The Children of the Damned
FROM – Episode 401 – The Arrival – SPOILERS ⁓
Sophia (Julia Doyle)
Prologue
At the end of Season Three, Sarah (Avery Konrad) tortured Elgin (Nathan D Simmons) to discover Fatima’s location. As a consequence, Elgin lost an eye. When Fatima (Pegah Ghafoori) was found, she had given birth to an object which the Kimono Woman (Shuoxin Fu) then carried into the catacombs. Boyd followed and watched the object turn into the Smiling Creature (Jamie McGuire) whom he had killed in “Forest For the Trees” (episode 208).
Kristi (Chloe Van Landschoot) prepares to treat Elgin’s injuries.
Jade (David Alpay) and Tabitha (Catalina Sandino Moreno) remembered that, long ago, they failed to rescue their daughter and because of that have been repeatedly returning to the town in various incarnations. Jim (Eion Bailey), upset by this, walks to the RV and runs into the Man in Yellow (Douglas E Hughes), who rips Jim’s throat out, despite the pleas of Julie (Hannah Cheramy), who had followed her father.
Ce Sera Sera
The Man in Yellow
The Man in Yellow turns to Julie. “People are such fragile things,” he tells her. “We have to stop meeting like this. When did you come from this time? Didn’t anyone tell ya? There’s no way to change a story once it’s been told.” Julie’s brother Ethan (Simon Webster) told her exactly that in “Revelations: Chapter Two” (Episode 310). Julie flees into the woods. “I liked you, I really did,” says the Man in Yellow to Jim (who seems to be dying). “It’s a terrible shame you won’t get to see what happens next, because what happens next is my favorite part.”
Alone in his car, a clergyman (Rhys Bevan-John) encounters the Tree Blocking the Road. The tree he sees, and the road on which he sees it are different from those seen by the ambulance driver in “Mouse Trap” (episode 303), and the Matthews Family (in Episode 101). The preacher’s Alabama license plate has a tag dated August 2035. (On the map in the sheriff’s office, one of the pins marking where people in town came from is positioned near Birmingham, Alabama, though it is uncertain just whose point of origin it represents.) The preacher gets back in his car and tries to find an alternative route.
The clergyman’s license plate
In the root cellar, Fatima is being questioned by Ellis (Corteon Moore) and Kenny (Ricky He) about what happened there. She tells them that she had a vision about the origin of the night creatures, and saw them make a deal with something (she knows not what), sacrificing their children and gaining immortality for themselves. Kenny goes into the catacombs looking for Boyd and the two of them see the reborn Smiley Creature, who says: “Hello, Kenny. It’s nice to see you again.”
Acosta watches as Kristi treats Elgin
Meanwhile, Donna (Elizabeth Saunders) has called Kristi (Chloe Van Landschoot) to Colony House to treat Elgin. Kristi has questions, gets no answers, and stitches Elgin’s eye socket closed. Acosta (Samantha Brown) guards Elgin to keep him from further harm.
Back in the woods, The Man in Yellow locates a buried suitcase outwardly similar to the suitcase that was found in the catacombs in Season One. Inside, he finds a change of clothes.
Boyd counts his bullets.
At the Sheriff’s Station, Boyd (Harold Perrineau) gets out all the confiscated ammunition. He counts the rounds and asks Kenny how many people are in town. After Kenny tells him the town’s current population is forty-seven, Boyd, who has given up trying to beat the situation, explains that he wants to make sure he has one round for each person, should that become necessary.
The Uncertainty Principle
Sophia trapped in the wreck.
Tabitha returns to town. Julia and Ethan, who seem unaware of what happened to their father, are happy to see her. The clergyman’s car speeds through town, and veers into the Sheriff’s station. Tabitha and Boyd rush to extract the driver and his passenger, a teenage girl named Sophia (Julia Doyle) who says she is the pastor’s daughter. Marielle (Kaelen Ohm) brings the ambulance, and, based on Sophia’s account of things, suggests that the preacher had a seizure of some sort. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with him is actually medical,” Marielle says. “The day I got here, I watched Elgin have an unprovoked seizure right over there.”
Marielle
Jade finds Tabitha and suggests they tell people about the things they remembered. Tabitha doesn’t think so and asks: “What’s easier to believe? That whatever is keeping us here put those thoughts in our heads to torture us, or, that you and i have been coming back here over and over again for centuries, trying to save children that are already dead?”
Boyd finds Acosta and wants to “talk about what happened”. Acosta is having none of it. She excoriates the Sheriff for acquiescing to the torture of Elgin, and calls him and all the other townspeople monsters.
Songs visibly listed on the diner’s jukebox are: ‘At Seventeen’ by Janice Ian, ‘Stumblin In’ by Susie Quatro, ‘Blue’ by Joni Mitchell, ‘Town Without Pity’ by Gene Pitney, and ‘Psycho Killer’ by The Talking heads.
At the deserted diner, Acosta tries to get Elgin’s blood out of her uniform, and her frustration with that seems to activate the jukebox. We hear Frank Sinatra sing “Send in the Clowns”. (In Stephen Sondheim’s musical “A Little Night Music” the song is sung by Desiree after she proposes marriage and is rejected.)
Acosta finds some clothes in the diner’s back room that look like they might fit her.
Inside Colony House, Donna is curiously concerned with Elgin’s fate “We need to talk about what we’re doing with him,” she tells Boyd.
The shapeshifter and the poltergeist
As Victor and Ethan watch Sophia and the pastor extracted from the wreckage, Victor seems to pay sudden attention to his left hand.
The pastor and Sophia are taken to the clinic and Kenny decides to spend the night there to help out. He explains the nature of the town to Sophia, who is surprisingly accepting of it all. The clergyman has not regained consciousness.
In the course of reassuring Ethan that his father is not dead, Julie quotes something her father said after Tabitha vanished for a while: “All we have in this place is what we believe, so we have to believe good things.”
Kenny and Sophia at the clinic. Sophia kills the clergyman in nearly the same way that Sarah killed Jade’s friend Tobey in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (episode 102). ‘This isn’t your fault,’ Sarah said.
The Matthews family (still without Jim) hears a noise from the kitchen. When they look they see a poltergeist-like phenomenon — flying objects and cabinet doors opening and closing by themselves. Poltergeists are often associated with with emotionally stressed adolescents, and both Julie and Sophia are certainly that. But one also wonders if some invisible version of Jim might have gotten home before dark.
Once Kenny falls asleep, Sophia puts her hand on the preacher’s chest and commands him to “wake up”. She tells him he played an important role in a very important story. “I couldn’t have come to them as I was,” she explains, and we see a flashback to the Man in Yellow and that suitcase. We see him physically shapeshift into Sophia, who then hitches a ride with the preacher. “This is my favourite part,” she says, “it’s the one where they tear themselves apart.” While Sophia kills him, she smiles.