Everyone makes it outside in anticipation of Henry’s arrival and as Olivia gets scolded by Catherine for taking too long in getting Francis to bed, Mary compliments Kenna’s dress and reminds her friend that although she may be infatuated with Henry right now, she should be wary of his mercurial heart and the presence of the ever dangerous Queen Catherine. Kenna takes offense at Mary presuming her to be a fool and the Queen of Scotland sets her sights on Bash, whose only regrets from the kiss come from the fact that Mary is engaged to his brother. She then mentions the necklace and shows it to him; Bash instantly recognizes it, but he can’t delve into its origins with Mary, as Henry steps out of the carriage – with Diane in tow.
After the pomp and circumstance dies down, Bash takes Mary and Francis aside to explain the blood debt that he owes the pagans and how he must either choose someone to die or have the woods dwellers choose someone, with their target looking to be Mary. Francis thinks that the pagans are just trying to get at Bash through Mary and while she pledges to do some digging around the castle to see if anyone saw a strange figure go into her room, Francis tells Bash that he doesn’t blame him for cutting the bodies down. The reason that he’s so upset is that there are too many secrets clinging to the castle walls these days. Also upset is Kenna, furious that Henry brought Diane back instead of breaking up with her in Paris like he promised. When she refuses to fall for his physical advances, he confesses that Diane will be staying at the cottage that resides on the grounds, though since that needs renovations, she’ll be within castle walls for a while. He also reassures Kenna that things between him and Diane are over and that she’s his official mistress before the two make love on the floor of his chambers.
Bash visits Diane, a former pagan herself, obviously worried about the debt that he’s been forced to repay. She laments that the faith that she once held on so tightly to has become unrecognizable and warns Bash that if anyone at the castle knew of their connection to the pagans through her past, they would be burned at the stake and called heretics. As Mary is already marked and Francis will blame Bash if anything happens to her, Diane suggests that her son choose someone, settle up his debts, and learn to harden his heart toward Mary, since he’s only being allowed to stay there due to her being in Henry’s good graces. Across the castle, Mary is woken by a bleeding stag’s head that someone strung up to her bed, the face of the dead animal looking her right in the eye. The way that those responsible were able to do their deed without being noticed by her? Poppy, which they put in the drinks of Mary and her guard. She also finds that she has the symbol from the necklace burned onto her hand, making Francis think that it might be dipped in some type of poison.
While Francis guilts Bash over bringing the pagans to the castle doorstep and attempts to motivate his brother to make a decision about the sacrifice, Kenna brings the other ladies to Henry’s chambers and confesses that she’s now the official mistresses of the King of France. All three have decidedly mixed reactions to the news, with Greer happy that Kenna is happy, Aylee extremely curious about how everything happened, and Lola skeptical due to how Henry is still so entwined with Diane. In fact, the tiles in the bedroom have Henry and Diane’s initials on them and since their love affair has lasted decades, the ladies conclude that Kenna being named mistress won’t simply make Diane go away. In the throne room, Mary and Catherine call in the castle servants where the former offers them a chance to offer any knowledge they may have about who was responsible for the stag’s head. Though Mary initially mentions that this would be a moment free of judgment and that everyone in the castle would suffer more if no one came forward, no one comes forward and Catherine decides to amp up the threat level, telling the servants that she’ll burn down their houses if they don’t provide information by midnight.
Kenna takes her concerns to the king, who has grown more irritated with her worries with each new fret presented. She tries to guilt him about renovating a 15-room cottage for Diane and being unwilling to bust up a few tiles for her, especially since she risked everything to be with him, but for now, he’s refusing to honor her request of replacing the tile. However, later that night, he writes her name in candles on the lawn of the castle during the big fireworks display, causing her to forget her worries and run into his arms out of love. Bash heads to the dungeon and retrieves a thief that he takes with him to the woods, just as Mary finds herself worried sick about his whereabouts, a worry that only increases when she learns from Francis 
One of the servants comes to Catherine’s chambers and tells of seeing one of the royal guards carrying the stag’s head, a guard who came into the kitchen for scraps. Though she didn’t get to see a face, she noticed that he was covered in blood, meaning that he would have had to change and thus wouldn’t be as kempt as the other guards. Catherine rushes outside for her guard Robert, who she chastised earlier in the day for his lackadaisical uniform, only to find that he’s fled the castle. Out in the woods, Bash gets the thief to tie the rope around his feet and allow himself to be strung up, despite pleading for his life and mentioning the young child that he must take care of. However, the thief isn’t Bash’s target; it’s one of the pagans who approaches him. The two have a brief duel that Bash wins, but before he sticks the sword in the man’s stomach, he learns that the pagans know who he is and that their bloodlust is now in him.
Kenna might be getting the broken tiles that she so longed for, but Henry still ends up in Diane’s chambers that night, frustrated that his new mistress is taking too long in fixing things without bothering him. Elsewhere, Mary attempts to relax in her chambers and asks for a story from Sarah, the maid that she inquired about the stag’s head to earlier. It turns out that Sarah is also a pagan and draws a dagger on Mary, only for the guards to come and drag her away. Bash and the thief ride their horses back to the castle and the thief is especially thankful that Bash hadn’t planned on killing him. He goes on to say that everyone chooses their own path or else the king will, citing the fact that he lives in a town primarily Protestant but that he practices Catholicism due to Henry being Catholic. Bash gets the thief to admit to knowing who he and his mother are before pushing him off the cliff beside them and taking the reins of his horse.
With Robert and Sarah in jail and scheduled to be burned, Bash returns from the woods and Francis tells his brother that if he would have died out there, that he would have deserved it, that he would have brought it on himself. He then informs Mary and Bash that the three of them are rulers and they need to start acting with the clear heads that they’ve been lacking lately due to the situation between the three of them. As such, anger can no longer divide them and while his engagement to Mary will remain, it’s only in name; if their respective countries need something from the other, the agreement will be honored, but otherwise, they’re to spend time apart. He gives her permission to spend time with others, only not Bash, and claims that he’s doing all this to take control of the spiraling situation between them. Once the conversation is over, Francis goes to Olivia and hooks up with her, while Mary and her ladies watch Robert and Sarah be burned at pyres that night. Mary argued for a quick death for Sarah and hears an arrow being shot into the girl not long after the fire gets started.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Contrary to public opinion, I do not relish in destroying other people’s homes.”
-So, the stag’s head reveal: a little too tween Godfather? I thought it was nifty if only because it’s one of the images from the opening sequence. The implications of it, that the pagans were close enough and crafty enough to make it into the future queen’s chambers undetected, were sufficiently creepy, as well.
-I like that they’re writing neither brother as being an ideal option for Mary, sort of a commentary on the fact that she doesn’t have a choice on who to be with and that women during that time period were often faced with making the best of a bad situation. On one hand, Francis is a passive aggressive hypocrite who feigns self-righteousness only to fall into the arms of his ex-girlfriend; on the other, Bash killed a guy for what appeared to be no reason and might have blood inside him that makes him susceptible to bloodlust. Not exactly a clear-cut option in this situation, something that gives each of Mary’s decisions moral complexity (how much is she willing to put up with? how much has she assimilated into life at court?) and a sadness of inflexibility that has been interesting to watch.
-Speaking of, let’s talk about Bash killing some guy. I’m assuming he did it for a few reasons: the thief knew who he and Diane were and could have told people what happened, including that she had pagan blood; he was jealous/frustrated that the thief had more choice in his life, seeing as how he had converted to Catholicism, than someone with infinite more power than he has, especially after the pagan mentioned the thing about the bloodlust; and he didn’t want to have a reminder of his time in the woods lurking around the castle. Some combination of those three, plus whatever gets revealed about his time in the woods/mindset in the next few episodes. But the push was ludicrous beyond belief and an awesomely cold-blooded way to muddy up the character – in a good way.
-Sexy Nostradamus Watch: He…didn’t appear in the episode. He gets mentioned by Francis, though, because Sexy Nostradamus is the life blood that beats through Reign’s circulatory system. Or something.
-Since Greer is so concerned with status, I figured that she would have been happier that Kenna had set her hooks into the king, but I do like how they snapped her out of her infatuation-fueled stupor and made her question what her status around the castle really is. Also, how long is it going to take for Kenna to get over the grand gesture from Henry and realize that he hasn’t let Diane go just yet? She risked everything in order to be with him and if she is to have a man after Henry, she must navigate their relationship accordingly; even if she doesn’t want him sleeping with Diane, it’s not as if she can confront him about it, not when he holds as much power as he does. She already knows that she was pushing it with the tiles, so for now, she might have to lay low and look the other way until she has more leverage.
-I’m so happy they brought back Diane, you guys. I find her to be the most intriguing character on the show and appreciated that they started to fill in her backstory this episode, her pagan past a good way to connect the castle and the woods without having Bash interrupt more blood rituals or everyone working at the castle turning out to be pagan. That past also adds to Bash’s feeling of being The Other in his own family, as he’s not only Henry’s bastard but linked with a faith that is seen as dangerous and savage. It’s that feeling that I think will be the main guiding force behind Bash’s actions this season, that battle between wanting to assimilate (e.g. his Catholicism) and not wanting to become like his brother or his father.
-I appreciate how Catherine can tell a group of people she’s going to burn down their houses and sound like she’s ordering coffee. I have a feeling that public opinion about her might be correct.
-Favorite Dress Watch: The dress that Olivia wore before Henry came home was gorgeous. As were Kenna’s dress that she wore to greet Henry and the dress that Mary wore during the final conversation with Francis.
-Although I don’t want this show to turn into Name That Pagan!, with every week another member of the castle staff being revealed as belonging to the mysterious group, I did think this week was effective, mostly because of how young/unassuming the actress they cast looked and how close she was able to get to Mary. The show can only continue to grow if they reinforce (and specify) what type of threat that the pagans are and what exactly is going on in the woods.
–Reign is off next week, but on December 5th, the castle falls under siege and Mary and Francis are taken hostages, while Diane reveals to Bash that she plans to have him declared legitimate.
