A great mystery is solved, but now even more questions

FROM it’s been a slow stretch over the past few episodes. We’ll call it the midseason nap. Last week, in particular, was really poor, making us face many unpleasant encounters between angry townspeople.

The hibernation is over. Episode 8, “Thresholds,” ramps up the action, giving us scene after scene of good stuff. The big mystery in the title I’m referring to made my jaw drop. We might as well start with that.

Julie in Wonderland

I’m not sure it was a particularly good idea for Julie to take her little brother, Ethan, into the wreckage with her. Things could have ended very badly for both of them. She wants him there because he has the mind of a suitor. She wants to know what the characters in his stories would do if they were in her shoes. He tells her they were going to the ruins. So she does.

Instantly she is crashing to the ground, Ethan at her side, then running for help. She is transported back to the room where she, Randall and Mari were held captive by the music box monster. She hears screams and sees the three of them chained to the wall. When she stops, she sees the old, haggard man that Boyd had encountered much earlier in the show when he was trapped in the well.

The old man tells her that she must throw the rope down into the well. “Who’s down there she asks?” “Please,” he tells her. Drop the rope. So she does, and we see Boyd below. It’s always been a big question in worship: how did the man, chained to the wall, manage to throw the rope to Boyd so he could climb up and they could have their “spearhead” talk. Now we know it was Julie all along.

But that raises big questions: Namely, how exactly does time work in this country? It’s clearly not linear, if Julie were able to go back in time and throw the rope down. And it makes me wonder, who exactly is this old man? Does he also exist outside of time? Could he be a character we already know who has aged somehow by going back in time? Probably not, but even though we got a great answer, we’re left with a lot more questions.

He tells Julie that she needs to get out of this place and she turns through the bedroom door and finds herself in the tunnels below the city. She hears voices. “Angkooey…Angkooey…”

Ethan manages to find Kenny and Acosta, who, by the way, are acting less intolerable this episode, though still annoying — and they rush to the wreckage and pull Julie out, apparently just before she find himself in great danger. . . or learn something great and important. I wonder if she will return, or if she will retreat to the tunnels. She is clearly on the same path as her mother and Jade. Speaking of Jade. . . .

Jim will totally die

Jade continues to be the character with the clearest and most rational approach to solving the city’s mysteries. He’s also the only one who isn’t just taking Tabitha seriously, but helping her find answers. So naturally, Jim has to go confront him and act like a territorial monkey.

I’m not sure why the show’s writers are making Jimmy so terribly unlikable this season. My working theory is that they will kill him by the end of the season. He’ll be the big death in the finale, maybe doing something heroic to redeem himself after all this nonsense.

He accuses Jade of taking Tabitha and Ethan into residency, that it’s kind of reckless, and that he should back off and leave his family alone. Tabitha is not a child, Jade tells her. Jim accuses him of having a huge ego, saying that he is doing all this to feed said ego. “So what?” Jade fires back. “If it helps us get home, so what?”

Indeed. After Jade storms out, Henry—whom Jim hasn’t met yet and watched the entire confrontation wind down—asks, “Do you mind if I give you some unsolicited advice?” He tells her he has to shut her up EMPTY stand up and listen to his wife. Take it from someone who didn’t, he says, who thought his wife was going crazy. He wishes he had listened to her and helped her by listening instead of trying to “fix” her.

Jim softens at this. He realizes that Henry is right – he finally realizes what a jerk he’s been all along. They have a pleasant conversation and Jimmy reflects on the birth of his oldest child. He went to a bar, ordered a large glass of whiskey, and then stared at her, promising himself that he would be a better father and husband than his father, who was a drunk. It’s a nice moment, but I’m still a little upset that Jimmy was written into this corner. I just don’t see Jim from previous seasons acting this way about Tabitha’s dreams.

Victor remembers

Victor and Sara are trying to get the Jasper doll to talk. Or rather, Sara is humoring Victor and trying to play ventriloquist with Jasper and Victor is getting more and more frustrated. So Sarah goes and gets Tabitha, and she comes and goes in to help. The two women are able to calm Victor down, asking him questions about the day he heard the dummy tell Christopher the things he was trying so hard to remember.

After many enchantments down memory lane, Victor has an epiphany. It wasn’t the doll talking to Christopher, it was the boy in white. The boy told Christopher a few things:

• The answers to the end are at the beginning. This is pretty cryptic, but fits well with Julie’s time travel. A cycle of sorts is taking place. Events are repeating themselves somehow.
• Children are at the heart of the mystery. They were killed in the dark by the people they loved. But someone told them a story that gave them hope. When they were placed on the stone tablets, they put their hope in the root and this created the symbol. These are the roots of the Far Tree.
• The Boy in White told Christopher that to save the children, he would have to go through the Far Tree, just like Tabitha.

I’m not sure how to parse all of this exactly, but it sounds like some kind of human sacrifice, like SOMETHING it is feeding the hope of these children. But it’s hard to know exactly what it all means. Was this story of hope told so that the city could feed on their hope and then be killed? Were they killed first and were the undead versions of these children given hope? We hope this is cleared up to your satisfaction. We are clearly moving towards answers about the Angkooey Children and how they relate to this place and the tree.

Elgin pulls a sara

Finally, we return to the misfortunes of poor Fatima. After she kills Tillie, Boyd takes her to a cabin in the woods and tells her to sit tight until he figures out what to do. Instead of staying with him alone, Ellis multitasks. He must take her things. After bringing it to her, he has to leave again for some reason. I hate how the characters on this show never learn from their mistakes. Leaving Fatima alone was what led to Till’s death in the first place. Now that you know things are very, very bad with him, why leave him alone again?

Oh, right, so the plot can happen. It happens in the form of Elgin, who continues to receive instructions from the Kimono Lady through the polaroid photo. We see him fill a jar with his own blood. Then he follows Fatima and tells her that she must come with him. Ellis is waiting.

He brings her to the basement where she was in last week’s episode. There is a room built with a bed, and he tells her the baby will be safe here. “There are no children!” Fatima says, clearly troubled by all this, especially since there is no Ellis in sight. But Elgin has always been a good guy, and she has no reason not to trust him—yet. “There is,” he replies. “It’s just not your thing.”

Okay, that’s scary. Doubly upset because Elgin isn’t acting malicious. He behaves enthusiastically, since this whole kidnapping is an altruistic act. He honestly believes he’s helping Fatima, but generally when you kidnap someone and lock them in a basement so your ghostly Mistress Kimono can have their monster baby, well, that’s not exactly the most altruistic thing to do, regardless your motives.

It’s clear that Elgin has been corrupted in a similar way to Sara, who truly believed that killing Ethan would bring everyone back home. He’s not hearing voices or seeing words appear on his skin, but his visions are making him do things, and he does them in secret, without telling anyone. Boyd really needs to implement a new policy: If you have a vision, dream, otherworldly encounter, find ruins, remember old nightmares, etc. come tell us about it. Share that information with Boyd and Jade. If you think a doll can tell you about the past, say Boyd and Jade. No matter how weird or scary or crazy or maybe irrelevant, add this knowledge, insight or craziness to the information box. This is how to not only piece together the answers to the city’s mysteries, but potentially prevent terrible things from happening to people.

All told, a really solid episode that left me on the edge of my seat. We only have two left this season, but I suspect we’ll get some more answers and some crazy stuff in the finale. It’s going to make the wait for Season 4 really painful, though hopefully MGM keeps releasing seasons every year so we don’t have too long to wait.

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