Mushrooms, Crows, and a Funeral
FROM – Episode 403 – Merrily We Go – speculative recap ⁓
Acosta
Prompted either by a dream about his dead wife, or by Acosta’s suicidal tendencies, Boyd (Harold Perrineau) takes the former police officer to a storage room and assigns her a task. “We got storage sheds around town,” he tells her. “They’re filled with clothes, tools, everything we thought would be useful. This is everything else. I want you to treat this place like a crime scene. These things, they tell a story, right? I want you to develop a narrative. Tell me everything there is to know about the people this stuff belonged to.” Acosta (Samantha Brown) asks why he’s doing this, and Boyd explains that she reminds him of someone he could have helped but didn’t.
Ethan and his mother
This brought to mind what Ethan (Simon Webster) told his mother in “Book 74” (episode 106): “When the Cromenockle was lost in the rainbow sky, she found a cavern where the lonely dragon lived, and it was full of stuff that nobody wanted. But for the lonely dragon, all the stuff was treasure…In one of the big piles of stuff, there was the map of the rainbow sky. So, the lonely dragon gave it to the Cromenockle and then she wasn’t lost anymore.”
Before the double funeral for Jim Matthews and the pastor from Alabama, Sophia (Julia Doyle) finds herself alone with the pastor’s corpse and, for reasons not yet revealed, removes one of his teeth.
Sophia takes a tooth from the pastor as a souvenir.
The funeral is graced with the attendance of crows. The smell of death might have attracted them, though Julie says afterward: “It felt like those crows were celebrating.”
After the funeral, Sophia tells Kenny (Ricky He) that Sarah (Avery Konrad) told her that people were safe for a long time after Sheriff Boyd found the talismans, and asks him: “When did that change?”
“It was around the night that my dad died,” Kenny replies. “We had lost a family the night before, the Pratts, and then Jim and Tabitha, the Matthews family, showed up with Jade.” Sophia suggests that the Matthews’ arrival might have caused all the trouble. She repeats this idea to Julie (Hannah Cheramy) who becomes upset because she suspects it might be true.
Julie
Sophia explains her agent provacateur behavior in religious terms. “Achan caused the whole nation of Israel to suffer because he offended God,” she tells Kenny. “I just thought that maybe, somehow, they brought some sort of ill tidings with them.” (This is likely a reference to 1 Chronicles 2.7.)
Julie’s reaction to Sophia’s suggestion is to recover Ethan’s books from under the collapsed house where they used to live, and Randall (A J Simmons) volunteers to do this for her. While under the house, Randall finds the body of Brick who died there in “The Kindness of Strangers” (Episode 202). He locates two of Ethan’s books, “Grand Gooligog” and “The Flight of the Cromenockle”.
Randall finds the books.
Tabitha (Catalina Sandino Moreno) has a different reaction. She decides to go into the bottle tree again, hoping to return to the lighthouse. Henry (Robert Joy) tries to stop her. The Boy in White (Vox Smith) appears and tells them the bottle tree will likely not take Tabitha to the lighthouse again. The boy also tells her: “You’re getting so close now, but I’m afraid you’re running out of time.” Then he vanishes just like Jim did after speaking to Ethan last episode.
Ethan and Victor (Scott McCord) find Jade (David Alpay) at The Brundles. Jade is fascinated by Ethan’s story about the Lake of Tears, but doubts its usefulness. Ethan points out that his mother thought the red rocks at The Settlement were something she imagined, but learned they were real (see “These Fragile Lives” — episode 307). “Maybe I didn’t make it up,” says Ethan. “Maybe i just thought i did.”
Sarah learns that Sophia wants to live with her.
As they walk back toward Colony House, Victor spots the suit that the Man in Yellow discarded when he transformed into Sophia in “The Arrival” (episode 401). This frightens Victor. After a lone crow lands between Victor and the discarded suit Victor is utterly terrified and says: “I told myself it wasn’t real.” He does not specify what.
Jade, who in an earlier conversation with Boyd suggested using LSD to help recover more of his memories, finds some Psilocybe semilanceata (magic mushrooms) growing nearby.
Fatima seems to be up to something.
Ellis (Corteon Moore) takes Fatima (Pegah Gharoori) to the Car Graveyard for Rage Room Therapy. This might be a red herring, or it might be a clue to what’s actually going on. It is not impossible that the entire town is a complex rage room, and the inhabitants are undergoing some variation of primal therapy.
Unknown to Ellis, Fatima has, for undisclosed reasons, talked Elgin (Nathan D Simmons) into obtaining a quantity of dirt, possibly from a specific location. Elgin deposits the dirt at Colony House, and Fatima suggests that she might need more.
Boyd and the hand.
Sheriff Boyd visits his wife’s grave. “Things are changing,”“Done some things recently and said some things. I don’t know if I like who I’m becoming, but I don’t know who else to be…I could really use some help. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do, but if you can hear me…” As if in response, we see an arm emerge from the ground behind Boyd. We see it before he does. It grabs the Sheriff by the wrist and tries to pull him into the ground. Boyd breaks free, but when he looks around, the ground is undisturbed.