will continue to protect her. However, she tells him it is too late—and he sees her body. Julia was killed in the accident and is now a ghost, and having gotten closure on why Josh left, her door appears and she goes to the afterlife, leaving Josh alone once more.
Review:
Well, that’s one way to end a love triangle. It’s not really a surprise that Julia died—in fact, most probably expected it when she and Josh started getting serious. But just because a general plot point is expected doesn’t mean the execution can’t be brilliant and shocking. We got a nice twist in expecting Josh as the wolf might kill her, only for that tried-and-true “death by suddenly appearing car” trope to come into play. It was definitely a “gasp” moment—I sure made some noise—but considering how frequently any form of a “sudden car crash” is used in movies and TV, it would have been underwhelming if that’s how it ended. What really sold it was the ghost fake-out—because, all joking aside, that was wonderfully executed. I imagine some might have picked up on it beforehand; I thought it was odd that Julia had no bandages on her wounds and merely sat on the sidewalk instead of being in an ambulance, but I didn’t think enough to figure out she was a ghost. Part of that simply had to do with so much going on, though; she and Josh having their big talk was huge, and has essentially been what his entire story from episode one has been leading up to. So, predicted or not, the reveal that it’s too late and he’s already lost her was incredibly saddening, and would have taken some quick-thinkers to figure out.
Natalie Brown did very well in what’s likely to be her last episode as Julia. In fact, she and Josh had more chemistry than they’d had all season, and like I said last week, she’s plenty likeable. Julia was a very smart lady, shown this week through her talk with Josh at the beginning and her reactions at the end. So even though we may not have had a huge emotional attachment to Julia as a character, it’s still sad to see her go because she was a decent person. But it’s even more sad to see her go for Josh, considering the entire episode was spent basically establishing how he truly loves her.
Not unlike the “Sally is the Reaper” reveal in “When I Think About You I Shred Myself”, this episode is likely to be overshadowed by Julia’s death and ghost reveal—which says quite a lot about how well that was executed, but unfortunately means the other good stuff might get overlooked. Because there was definitely some other good stuff here.
I’ll admit, I’ve never been a fan of eclipses being thrown in as mystical plot devices at random (I’m looking at you, Heroes season 3.) But despite the shrugged off “it messes with the duality of our plains!” explanation, the results were certainly effective enough—not just with Josh, but Sally’s story too. Closing off Nick and Zoe’s tragic story was well-done, and the moment between them was very sweet, despite the darkness looming over the truth. As much as it sucks, at least Zoe gets some happiness now. However, since she works as something of a ghost therapist, is she going to spread around this knowledge that “if you get shredded you go to Heaven”? I’m sure revealing that won’t be her first solution for everything, but it’s definitely a harmful possibility that we probably won’t ever explore. And let’s face it, there are no truly happy endings on this show.
Sally is certainly getting put through the wringer, hearing the horrifying, eternal pain she’s putting these ghosts through. Redemption for her is only getting harder, and even though she’s responsible for some terrible things, it’s hard to not still feel for her considering the reason she’s in this situation (her murder and missing her door) weren’t her fault. However, if there’s one complaint, it’s that while Meaghan Rath is certainly competent with portraying the piercing guilt in the big, important scenes, there are other points when she seems too bubbly and aloof. For example, I get that Sally was trying to get Zoe’s attention with quoting those speeches, but wow, being verbally tortured by the girl who killed your boyfriend is all kinds of messed up, especially when said girl is being very playful about it. Granted, we couldn’t have Sally being super mopey all the time—and really, that wouldn’t fit her character—but in that scene, she came off as being too uncaring, like she was trying to get Zoe to forgive her because Sally wanted to feel better, not because she cared about helping Zoe. At other parts of the episode, though, like when Sally’s conversation with Nick, it felt like she genuinely cared. It didn’t hurt the episode too much, but it did feel inconsistent.
The vampire storyline, as usual, is the weakest of the three. Luckily, a very minimal amount of time was spent on it, and what we did get was solid, but not particularly entertaining. I definitely appreciated Suren’s decision to return—as I’d said before, while I like Dichen Lachman’s performance, Suren herself has never felt like a fully fleshed-out character. So it’s beneficial to at least make her likeable, and this really wiped away any doubt over whether or not Suren did love Aidan back. Her return is clearly going to throw a wrench into Aidan’s mysterious plan with the Dutch, though. As a bit of speculation—and considering the tragic nature of the show—I’m suspecting we might see a big fight erupt between the Dutch and Mother’s regime in Boston, with Suren a casualty caught in the middle.
One downside to this episode’s timing in the season is that, in terms of setting up the finale, there wasn’t much momentum as it ended. However, with next week ending a very dense season, this episode did feel like it was closing off a bunch of dangling threads so there’d be more room to breathe in the finale. So, that’s certainly not a bad thing, because it means next week will be less cluttered. But, it might have been beneficial to pack in some teases of what we can expect—which I guess was what was intended with Aidan and the Dutch, but that story is just too uninteresting compared to everything else.
Standing alone, though, the emotion and tragedy are what brings this episode above and beyond. If it was a choice between a cliffhanger for next week and the emotional heartwrench we got, this was the way to go.
Some stray tidbits
- One thing this show doesn’t do particularly well is quick flashbacks to remind us what happened in earlier episodes. Strong scenes often feel awkward, like when Sally flashed back to killing Nick—why was that necessary? All it did was break an otherwise good scene.
- Hopefully something big will happen for Henry in the finale. Kyle Schmid is just fine, and the Henry plotline had promise at the start, but he’s kind of petered off into feeling superfluous in the past few weeks.
- Suren’s declaration about not being a damsel waiting for Aidan (and subsequent proactiveness) was awesome. This is 2012, after all!
- The song in the opening, “Into the Wild” by LP, was a unique choice for the music, and its contrast with what was on screen was effective.
- While it was cool to see Danny one more time, making him repentant for his actions and trying to be sympathetic was a bad move—the strength of his character is how disgustingly sociopathic he is. I could see what they were trying to do, using him to make limbo seem even worse, but having Sally feel bad for him just wasn’t right.
- “It’s so bad, it’s like you knew where you were sending me.” – Okay, I’ll bite, that great line did come out of the Danny stuff.
- “I loved you enough, Josh. You just never believed it.” – Knife, meet heart.
- “Oprah me.”
- “If you were a woman…of the blood and guts variety…”
