Episode 110 – Rend the Veil – (speculative recap) ⁓

When Blaine Abel (Steven Ogg) was nine years old, Sheriff Cypress (David James Elliott) ran his father out of town for defrauding his followers by faking stigmata on his son’s hands. An article about the stigmata was visible on a bulletin board in “Too Many Secrets” (episode 1.7). Another article on that page was headlined “Three-headed Lizards in Local Creek”.

Inside the old Abel church, Em (Romy Weltman) is manacled, Ibrahim (Andy McQueen) is handcuffed, and both are being held at gunpoint. “You do know that my father foretold this, right?” says Blaine. “An angel of the Lord would reveal itself to me and the day after Revival Day it did, in the woods…It was beautiful. I’d never seen anything like it. And then the angel spoke to me, in pained agony. It said Rose’s name.” Ibrahim disagrees. “That’s not an angel,” he says. “That’s confirmation bias.” Noting that Wanda Peterson (Marcia Bennett) said repeatedly “That’s not mine.” before being destroyed by the creature she encountered, Ibrahim puts forward an idea. “In Islam,” he explains, “we believe that when a person dies, their soul is separated from their body, and it enters an intermediate state — a transitional barrier between this world and the next. That light that you saw on Revival Night, that was Em. What if somehow her death broke that barrier?”

Blaine’s men capture Sheriff Cypress, Dana (Melanie Scrofano), and Lester (Peter Millard) outside the church. Blake’s plan is to introduce Em to his newly captured Angel. In an attempt to stop him, Dana testifies that Em healed her. “I was shot and I was stabbed,” she explains, “and she put her hands over me and healed me.” Blaine is unconvinced and shoots the Sheriff in the stomach. Em breaks free of her chains and, after a moment of doubt, heals her father’s wound. Blaine remains unconvinced and prepares to shoot again, but General Cale (Konima Parkinson-Jones) and her troops arrive and they shoot first.

Twelve of Blaine’s followers are killed, but Lester takes Em out through the church basement to the grist mill downstream of where Em died. Dana goes to pick up Cooper (Hudson Wurster) from Jeannie (Lenore Zann), and the Sheriff stays behind to deal with the General.

At Jeannie and Lester’s house, Dana spots a book by the late Professor Weimer titled “Banks of the Broken Creek” (the same book that was in Em’s dorm room in the first episode) and learns that Lester has a video of one of the Professor’s lectures. Dana plays the video, and we hear Lester say: “Many adherents see the river as the earthly manifestation of the goddess Ganga. They regularly attribute healing and transformative powers to its flow.” The next part of the video was taped over with a more personal recording that reveals a rune carved on Lester’s chest — the same rune Em saw as she was being killed.

Meanwhile, at the Old Mill, Em also sees the design carved on Lester. Lester explains that he and Aaron Weimer were jointly working to achieve immortality, but had a falling out, and that it was Weimer who actually killed Em, and tries to explain why. “in order to unlock the door to immortality,” he tells Em, “you need a key and that key was you. Something in you, Martha Cypress, caused all of this. You weren’t just a key, you were a detonator that blew the door right off.” It isn’t explained just why Em was able to do this, but it could have something to do with her mother, Patty, who referred to Em as her “miracle baby”. One wonders if the creek water might have had something to do with Em’s conception.

Then Lester shows Em the creature he has captive in another room, and tells Em it is part of her. The creature enters the water and seems to turn into Patty Cypress. Em joins her mother in the water, and it becomes uncertain just who is imagining or doing what.

Dana bursts in and we see that Lester is trying to drown Em, and Patty isn’t there at all. Dana shoots Lester several times but he doesn’t die and his eyes glow white. Em comes up behind him and rips out his heart. Dana and Em embrace, then Em undergoes a transformation of sorts and vanishes. The Sheriff gets there next and says “Where’s Em?”

The General finds one of the creatures lying on the ground in the woods, apparently wounded or ill. “We won’t be going home empty-handed after all,” she says. It is not clear whose creature this might be. It might be associated with Em, or Rose, or another of the revivers.

Thirty-five Days Later

Em’s college roommate Kay Mathurin (Maia Jae) brings Dana a box of Em’s things. Dana thanks her and says: “I wish you hadn’t told her to go to the bridge that night.” Kay denies doing that. “Back then we were just roomies,” she explains. “It was probably one of those online friends of hers from livejournal or that OI forum thing. She was always chatting with them.”

Dana finds the online conversation in which an anonymous person told Em to go to the bridge, and asks May Tao (Katharine King So) to track it. May tells her the messages came from the Weimer house and adds: “what do you know about his wife?…She was the court-appointed therapist for Em, right? Well, turns out she wasn’t assigned Em’s case. She asked for it; in fact, she went out of her way to make sure she would get Em as a client.”

The revivers all of whom were spirited out of town by Nella (Lanette Ware) and JP are no longer fugitives.

Mayor Dillisch (Conrad Coates) is interviewed by Good Morning Wasau host Jamie Hines (Karen Knox). “With Revivers still among us,” Hines asks, “how can we be sure that history will not repeat itself?” The mayor says: “Jamie, I’m going to nip this in the bud. Revivers were not the problem then and they’re certainly not the problem now. As you may know, my wife is a reviver…But no one should be made to feel unsafe or unwelcome because of who they are, which is why the governor is spearheading efforts to pass this new bill now that ensures the rights of all revitalized citizens.”

While sorting Em’s things, Dana finds a poem her sister wrote about death.

“We stood on two legs; and raised our heads above golden grass. He was there.

We sharpened stone and steel; used tools to harvest grass, beast and brother. He was there.

We clustered together; in brick and mud, swarming with rats and plague. He was there.

We built nations and mistrust; our fingers hovered over the red button. He smiled.

But still we build to rise above the golden grass away from the reach of his scythe. For a day when he will harvest no more.”

Ibrahim has taken a teaching job at the local university. Cooper is seeing a therapist called Dr. Park because he blames his grandfather for what happened to Em. J P Brissett (Glen Gould) has taken over as Sheriff. Wayne Cypress is unemployed, thinks one of his daughters is dead. and can’t visit his grandson.

Everyone,including Dana, believes Em is dead, but in the final scene, Nithiya (Gia Sandhu) and Em are together in an isolated cabin on the shores of an unknown lake.

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REVIVAL can be streamed on Peacock in the US, on CTV’s Sci-Fi Channel in Canada, and on Binge in Australia.