“On many a dark night people would see her walking along the river bank and crying for her children”
There’s a man and his son fishing, enjoying themselves –
when they see a woman in white walking along the bank, crying. The father
watches her and sees her turn and walk into the water. Telling his son to stay
put he runs after her, running into the water where she went into try and find
and save her. He keeps looking until he sees, on the shore, the woman now dry,
leading his son away. He hurries out of the water and tries to chase them but
when he gets to the car park the woman and his son, Rafael, have gone.
Nick arrives at Monroe’s house – it’s Hallowe’en and
Monroe goes waaaay over the top. He reminisces about the good ol’ days when
Wesen used to Woge through the woods at midnight terrifying villagers (alas, he
can find no villagers in Portland). He’s borrowed a morning star from Nick and
further becomes all geeky about the history of it – Nick’s wonderfully amused
by Monroe’s geerkery. Then he uses it to smash pumpkins. Nick finally leaves
the scarily decorated house but only after Monroe promises no-one will get
hurt.
Brief interlude to a woman who is dreaming of a woman in
white, underwater, who becomes a strange banshee-type person. When she wakes
she’s surrounded by a wall board and newspaper articles about missing children.
She seems… intense
To the crime scene, where the father is telling Wu what
happened in Spanish, though Wu’s Spanish isn’t really up to it. Hank and Nick
show up and Wu fills them in – Luis Alvarez missing his son Rafael and they have
a video of the woman in white taking the boy away
To the police stations they fill in Captain Renard, inept
intern Ryan is still inept – and Nick calls Juliette in to be a translator, which
means she and Renard have another moment. With Juliette in tow (She’s a fluent Spanish
speaker) they can get all the details from Luis about what happened and what he
knows about the woman (very little).
Cut to intense interlude woman again, pacing around near
her computer until it beeps – with an Amber Alert for Rafael Alvarez. She woges
into a blue furred tiger and books a flight to Portland while panting with anger.
Hank, Nick, Juliette and Luis go to his home which has
several people waiting for them and is majorly decorated for hallowe’en
(Juliette comments on “dia de los muertos”). Nick, Hank and Luis go to check
Rafael’s room (and take a photo of Rafael) while a woman asks Juliette how she
speaks Spanish so well – Juliette’s grandmother is Spanish. She says she knows
who took Rafael – Nick & co return – but Luis tells her she knows nothing.
She insists – the person who took Rafael was La Lorana (the weeping woman), a
ghost story about a woman who takes children and drowns them. They show her a picture
of the woman from the film they have and she says that is La Llorana. Luis
doesn’t want to hear it and gets more and more agitated.
When they’re alone, the woman sees Juliette’s cat scratch
and says they have to talk. Juliette says it was nothing – but she says she
must have been very sick and then not remember any of it. She says someone
brought her a cat and the cat was sick – Juliette tries to shut it down but she
tells Juliette someone did this to her. Juliette becomes angrier and won’t talk
about it. They leave Juliette with the family with Wu to act as translator.
Later the same woman tells Juliette she’s in pain and going to have to choose
between the 2 men she cares for – something she angrily rejects.
At the police station. Renard is having a phone
conversation with someone about a man who was badly tortured – and they need to
find out what he told since it could put their people at risk, especially
people on the inside of the organisation. Why,
possibly this man his brother Eric was torturing? And is Renard involved in
the resistance against the royals? He’s interrupted by a knock on his door –
Intense Cat Woman, is here, she’s a Detective from New Mexico. Damn it, we were
getting exposition before she interrupted! She is Detective Valentina Espinosa of
Albuquerque and has information on the boy.
Outside Hank and Nick are doing some calling around
trying to find an enemy or a reason or Rafael to run away and coming up with
nothing. Renard introduces them to Valentina, she’s been tracking the kidnapper
for a while – if Rafael is the first child taken then she will take 2 more.
Just as she did in New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Arizona and Utah. And all will
be dead by morning. They have no forensic evidence, only bodies – always 2 boys
and a girl between the age of 7 and 10. She’s killed at least 12 kids but many
more just go missing they don’t know of. They show her their video – and her
eyes turn gold watching it. She also knows that the three children are always
taken near where 2 rivers meet – 1 from one fork, 1 from the other and a third
downriver from where the two rivers meet, forming a triangle.
La Llorana is in a shack with Rafael, humming to him
while he lies motionless – when we look at her face again, it’s withered and a
little oozy. She goes out and lures a small girl from a Hallowe’en party and
brings her back to the shack with Rafael.
They go to the scene and find the same circumstances –
but Renard stops them. The only Valentina Esponisa the Albuquerque police force
have was relieved of duty 3 years ago and the FBI want her for interfering in a
federal case and impersonating a police officer. Hank protests that a second
child has been taken and that Valentina was right. Renard orders them to bring
her in. Nick grabs her and she Woges into her blue kitty and he warns her not
to do anything she’ll regret – Hank notices and asks what kind of Wesen she is –
he says he doesn’t know. She says she’s a Balam (Jaguar?) – and he’s a Grimm
and going to kill her.
At the police station, Renard questions her, how she was
thrown off the force for her obsession and asking if she is involved in the
cases. Her sister’s son was one of the kids who was kidnapped and killed – she’s
obsessed because she saw the woman, she went to rescue her from the water and
she was the one who was supposed to be looking after her nephew.
Research in the Grimm trailer – and they find La Llorana.
But she wasn’t a Wesen but it was something even his ancestors couldn’t figure
out. They do find one reference to the Abrazos del Rio – the embrace of the
river. They take this to Valentina who has never heard of it, they take her out
of custody – risking the FBI’s anger for the sake of the children but as they
get outside they hear that a third child has been taken. They know all the kids
are drowned but their bodies wash up down river. Working with the word “abrazos”
(and “brazos” for arms) they figure that the confluence, where the rivers meet,
is the most likely spot – and it’s not like they have any other likely spots. They
hurry to the park.
La Llorana takes the three children to the river, where
she cries for her children, begging them to forgive her, crying tears of blood.
Three ghostly children rise from the water, she says she has taken 3 to take
their place. As they approach the water, Valentina, Hank and Nick run to them –
the ghost kids sink back into the water and La Llorana goes all wrinkled and
oozy. Weeping, she continues to lead the kids to the water. Nick grabs La
Llorana and tackles her into the water while Hank and Valentina get the kids.
Nick wrestles with La Llorana in the water, she tries to drag him under while he strangles her – then suddenly she becomes human again – and fades away. He swims back to the shore and Valentina says it’s one minute after midnight.
The kids are rescued and returned to their families, Ryan
the intern is inept, Renard says they’ll throw some credit to the FBI and make
them back off and Juliette looks on, for once not staring at Renard, but watching
Nick.
While all this has been happening, Monroe is having an
awesome hallowe’en, much loved by the kids for his ridiculous over the top
windows. He stops 3 boys stealing a girl’s candy and they come back for revenge
– using his mace to break his window. Eddie’s eyes turn red - I was thinking we were going to see some
limb ripping, alas no. He finds the boys, taking the Iphone they recorded the
destruction on and says he will keep it until they pay for his window. They say
they’re not scared of him and he woges at them.
And Renard, as well as checking on his possible
involvement in the resistance, is also tracking Adalind in Vienna
It’s nice to see more racial diversity on Grimm – they haven’t
had many Latino characters before. At the same time, it feels like an insert so
they can use La Llorana ghost story – which is a Latin American myth. At the
same time, that’s better than many shows like this that feel free to life
monsters from all the world’s legends without bothering with the people or cultures
from that region.
I want to know more about Renard! I think he’s rapidly
becoming the most intriguing figure on the show.
