‘Don’t go in the tunnel’
Much of tonight’s episode, Esther, felt like The Returned on autopilot: slow-building, ruminative, but relatively light on dramatic moments. But even when The Returned feels ever so slightly underbaked, its creators still find a way of dropping a revelation with whopping great implications. Just who are you, Victor/Louis, and where – or perhaps when – have you come from?
‘You must help us’
For once, we get a flashback that doesn’t take place 35 years ago: instead we’re whisked a decade back into the past, to witness the death of Esther, a bank worker and victim of Serge’s serial-killing spree. Why are we revisiting another of the horrible underpass murders? Well, this one is different because it features Victor, who warns Esther of her fate just as Serge pounces. Already we know that Victor returned before the others – he was responsible for the coach crash that killed Camille, I’m sure you’ll recall, but this is the earliest we’ve seen him pop up in undead form.
Or at least that’s what we thought, until an ailing Mr Lewanski reveals something of a shocker to Julie. Victor isn’t his son; instead he wandered in from the night and into the Lewanskis’ house and made himself part of the family, just as he did with Julie. The ramifications of this are, of course, enormous, and the questions many. Just who are Victor’s parents? What time period is he from? When did he die? And after he was shot by Pierre 35 years ago, did he simply “return” all over again? I think it wouldn’t be too much of a leap to guess that Mr Lewanski secretly took care of Victor in the years after the break-in, making sure not to reveal his identity to the rest of the townspeople (he hid Victor’s drawings behind a wardrobe, remember). Beyond that, I’m thoroughly stumped about Victor’s true identity.
Back in the present, the little tyke is still on the trail of Julie, guided by his terrifying hallucinations. We get more of those this week, including one of Lucy telling him “You must help us” just as Julie hurls herself into the abyss. (Presumably Lucy, clued-up leader of the undead that she is, knows a fair bit more about who/what Victor is than we do.) Victor’s having less luck finding Julie outside of his hallucinations, particularly now he has been found by Pierre’s goons, Frederic and Lucho. Their decision to take out Costa was an unwise one: Lucho, the one who shot her, takes his life shortly after by leaping from the high-rise window, a decision which you can’t help but think Victor – who has history in making people do things against their will – had a hand in.
So now Victor, providing he comes quietly, is off to the Helping Hand to join Audrey. We get a glimpse of the unpleasantness Pierre and co have been inflicting on their latest project, with Audrey’s face covered in severe cuts. (“We must find their weak point”, Pierre says, ominously.) Sandrine’s belief that the person in the basement isn’t actually her daughter but some sort of subhuman doppleganger was always likely to waver once she saw her in pain, and Sandrine ends the episode by forcing her way into Audrey’s makeshift cell. An escape is on the cards.
‘It’s like you’ve been given a second chance’
Meanwhile, Serge and Toni are still entertaining an unmanageable number of houseguests in the form of the silent women, so they attempt to thin their numbers by returning one, the aforementioned Esther, to her family. It proves harder than they envisaged, mainly because Esther would rather return to the tunnel where Serge killed her. His apology finally breaks Ester’s spell of muteness - will Serge have to do the same to the rest of the silent women? – and she asks where “the little boy” is. Why does she want to find Victor, and might it have something to do with Lucy’s request for help in his dream?
Milan’s talking too, though not in a way that any of the military, who freed him from his watery prison, can make sense of. “I lost her. I love her. I never told her,” he says, presumably referring to Lucy, who he uttered similar sentiments to a few weeks back. Is this a kinder, gentler Milan we’re seeing? I wouldn’t bet on it.
‘If you love her, why kill yourself?’
Also resurfacing, though looking a little worse for wear than Milan, is Thomas. The discovery of him in the forest, rotten and with a pole through his chest, means that all the police are now accounted for (and ruling out the prospect of Laure having survived, it seems). Adele goes to visit Thomas “to feel his presence” but doesn’t get a chance to glimpse the body. Instead she’s confronted by what is probably best described as an apparition of her former husband, who tells her that Simon was responsible for his unhappy demise. This seems unlikely, though not impossible, which makes me wonder if this apparition is some manifestation of the darkest corners of Adele’s psyche, the part that mistrusts her former lover.
Adele has good reason to mistrust Simon, if Lucy’s words are anything to go by. “No one could hurt Adele like you did,” she tells him during a confrontation at the church, pointing out that his suicide is a clear sign that he never really cared for her. Lucy surely knows the truth behind Simon’s death, having presumably read his thoughts as she slept with him, but is she telling the truth about his suicide? When exactly are we going to find out the circumstances behind Simon’s death?
Over in the village of the undead, there’s concern about the wellbeing of Claire. Camille reveals that she didn’t actually get beaten unconscious by the horde earlier in the season, but instead beat herself into unconsciousness. “They surrounded us but didn’t come near,” Camille says. Did the horde cause Claire to imagine the attack? Whatever the case may be, it seems a good time for the family to leave deadsville. It’s a stroke of luck then that Jerome and Berg turn up just in time to help them make their escape. As the group ventures on to the street they come to face to face, once again, with the horde.
Notes and theories
- If Claire hallucinated the horde attacking her, could she have done the same with Virgil when she caught him with Camille? He seemed to have a very large knife, but when the camera cut away it was suddenly gone.
- We know that Serge died seven years before coming back, and the murder of Esther happened 10 years ago, so Serge’s reign of terror must have lasted at least three years.
- The water is finally going down in the lake. Meanwhile Berg and Jerome encounter another big hole on the outskirts of the forest.
- There was a thick layer of frost at Serge and Toni’s cabin, which suggests it must be the beginnings of winter in Returned-ville. But then, do we ever get the sense of what the seasons are in this strange place?
