SURREALESTATE – Season 2 Episode 10 – SPOILERS ⁓
Thomas Rabbitfoot and Luke
“Hela Ensom (Allie Duff), whose name means “entirely alone” in Norwegian, is dead. and her custom-built house is making trouble. Thomas Rabbitfoot (Bill MacDonald), who built the house explained to Luke (Tim Rozon) how it was that the house Susan purchased came to be.
“[Hela] was out on an oil rig six to nine months of the year,” says Rabbitfoot. “She came to me. She asked me to design a house. Actually, that’s not accurate. She wanted to design a house and she wanted me to smile, nod and build it…She said it was her Evig Hus (Norwegian for ‘eternal home’).” Luke is shown a photo of the woman, who looked very much like Susan. “Hela had no relatives,” Rabbitfoot continued, “so the bank basically took it over and then leased it a bunch of times, but nobody would stay in it more than a week or so.” The builder suggests this is because the house is mourning the loss of its creator.
Allie Duff as Hela Ensom — Duff is also the author of a book of poems called I DREAMED I WAS AN AFTERTHOUGHT[
Phil (Adam Korson) gets a surprise employment offer from Father Amandi Dola (Marc Senior), an unofficial representative of Bishop Fabrizi in Rome. Fabrizi was a colleague of Father Diaz (Juan Carlos Velis). Diaz was Phil’s mentor, and appeared to him as a ghost in “The House Always Wins” (Episode 1.10).
Dola explains the purpose of his visit. “There are some global patterns we are seeing that are alarming,” he tells Phil. “Incidents of demonic possession in children. Young children. Diaz wrote a book about that. And you researched it. You edited it. And that is why I’m here. You would have access to all of the Vatican archives, including the Apostolic Archive in Belvedere Court.” He goes on to say that the Bishop thinks Phil’s “outsider status” would give him “the spiritual distance to be a more dispassionate judge of the phenomena.” Phil agrees to think about it.
Lomax and Luke
Susan (Sarah Levy), has returned to work, but is possessed by the spirit of Hela’s house, which makes an effort to kill Augie and uses terror tactics to interrogate Phil. Susan manages to stop Helahouse from killing anyone, but Phil spills the beans about plans to separate the house from Susan. In the process, Phil describes himself as an exorcist.
In Episode 1.1, the initial scene was an homage to William Friedkin’s 1973 film THE EXORCIST, which may have been based on the adventures of well-known exorcist Malachi Martin (though William Peter Blatty, who wrote the book, denied this). Luke mentions that Hela’s house is located on Kinderman Street, and Police Lieutenant William F Kinderman is one of the principal characters in Friedkin’s film.
Hela’s house counters the beam from Rochelle’s linear accelerator with a beam of her own.
In (“Let Sleeping Dogs Lie” (Episode 2.8), Lomax dealt with a family named Malachi.
Luke, Phil, Augie, Rochelle, and Zooey visit Hela’s house and go on the attack. Luke summons Hela’s ghost, while Phil reads his own adaptation of the exorcism incantation: “Recede ab nobis, domus. Recede ab hac femina. Leges omnes pertinentes emptionem venditionemque peculiorum in hoc mundo seculare. Locatio tua abit. Locatio tua abit.” which translates (approximately) as “Go away from us, house. Get away from this woman. Read all the laws relating to the buying and selling of assets in this secular world. Go from this place. Go from this place.”
Elsa Amaranth
The house spirit, or húsvættir, is unimpressed and nearly pushes Phil over a railing, but Augie (Maurice Dean Wint) and Rochelle (Joy Tanner) arrive just in time with a portable linear accelerator. They train a beam of high-energy electrons at Susan, but the house ghost uses Susan’s pyrokinetic talents to destroy the device. Then Hela’s ghost arrives. “Something bad is happening in your name,” Luke tells the ghost. “I thought you might want to fix it.” Hela and house/Susan hug, and then both ghosts vanish, leaving only Susan behind. It is unclear if the house continues to be haunted. It has been sold to Elsa Amaranth (Brenda Bazinet), who for some as yet unexplained reason cannot die, so if the spirit remains it should have no further abandonment issues.
In the aftermath, everyone’s life changes. Susan is made a full partner in the agency. Phil decides to accept the Vatican’s job offer and move to Rome, and Augie accepts Rochelle’s offer of a position at ASDRA. Zooey gets a new haircut and will soon start law school. Luke gets a call from Megan Donovan (Tennille Read). We hear only the part of the conversation where asks her “How long have they been dead?”
Miscellaneous Inco
Zooey‘s new haircut
Tim Rozon told Tara Bennett of SyFy Wire that he isn’t worried about the staff migration becoming permanent. “I don’t think for one second, we’re breaking up,” Rozon said. “I was more surprised at the ending of The Roman Agency and Susan combining, than the characters leaving. We’re putting them aside for a second just so we can all get back together.”
Showrunner George R Olsen was asked by Horror Fuel about the possibility of a third season. “Well, if all of us do our jobs, yes, there is,” he said. “That’s one of the fun things about this show and these characters, particularly, and our amazing cast and crew. But there are so many different kinds of houses, there are so many different kinds of entities, there are so many different kinds of stories that as long as they let me, I’ll keep doing these.”
Father Amandi Dola (Marc Senior)
After Rabbitfoot explains to Luke that his last name is derived from his great-great-grandfather’s good luck charm, he adds: “Ancient Romans considered the human phallus a lucky charm. Maybe we got off easy.”
The Romans used phallic symbolism to invoke the protection of Fascinus, a god seen as a protection against envy and the oculus malus, or evil eye. It might be merely coincidental that Phil gets a visitor from Rome this episode, and that Luke’s last name is Roman.
