Van envisions herself in the cabin nearly consumed by flames. Shauna sees her son on the shore of the lake and nearly drowns making her way to him. Akilah is nearly consumed by the earth that she tends to so well. And then they all come together in the same hallucination featuring Jackie (Ella Purnell), a lethal slap bracelet, and the man with no eyes. The Wilderness is hungry for a sacrifice after all these months without one and will clearly do whatever it takes to get one.
Eventually, they regain consciousness thanks to Ben pulling them away from the poison gas that is supposedly causing these hallucinations. The rest of the group finds them and captures Ben. But if he truly wanted them all dead, why would he have saved them from the poison gas? It’s starting to look like Ben might not have actually set that fire after all. Or at least wasn’t conscious of it.
The Wilderness may be screaming at the survivors in the past, but it isn’t exactly quiet in the present either. Van (Lauren Ambrose) discovers that her cancer might be in remission, and Tai (Tawny Cypress) is very quick to celebrate it as a gift from the Wilderness after the waiter’s death. We see her actively pray to the Wilderness while Van looks at her with slight terror.
Later that night while watching old recorded episodes of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Tai and Van see the man with no eyes in a commercial for a now closed ice cream parlor from when they were kids. They decide to go investigate the building and see a coyote kill a rabbit, to which Van says “We know what It wants. It wants more.”
Speaking of sacrifices, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) and Misty (Christina Ricci) have a near-death experience when they realize that the brakes on Shauna’s minivan have been tampered with while on the road and go careening into a nearby park. Someone seems to have it out for Shauna, and doesn’t seem to care who gets caught in the crossfire. I also submit this scene as evidence that the music supervisor for this show deserves a raise because playing “Nookie” by Limp Bizkit as the background song for this scene is an impeccable choice.
Meanwhile, Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Callie (Sarah Desjardins) have been having a girls day, shopping, bonding, and preparing dinner for the family. Until Shauna returns home to see Callie wearing Jackie’s necklace. Furious, she confronts Lottie, wondering how she even got it in the first place. Lottie calmly, yet ominously tells her “It never meant what you thought it meant,” to which Shauna replies by kicking Lottie out of the house in a rage.
