It turns out that Joanna took Wendy and Freya back to 1848 Baltimore in search of a rare weapon that can be used to defeat the king. The weapon was also used when Joanna had to kill Freya once upon a time, a revelation that understandably leaves Freya stunned. Back in East End, Ingrid sips tea with her grandfather and confides in him just how lost she feels in this realm, just as Agent Moreau reveals her true identity to Dash when she shows up to the hospital. However, rather than looking to bust him for Kyle’s murder, she’s more interested in his opinion on the recent murders, of which he has photos; Dash claims to not have seen anything like it before, only for one of Moreau’s underlings to bring up the floater, which hasn’t been connected to him as of yet.
Joanna, Freya, and Wendy make it to the Cat & Shadow, a brothel/opium den that they owned and operated, with Freya being one of the working girls. Once upstairs, Freya gets a chance to marvel at the clothes she once wore, but she soon finds herself forced to hide when past versions of Joanna and Wendy come up to the changing station. The topic of conversation? Joanna’s increasing dependence on opium now that Victor isn’t around anymore. The Beauchamps manage to escape into the stables, where they’ll be confined until midnight when Joanna must retrieve the weapon she hopes to vanquish her father with. The reason for the delay is that the only way to get the weapon is to wait for past Joanna to use it on past Freya and as Dash removes the teeth from Kyle’s body one-by-one and Killian learns of a spell that could break the cycle of heartbreak between him and Freya, Joanna decides to tell her daughter about the incident they’re waiting to have happen.
In addition to being a working girl, Freya tended bar at the Cat & Shadow and one day, she met a man who tells her about the special demon surrounding him that seems to thrive on his misery. Freya imparts some wisdom on him and the two flirt enough to where he wants to come back later that night to see her. Once they see each other again, she reads his tarot and unnerves him the closer she gets to the truth; aside from some biographical facts that she could have picked up through other channels, she manages to nail the career goals that he hadn’t shared with anybody and convinces him that wealth and love are on the horizon for him. The two end up going upstairs to fool around where she gets him to give up his real name, something that very few people knew: Edgar Poe. Freya is, of course, beside herself when she learns that she was having an affair with the man who nearly caused her to fail sophomore English, but Joanna and Wendy assure her that the relationship she and Edgar shared was very real and based in feelings, with the poem “Annabel Lee” about their connection.
But things soon went down from there, as Freya told Edgar about being a witch and broke the code in which she was supposed to live by. He used that information and every other supernatural tidbit Freya could muster to drive his creative engine (e.g. “The Black Cat” being about Wendy) and eventually, he ran out of things to write about. Edgar then become broke and turned to the bottle, causing Freya to suggest a table turning – a parlor game where 
one is supposed to be able to talk to the spirits. Reluctantly, Edgar agrees, only for things to go sideways rather quickly. Freya’s powers prove to be too good and when she calls out to the spirits, she’s possessed by a puff of blue smoke that calls itself Ambrose Bancroft, a violent spirit who threatens to punish Edgar and kill someone named Rose. Edgar manages to drive Ambrose away, only for the purported murderer to linger in Freya’s psyche and have an adverse impact on her life and the lives of those she loves.
Back in East End, the king tells Frederick that in order to prepare for Joanna’s return, he wants to perform a spell that requires a beating human heart. To acquire said heart, he uses his vessel to his advantage and turns his face back into Tommy’s. “Tommy” then goes to the Bent Elbow and picks up a girl that he gets alone and incapacitates long enough to rip her still-beating heart out. As Dash gets another visit from Agent Moreau, this time on personal business rather than the still-open case, Killian is given the poison that will scrape the curse from his soul; he doesn’t even care about the warnings from Eva’s relative about there not being any turning back once he takes the potion, not when he can’t imagine living a life without Freya. Meanwhile, Freya learns that her past self strangled three people while being possessed by Ambrose and that Wendy was the one to step up in hopes of curing her niece once and for all. Yet Freya proved to be much too powerful for even someone like Wendy and quickly snapped her neck while the two tangled in a dark alley. After discovering Wendy’s body, Ingrid managed to wake Joanna from her opium-fueled slumber long enough to get a plan together on how to stop her sister from Killian, with a wooden box being presented to them in the parlor. The box is said to rip the intruder from the host body and throw its soul back into hell; unfortunately, the host will die, as well, meaning that if they use this box on Freya, Ingrid will die, as well.
However, Ingrid doesn’t mind the thought of dying. She knows she’s going to be reborn and she doesn’t want Freya to hurt anymore people, so she agrees to the procedure only if Joanna will stop the opium use, seeing as how she’s going to need her mother here soon. While Dash discovers Moreau snooping around his house, only to turn it into a kinky sex game, and Killian takes the poison given to him by the witch doctor, Ingrid convinces her grandfather that she wants to go to Asgard with him. Before they can go, though, the king tells Frederick that he’s going to send Tarkoff after Joanna in order to keep her from procuring the weapon she needs to take him out. Ingrid then stops over at Dash’s to confess that she’s lying to her grandfather and that she needs his help if they’re going to dispatch him. Past Joanna and Ingrid lure Freya to Bancroft’s grave with a siren song and Joanna ends up being the one to open the box, thereby separating Bancroft’s soul from Freya’s body. Bancroft takes the wooden box straight to hell, while Freya drops dead immediately, only for present Joanna to interrupt their grieving in order to get the box.
Or what looked like present Joanna, as it turns out that Tarkoff disguised himself long enough to get the weapon, presumably to return it to East End and the king’s possession.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“No, why would I be upset? Because we just time-traveled and I found out you murdered me?”
-“I can literally hear the quotes around everything you say.”
-“Wait, I was sleeping with Edgar Allan Poe?”
-Since the Beauchamps were fairly prominent in Baltimore once upon a time, I’m going to need somebody to do up a Witches of The Wire mash-up/parody. It will give me sustenance to make it through the hiatus between seasons two and three of this show, because there will be a third season. I’m speaking truth to power and things into existence.
-Were you fooled by Ingrid’s deception of her grandfather? Because I have to admit, I kind of was. The revelation of her lulling him into a false state of security wasn’t a huge shocker or anything, but I was kind of impressed at it because it went along with some of what we’ve learned about Ingrid this season, e.g. she’s uncomfortable being the family anchor. And it was a nice reminder that Ingrid’s practicality and intelligence win out over everything else, especially when the safety of her family is in jeopardy.
-Though this show won’t kill Killian, I have to wonder what will be the impact of him ingesting the poison. Will someone have to give up their life in order to save him? Could this be what happens with Wendy’s last life? The show had her bring up sacrificing herself for Ingrid and Freya, but where she can only save one person with her last life, this seems like a possibility.
-Okay, Dash learns that the lady he’s banging is an FBI agent looking into one of the murders he committed. Naturally, you’d think he’d, like, stop banging her? Or at least hide the evidence of what he did to Kyle so that he could bang her in peace, since he learned from leaving evidence out in the open with ladies he likes? Nope and nope, as Dash is thinking with little Dash and he left the black goo that came from throwing the Kyle doll into the fire. I don’t mind the recklessness because Dash has been like that all season and I’m particularly curious what the medical examiner will determine about the goo – whether that’ll tie Dash to Kyle’s murder or if it’ll be a dead end that’ll force her to push even further into 50 Shades of East End territory.
-Nice to know that Dash wears boxer-briefs.
-I know it’s probably cliché, but a part of me would have liked the flashbacks to be differentiated from the rest of the show better. There were some great visual moments in the Baltimore scenes, but it felt like more could have been done to really give it some memorable pop since the girls were actually interacting with the past in this particular flashback.
-That being said, I did like the multiple Joannas, Wendys, Freyas, and Ingrids lurking around this episode. And the ending reveal where we learn that Joanna hadn’t left the stables was just the best.
-Also, shout out to this show for having an Edgar Allan Poe cameo. I joked last week about them doing it and what do you know? They did it and it was awesome, if only for Killian’s mustache (Daniel di Tomasso gave what could be his best performance of the series here, but the number of times I wrote mustache in my notes is ridiculous), the visual effects at the séance scene, and Freya going on the war path. What I like about Witches of East End is that it really feels like anything could happen – it doesn’t fall into the repetitious patterns of certain other genre shows and that liveliness, that spirit of spontaneity, has been taken to another level during season two.
-Toss-up: Killian’s Edgar Allan Poe mustache or Dash’s 70s mustache – which do you prefer? And should Lifetime order a spin-off where they solve crimes together?
-Has Freya been a bar tender for each of her lives? Because how much would it suck to be immortal yet having to work the same job, right?
-There was one shot of Edgar behind Freya that made me think we were going to learn that celebrated author and Master of the Macabre Edgar Allan Poe was into anal. Which, I wouldn’t put it past this show to do and I mean that in the best way possible.
-What’s your favorite Edgar Allan Poe work? I’m partial to “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but Poe’s one of my favorite authors, so any choice you make is a good one.
-Would Past Joanna remember that she took a weapon from herself right after Freya died? Has it been established how interacting with the past will change the present on this show?
-So, I might have thought that the guy bringing Joanna and Ingrid the weapon was Abraham Lincoln for more than a second. The way it was filmed (the lighting especially) made me think that the guy was somebody special and the hat just put me in mind of Lincoln. Which American president would you like to see guest star on Witches of East End next? I’m pulling for a Taft cameo, but that’s just me.
-Next week on Witches of East End: In the two-hour season finale, someone tracks down Joanna in the past, while Freya and Wendy try to find a way back to the present.
