The town
The Returned’s first series concluded with a dramatic stand-off between the dead and the living. The horde – the rogue group of “revenants” who had, for much of the series, lurked in the shadows – finally made their move, demanding that all of the revenants who had been dwelling in the town be handed over to them. That prompted a showdown between the horde and the town’s gendarmes, which, in the typically opaque manner of The Returned, we didn’t actually get to witness. Instead we retreated behind the shutters of the Helping Hand shelter with the townspeople as the battle commenced. When the shutters were raised the next morning, neither the horde nor the gendarmes were anywhere to be seen, and even more perplexingly, the town itself had been completely flooded. The source of the water seems to be the town’s reservoir, which had begun to mysteriously drain. That is not the town’s only mystery: it also seems that some people are unable to leave it, finding themselves driving in purgatorial circles if they attempt it.
Camille, Lena, Jerome and Claire
Camille, the teenage revenant who was killed when the school coach she was travelling in careered over the edge of a cliff, spent much of the show’s first series coming to terms with her arrested development; her twin sister Lena had carried on ageing in the four years Camille was away and is now four years older than her. In the final episode of the first season, Camille disappeared off into the night with the horde, accompanied by her mother Claire, who, despite not being dead herself, was unwilling to let her daughter join the unruly mob without some parental supervision. Very sensible of her. Lena and Jerome (Camille and Lena’s father, who has separated from Claire) remained in the Helping Hand.
Adele, Simon, Thomas and Chloe
Adele is carrying the unborn (and possibly undead) child of her one-time fiance Simon. He apparently killed himself shortly before the pair were due to get married, and then returned from the dead to woo her all over again a decade later. Thomas, Adele’s current beau and leader of the town’s gendarmes, quite understandably tried to put a stop to this wooing, even going as far as shooting Simon dead (it didn’t work – Simon simply “returned” again), but was ultimately unable to prevent the pair procreating. Because of the nature of Adele’s pregnancy, the horde demanded that she join their ranks but Thomas refused to let her go, prompting the aforementioned showdown between the dead and the living. Both Thomas and Simon are missing. Adele and her daughter Chloe (who is also Simon’s child, though she was conceived while he was still alive) stayed behind at the Helping Hand.
Victor, Julie, Mme Costa Laure and Pierre
Creepy child revenant Victor has also joined the horde’s ranks, accompanied by the revenant Madame Costa and Julie, the nurse who has been taking care of him since he returned. (Julie, who was attacked and left for dead by serial killer Serge, spent a fair portion of The Returned’s first season wondering whether she too was a revenant, so joining them shouldn’t prove too much of a culture shock.) Laure, Julie’s estranged partner, was among the police officers who vanished. Pierre, meanwhile, stayed with his flock at the Helping Hand. A former burglar and one of the men responsible for Victor’s death 30 years earlier, he has since repented, though still gives off the sense of having an ulterior motive. Just what does he know about the revenants?
Serge and Toni
Serge was a wrong ’un when he was alive, and a wrong ’un when he returned from the grave, stabbing and killing Lake Pub barmaid Lucy. He seemed to have gone for good when he was dragged to the bottom of the reservoir by mysterious forces, but returned at the Helping Hand, just in time to witness the Victor-assisted suicide of his brother Toni, the man who killed him in the first place. Of course, in this strange place death doesn’t necessarily mean the end. Can we expect to see Toni again in the second series? And what of Serge and Toni’s dead mother, who appeared fleetingly in the first series? Was she an apparition? Or something more corporeal?
Lucy
Barmaid Lucy had taken on the role of leader of the horde at the end of last series, despite being a relative newcomer to the group. Certainly, she seems to have a greater grasp of who or what the revenants are than most, but the issue of her own background remains something of a mystery. We know nothing of her life before she moved to the town, nor the origins of her peculiar gift, which allows her to see the deceased friends or relatives of the person she is having sex with.
