This episode felt like progress as it brought most of our characters away from rationalising everything and delved deeper into the real plot. The episode opens with another short flash-forward piece which began to make this show feel like a real documentary. The episode then proceeded to follow the story of Lee’s lost daughter Flora and the search for her.
Kidnapped by the Living
This felt more like a thriller than a horror as various animal parts and the limbs from Flora’s doll were found. These findings, along with the discovery of two wild boys point more to a serial killer than a ghost. This allows the Millers and the police to continue to rationalise that the hillbilly family are behind the kidnapping. Matt Miller had mentioned the attempt to rationalise in the previous episode and this is a theme of the first half of the episode.
Coming Together
The sacrificial nature of the body parts connect this human crime theory to the colony scenes of previous episodes. Further to this the arrival of a new character, Cricket (Leslie Jordan), doesn’t derail the story as you might imagine but brings it together more. Cricket offers his services as a kind of medium to aid in finding Flora. Cricket uncovers that is wasn’t “the living” that took Flora but the ghost girl of a previous episode, Priscilla. He also acts as a medium to bring the colony story back to the fore by telling ‘the butcher’ (Kathy Bates) or Thomasin White’s story. It is she who brought the colony to Roanoke and who has been, in her mind, protecting the area from invaders.
Overall this was a good episode despite starting slow. Flora missing is used as a means to get into the Roanoke story, but there is some more delving into Lee’s past concerning her daughter Emily. It’s clear Lee is becoming central. Adina Porter, the actress portraying Lee during testimonials, really delivered this time around making the audience empathise with her. There were parts of the episode that made it feel a bit meta. The camera broke away from filming close to her face when Lee asked them to stop and the characters also discussed the real Roanoke stories.
Mistrust
There were parts of the episode that felt like they didn’t fit, bringing the elements of mistrust between the three key players. When trailing signs of Flora, the search party come upon the burned body of what was later to revealed as Lee’s estranged husband. This caused some tension as Lee is briefly accused but this doesn’t last long. Lee’s past career as a cop comes in to play as she is unsure of the police in the search party. The biggest tension comes when right at the end of the episode Shelby searches for her husband only to find him in a questionable position.
These scenes feel out-of-place but they could end up being relevant further down the line. Perhaps this new mysterious woman (Lady Gaga) seen with Matt and in The Butcher’s backstory is important. She may even be intentionally splitting the ranks by planting the seeds of mistrust.
Only time will tell where this plot is going, but if you have any theories please post them in the comments. We would also like to hear your suggestions on the phrase uttered by the medium during this séance.
