‘It was as though God was taking back what he had given’
We’re now at the halfway point ofthe second series, a time to take stock of what’s happened in this at times perplexing, but always beguiling show. New characters have emerged, while others have receded into the background. Not only that, but there are changes in the way the story is being told. While the first series was so unmistakably rooted in a fixed location that it led many – me included – to speculate that it might be a form of purgatory, now the show is set as much in the past as it is in the present, with the events around the original flooding of the dam 35 years ago becoming increasingly significant. In The Returned’s alpine town, the sins of the past cast a long shadow over the present. Death does strange, and sometimes very dark, things to people, and secrets – not to mention bodies – rarely stay buried for long.
‘We cause the death of those we love, without meaning to’
The identity of the boy in the bomber jacket is finally revealed this week. He is the Virgil of the episode title, a teenage tearaway who lived in the town around the time of the dam’s bursting, and another victim of Milan’s murderous reign. Not that anyone knew he was dead – when Virgil returns 35 years later, he spots a tattered missing-person poster with his face on it. Last week, Virgil told Camille that his parents were “waiting” for him when he returned, but they certainly weren’t expecting him. Shocked at his reappearance, Virgil’s father shoos him from the house at gunpoint and, when Virgil returns later, he finds that his parents have killed themselves. “I thought they had accepted it, but no one can accept this,” he tells Camille.
The reactions of Virgil’s parents to his reappearance are reminiscent of old Monsieur Costa from series one, who responded to the return of Madame Costa by burning his house down – with her in it – and flinging himself off the dam. It’s becoming clearer as to why the dead are so keen to keep away from the living: being together does neither any good. To that end, Virgil encourages Camille to get Claire and a recovering Lena away from Revenants-ville, though warns her not to go with them. “They rejected you,” he says sternly.
‘They didn’t show any mercy. We shouldn’t show them any’
If the dead are a risk to the living, there’s a growing sense that the living pose just as much a threat to the dead. At the Helping Hand, Pierre continues to speak in hostile terms about the dead, who he views as nothing less than an existential threat. It’s not entirely clear what Pierre and his cronies are doing to Toni down in the basement – we see severe cuts on his neck – but it looks like Serge’s intervention came just at the right time. You fear for Audrey, who in returning to her parents, might be about to inadvertently put herself in Pierre’s clutches.
Also leaving the dead side of town is Adele and Simon’s baby. Having kidnapped the child last week, Simon this week repents and returns it to Adele. Why the sudden volte-face? Lucy had put the sprog in the custody of Simon’s own returnee mother and father, who are raising it as Simon. “They think the baby is you,” Lucy explains. If that wasn’t concerning enough, there’s a suggestion that Simon’s mum and dad died as part of a suicide pact. “We joined the circle”, they tell Simon. “We found the path”. Not ideal parents, it must be said. So now Adele has her son back, though both remain in danger. Simon tells her to skip town. “They’ll come for him”, he warns. But can she even leave with the child? She wasn’t able to when she was pregnant, remember.
‘We needed someone to blame. So, many people died’
Disappearing from view, for the time being at least, is Milan, who this week showed an unhelpful habit of returning again and again from the dead, until Lucy took matters into her own hands. After forgiving him for her murder, Lucy dumped Milan, tied to a brick, into the lake. Given that we’ve already seen Serge escape from the same lake – he was dragged in by unknown forces in series one – it’s unlikely that that’s the last we will see of Milan. Either way, his presence looms large over the town.
We learned more about his life, 35 years previously, from the old woman who was confronted by Julie. Milan was a cafe owner who, after the dam’s bursting depleted the town’s police force, took the law into his own hands. “He was a brave man. You could count on him,” the old lady tells Julie, before adding darkly. “We all felt lost. We needed someone to blame. So many people died.”
Among those who fell victim to Milan’s vigilante rule were, of course, the Lewanskis – Victor/Louis, his brother and his mother. As suspected, they died because the townspeople were afraid of Victor, and blamed him for the dam bursting. How could a child have caused that catastrophic incident? The answer surely comes from Victor’s drawings. Berg and Jerome find a tranche of them hidden behind a wardrobe at the house of Mr Lewanski - who, it seems, isn’t in a coma as a result of the attack 35 years before, but owing to something more recent. I couldn’t make out all of the people being depicted in all of the drawings, but some of them definitely pointed to recent fatalities – the incident at the Helping Hand, and the bus crash definitely featured. Did one of Victor’s drawings predict, or even cause, the storm that burst the dam? And what of those pictures behind the wardrobe? When were they drawn? We know that Victor returned before the bus crash. Was he in contact with his father back then? Theories please!
Notes and theories
- Meanwhile, the soldiers investigated the huge hole, which has a second entrance (and skeletons in it).
- Do we trust the (presumably dead) man Claire has befriended? He saved her from the horde, and provided medical supplies for Lena, but there’s something thoroughly creepy about him.
- Learning about the death of Simon’s parents reminded me that the cause of his own death was never fully resolved.
- Both Adele and Simon seem to suffer from strange hallucinations – Adele imagines Simon cradling the baby just before realising that he has run off with him, and Simon witness his parents killing themselves.
- Julie gave Mr Lewanski insulin injections several years before he fell comatose.
- Fantastic name for the hamlet that survived the flood: the Hand Of God. The Lewanskis lived there, and also Berg, whose father we learn has died. Who was he?
- Virgil is able to “sense other people’s secrets”. A useful skill, and in a similar ballpark to Lucy’s.
- Milan says that he killed Lucy “to save her”. He said something similar about Lena. What does he believe?
- Did anyone recognise anyone other than Milan in the photo in the old woman’s house? While we’re on the subject of the old woman, what sort of person wanders around their own house with an axe?!
- I’m somewhat amazed that Julie wasn’t suffering from hypothermia after her dip in the lake last week.
