Anderson has his flock back and promptly tells them that all this bible stuff is nonsense and starts ripping pages out of one. Considering he’s a preacher in a church full of Christians this causes relatively minimal outrage as he sells them a new vision about gathering as an army of the righteous to fight evil
There’s no way that cold blow up in his face
He also recruits Giles on side who is fully back in action. He grieves for Rose but blames himself for becoming weak and despondent which prompted Rose to go out on her own. Now he has a whole lot of weapons, loyal police officer and
He also has Rose’s list of suspected possessed who he begins to round up. Ummmm can someone please challenge the religious leader and gun toting police chief rounding up undesirables at gunpoint, without law, and imprisoning them?
Someone?
Anyone?
No?
Ooooookay then.
Kyle has been reunited with his father and his dad is considering his master plan while Kyle, abandoned by this man to live with a possessed, abusive mother is NOT just going to shelve those daddy issues.
He’s also not impressed with the cult he’s built around him since it’s clear Daddy doesn’t believe a damn word of his whole “the world will end and we will be saved” rhetoric. Oh and he killed 8 beacons as well. Yup, Kyle goes all in on this one.
Dakota is also not having it with his backtracking and tries to convince her fellow cultists that he’s lost his way… not getting much traction there she goes to see Anderson. He is duly snarky since she kicked him out - but she appeaks: after all, surely he understands what it is to believe something and find it hollow
Oooooooh, that would be a direct hit.
Kyle and Daddy go to the junkyard and meet junkyard guy - it occurs to me I should start learning these people’s names. Maybe next season. There Kyle learns Amber and Alison have gone missing - their absence prompts Kyle to listen to Daddy and his plan to gather lots of Beacons in one place to use woo-woo against the demons. Ok… they can definitely feel power when together but from Helen to the meeting where Giles was possessed all indications have been that gathering Beacons attracts demons… how does this help? Kyle, desperate for his family, of course agrees
Together they learn that one of the beacons daddy shot in the head survived - it’s Junkyard Guy’s brother-in-law and his sister is really not happy to see Daddy at all. Of course, her husband is heavily disabled having suffered two debilitating head injuries
Megan is still imprisoned by Dr. Park who is extremely creepy and seems frustrated by her gut wrenching horror of him and his interest in her baby.
Dr. Park is working with yet another creepy faction - a woman who seems able to give him orders and be all condescending and to know and approve of him killing his Council or at least to be indifferent. When she touches him, his veins turn black and he is in obvious distress - but it is not the burning touch of an Outcast. This is new
She also wants Kyle kept alive. Why? Well crypticness including: “what they can start they can stop” even as Park talks about feeling it coming. So we’ll put this down as plot hooks for the next season
Megan does escape despite her daughter’s complete lack of anything resembling a survival instinct and Blake’s repeated ramblings and visions. The whole scene is definitely creepy - but rests entirely too much on the whole “unstable ‘crazy’ person” trope to be menacing like Blake couldn’t be plenty intimidating without it.
Megan and Holly escape when Blake decides to imprison them in a car (ostensibly to find Amber who has been spooking up Blake’s visions) Dr. Park returns and the two fight. Dr Park wins and Blake ends up injected with deathly goo. That’s that very pointless storyline put to bed. One would almost say such an aborted storyline, perhaps, should never have existed at all, maybe. Just maybe.
Time for a dramatic storm! DRAMA!
Daddy gathers the outcasts - including Amber (he had Amber and Allison all along - and can we talk a moment about how Daddy confesses this and no-one cares. Really?) and Martin the disabled man so they can all put their woo-woo together with the cult and do… something?
That something involves the Outcasts gathering together and a giant glowy ball of light along with ominous CGI effects and… I’m not even remotely sure what is happening here? Woo-woo apparently. Apparently this will show the demons all their power and they’ll just creep off, not threaten the Outcasts any more and just die…
This makes no sense at all… I mean, you can’t intimidate people into leaving you alone when the alternative is literally death. You need a threat more intimidating than death like The House of Night Series. Bad CGI doesn’t cut it
Daddy dearest also has his own plans- and has the cult start killing themselves, which they do (so much for their plans to survive when the world ends - do they believe they’d be resurrected?) while he kills Martin - basically confirming his role as a plot device
He also wants to kill Kyle, Amber and himself. He has decided mass suicide is the way to go. They fight - and Anderson and his army and Dakota mix in as well, facing off against the cult and Kyle and Daddy Dearest end up floating and it all goes wrong
Apparently
The big glowy orb is no longer being covered by blood and this is BAD (there is also floating because why not). Daddy Dearest is outraged by the lack of child murder - and a large number of the combatants now look like they’re being possessed
Which… is what happens when large numbers of Beacons are gathered together?
Honestly I kind of want some logic links to make even any of this make sense or why Daddy Dearest thought this plan would achieve anything? Why did he think his bloodline was key? What was any of this based on?
I think this is one of my core frustrations of this season - because we are getting answers but we’re also getting weird distractions like Anderson’s angst (and I really really really do not care about this character) or Blake’s brief and somewhat random appearance. At the same time for 10 episodes there’s just too many plot lines running at once: we have Megan and her grief over her husband and reaction to that, her suicidal ideation, some random visions in with some major issues with her parents and the trauma of her daughter and then pregnancy. We have Allison coming to terms with her own struggle and institutionalisation (also what was with the possessed in the hospital, did we ever try to look at that?) then there’s lots of hints into the past which could have been expanded so much more. Anderson and his lack of faith ran on to Giles and his possession and admission of defeat before finding his fire; Rose stepping up and then realising the cost of doing so. Throw in Sidney, throw in the Lighthouse, throw in Aaron and his wanting to be evil. Oh and Dr. Park.
That’s a LOT for 10 episodes. And inevitably many storylines are shamefully under-developed - Rose in particular would have been far far far more meaningful if Rose herself had spent more time actually on screen. And what happened to Aaron? Alison was grossly glossed over - and Amber definitely needed more examination. This huge list above isn’t even the main plot line - these are the side plots and none of them got the attention they deserved to really make any of them resonate - but all got enough attention to drag down the main plot. There was either too much, or too little.
