SEASON 1, Ep. 5: Silohuettes
1 — Nathan Myers, Sara’s brother, serves food and water to six goats. You can see seven chickens in the background.
An afro-american resident bolts down the road toward the barn to warn Nathan that his sister Sara is at the clinic. Nathan sprints toward the clinic.
2 — Sara asks EMT Kristi to tell her brother she is asleep if he comes knocking. She doesn’t want him to worry about her and doesn’t want to talk to him. EMT Kristi notices Boyd at the door pacing back and forth while grabbing his shaking left hand. Boyd asks about Sara’s condition and whether she has ever suffered seizures. EMT Kristi says Sara has never had seizures before. Boyd points out that Ethan and Sara now have both had seizures without a previous history of having them. He asks whether she thinks both patients have a physical reaction to this place. She doesn’t know without an MRI machine, but Kristi responds: “Look, Boyd, if you asked me this six months ago, I’d have said anything that we’ve seen here was impossible.”
[This suggests Kristi arrived in the town 6 months ago.]Kristi confronts Boyd about his obvious hand tremor. She wants to see him tomorrow to check his hand. Boyd says no need. He already knows what the diagnosis is.
[Either Boyd learned his diagnosis from a doctor before they arrived in the Town 2 years ago, or it's hereditary and he recognizes what his parent suffered a time ago]3 — Jim gives Tabitha and Ethan a Sharpie and brings them to the hallway to write on the wall. Tabitha talked at the Diner about figuring things out together. They are going to play a game. They are going to engage in problem-solving by asking questions. This will help them visualize and figure out what they know and what they don’t. It’ll be like telling a story, he says. The first question: “Where are we? There’s where we begin.”
4 — Nathan is at his home. Looking worried in the face at the bloodied dress on the table. The same dress Sara wore the night she killed Tobey and let the Infirmary door open that night.
5 — Sara stands up from the clinic bed and opens the drawer. She looks at the same scalpel she used to kill Tobey. She remembers the words on her skin at the Diner: “Kill the boy.” She grabs her left arm as if remembering the pain. This means she is struggling with whether to grab the scalpel to kill Ethan or not.
Kristi returns to the room and brings a cup of tea for Sara. She says Kenny and Kristi make a cute couple. Kristi responds they are just friends. Sara asks why. He loves her. Kristi responds it is complicated because she has somebody at home. Kristi thinks her fiancé Mariel might be still waiting for her return. Kristi wonders if she might think she abandoned her. Kristi asks Sara if she has someone back home. She responds: “No. I was with someone, but he wasn’t. It’s better that he’s not around anymore. It’s just me and Nathan now. He’s all I got in the world. Before we got here, things weren’t really very good for me. Nathan was the one who saved me.”
[This is cryptic, but she doesn't explain.]Sara Myers diverges from talking about her life and asks Kristi: “I wonder sometimes… about this place, what it means… why we’re here. If someone came up to you right now and said, “Do this one bad thing and everyone gets to go home,” would you do it?”
[This is in reference to Sara feeling pain in her left arm, and suddenly seeing the words being written: “Kill the boy” while she was at the Diner. The viewer didn't get to listen to the voices. Now we know what she was asked to do in exchange for what.]6 — Jim is looking at the hallway wall. Tabitha and Ethan are exhausted on the sofa. They have been busy writing questions and theories about this place. The image is blurry, but a few things can be read: “Tree/crows, the road, vortex? Dimensional Portal? The Earth map has question marks on South America and Africa as if they think they might have teleported to any of those continents through a dimensional portal. Creatures: Where do they go? day/night. Do they sleep? Alien? Biological? Real? Do they feed?”
Tabitha asked Jim if he figured it out. He responds he did and the answer is 12. She laughs.
Jim recaps: “Everyone enters from different parts of the country, on different roads and different places. They see the same road, the same tree, the same crows.
Tabitha says every townsfolk asks the same questions over and over. How does writing them on the wall make any difference? Jim says: “Because there are plenty of things in the world that don’t make sense. Something here is missing. We just can’t see it yet. But we will.”
Tabitha says: “Well, there’s a question we haven’t asked.” Jim gives her the Sharpie, but she refuses to write it down. He asks why. She responds: “Because I don’t want to know the answer.” [cryptic]
7 — Julie is writing a list of everyone that might be missing them in the world: her grandparents and friends. No boyfriend or girlfriend. Fatima asks about her list, then storms out saying enough about this we need to have fun. Fatima talks to Ellis and informs him Julie is making the list. They need to show her the Brundles.
8 — Jade walks across the road pondering special relativity and other ideas to explain this place. Jade mentions Klein (Oskar Klein) and Hardy’s (Lucien Hardy). Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen.
[In physics, the Kaluza–Klein theory (KK theory) is a classical 1920s unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism built around the idea of a fifth dimension beyond the common 4D of space and time and considered an important precursor to string theory. Hardy's is a reference to Hardy's Paradox. The latter refers to the 1935 Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox paper titled: "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?" Einstein wasn't satisfied with the EPR paper and revealed most of it was written by Rosen. Something mentioned in Einstein's argument against the EPR paper was the quantum nonlocality outside reality.]
9 — Trudy asks Jade why he has a CB Radio. He responds it helps him think. She says he looks cuter awake. That she watched him during his sleep when he arrived. She flirts and says: “Too bad you chose to live in the Town. I’d have rode you like an alabaster dragon.” Either Jade is too deep in his relativity thoughts or he is gay. He didn’t even flinch at the sexual advance.
10 — Jade enters the Gasoline Station and discovers it is a Bar. Jade takes a drink from Bartender Tom and asks the people in the bar why the hell they are just sitting there instead of trying to figure out what this place is — but he couldn’t finish the talk after tasting the drink and spitting it out. “What is this shit?” Tom responds: “Just consider it your poor man’s potato vodka.” [lol]
[Note: David Alpay (Jade) is a voice actor in Diablo IV]
Jade says: “You know, you guys are like rats in a maze, sitting there, contentedly nibbling on your cheese. This [place] is a paradox. That’s the problem. The immediate question is, how do we get home, right? How do we get out of here? Cause unless we know where “here” is, we can’t get out of here. It’s like hitting a bullseye with your eyes closed, right? You’re just throwing them blind! You don’t even fucking know where the fucking target is!”
Tom: “So let me guess, you’re gonna be the guy who figures it all out.”
Jade: “You’re goddamn right I am. People like me, we design the maze. We place the cheese. I don’t know what you did before you got here, but I just sold a company for an obscene amount of money based on a quantum computing algorithm with the potential to– [sighs] I’m not supposed to be here.”
Jade: “To solve the paradox, you gotta understand the paradox. You gotta identify it. You gotta frame it.”
Tom: “Schrodinger’s cat.” [reference here]
Tom taught Intro to Philosophy at USC (University of South California). Tom poses that they are the cat. This place is the box. To their family and friends in the real world, they don’t know if they are alive or dead. In the real world back home, they are both things at the same time.
Tom says he doesn’t know a thing about computers. But if Jade is so smart, he could make the radio broadcast. If the cat turns on the radio, he can be damn sure the people outside the box are at least going to know the cat is still alive. Jade is stunned by the idea, and gets lost in deep thought.
11 — Sara walks down the road with the Matthews’ house in the background. She inspects her pocket and reveals the scalpel.
12 — Tabitha changes Ethan’s bandages. He only feels sore. He’s recovering well. Tabitha wonders he is healing so fast.
[Note: This is implying the place might be doing something to accelerate his healing. Unless “Time” is passing differently in this place, resulting in her perception that he healed faster than it would naturally.]
Ethan responds he thinks this place is special (referring to his fast healing). He knows it tries to hurt people, but maybe it tries to help people too. Maybe that can be one of the questions on the wall: “Is there anyone trying to help?”
Jay announces Ethan has a visit. Sara and Ethan step outside to the Merry-Go-Round with seats (Radical Rotator equipment in playgrounds).
13 — Nathan enters the Church to talk to Father Khatri. He doesn’t find him.
14 — Ellis, Fatima, and Julie jump into a pond. [I guess this is the Brundles mentioned by Fatima earlier]. Fatima tells Julie if she closes her eyes and listens to the ambient, it is as if they were back home in the real world. Julie wonders how Fatima is so positive. Fatima responds “Well, I didn’t come to the U.S. until I was 11. I grew up in a small village in Iran with my parents and two older brothers. My father, he was a very outspoken cleric, which wasn’t always the most popular thing to be at the time. One day, it was my birthday. Actually, we were getting ready to go see my uncle. These men showed up. They were angry, shouting. I remember my mother told me to hide. But I was so confused because we were just laughing. My father had told this story about– [silence] He was a good storyteller. I think that’s what made him such an effective preacher. Anyway, I could tell my mother was afraid. My brothers had run to the door and now they were shouting too, and my mother just kept saying ‘Hide, hide.’ But I just stood there, I couldn’t move, because it was all so strange. I mean, we were just laughing so hard. It was going to be the best birthday ever. The sun was so bright coming in through the door that my father became a silhouette when they dragged him outside. And then, there was this pop, like a firecracker, and the silhouette fell down. The point is, there are always going to be monsters in the world. It doesn’t matter where you are. But I promised myself I would never let them scare the life out of me.
[Odd. In the series, every resident who has visions or is sensitive to the place seeing ghosts or having seizures comes from a storyteller background.]
15 — Ethan asks Sara how long she has lived in this place. She responds just a few months. Ethan says: “his “My Mom and Dad are trying to figure out where we are so we can go home. That’s what the Cromenockle would do. Sara asks what a Cromenockle is. Tabitha interrupts and asks Ethan not to force Sara to sit on the filthy Go-Merry-Around. Ethan asks permission to go with Sara to see the goats and chickens at the barn. Tabitha agrees and says she is coming. Sara abruptly interrupts her to say they don’t need to come. They should continue doing whatever they are doing and she can care for him at the barn.
16 — Inside the Matthews’ home, Jim walks back and forth with his Sharpie. Overlooking the hallway wall’s writings.
[I can read more stuff here.
Talismans: How do they work? Where did the talismans come from? How many talismans? Can we make new talismans?
Creatures: Can they be killed? Does light kill them? Why are they so slow?
The Town: Old buildings - Root Cellar, Church, Etc.
Livestock: Why don't creatures kill/eat them? More?? (Meaning are there more animals out there?).
Far to the bottom-right, I can barely make out "Gasoline: How much?" I can't understand the next word. Maybe it says "Stored?"]
17 — Boyd visits his wife’s graveyard. The cross reveals she was named Abby Stevens. He talks to Abby about what has happened the past few days: Meagan and Lauren’s deaths, etc. He says his hand tremor began a few weeks ago: “Same way it started with my Dad, which means the clock is officially ticking.”
[The hand tremor is a symptom associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), and dystonia. But the way Boyd says the clock is officially ticking suggests the harshest culprit: Parkinson's Disease.]
18 — Nathan Myers, Sara’s brother, finally finds Father Khatri at some sort of ancient circle of ritual stones, meditating. Nathan asks about the rules of confession. If it stays between them, especially if it is something very bad.
19 — Tabitha and Sara are in the barn showing Ethan the goat Alma. They talk about this place. Sara mentions they thankfully have the talismans. Before them, people used to hide in the forest hoping they would survive the night. Sara suggests that Tabitha should learn the location of these hiding places. One of them is inside the barn. She asks Tabitha to follow her inside the barn.
[This is a lie. Sara came up with the idea of the barn hoping Tabitha would let her take Ethan away to be alone with him. The scalpel in her pocket is a clue that her intention is to follow the voices' command to "Kill the Boy."]20 — Father Khatri tells Nathan he should have come to him much sooner to confess what he knew about Sara. She killed Tobey and then opened the Infirmary door at night to cover the crime so people would think the monsters killed him. Nathan grabs Father Khatri and reminds him he gave his word that the confession stayed between both of them. Nathan doesn’t want his sister punished to go into the box. Father Khatri just wants to make sure the people are alright. Nathan says she should be back at the Diner. Both head toward the town.
21 — Sara and Tabitha enter the barn. Deep in the barn, Sara pulls a fake wall that works as a small door.
Tabitha: “People used to spend the night in here?”
Sara pushes Tabitha inside the dark room, seals the door behind her, and bars it with a barn tool.
22 — Nathan enters the DIner calling for Sara. Bartender Tom tells him she is not here. He saw her with the Matthews lady and her boy heading to the barn.
23 — Sara enters the corral and approaches Ethan. The camera angle reveals the scalpel on Sara’s hand, which she hides behind her.
Sara asks Ethan to approach her. She has to tell him something. What’s about to happen will save everyone. Just like in one of his stories. Ethan will be the hero. The camera view zooms in on the hand holding the scalpel behind her.
Sara grabs Ethan and places a chokehold to swing the scalpel across his throat. Nathan asks: “Sarah, what are you doing?”
Sara responds: “This is how we go home. They [the voices] told me, this was the last one, then everyone gets to go home!”
[Later in the series, it is revealed there were seven children sacrificed but one escaped and a ritual was not consummated. I assume the voices want Ethan dead to complete the ritual. But this is revealed much later. Hey, you clicked a link to an article with Spoilers in the title.]
Ethan kicks Sara’s leg. Amid her sudden pain and surprise, she releases Ethan’s hand. Nathan yells: “Ethan, run!”
Nathan lunges at Sara from behind and grabs her right arm. He attempts to take away the scalpel from her hand. Sara struggles to free herself from his grasp and rotates clockwise. As she did, she accidentally slashed Nathan’s throat with the scalpel.
[At this point, we can agree that the jukebox playing songs by itself without any interaction is connected or announce upcoming deaths.]
24 — Father Khatri witnesses as Nathan falls to the ground, in his last throes for air as he bleeds to death.
25 — Ethan keeps running and finds Julie, Ellis, and Fatima returning from the pond.
26 — Screams are heard in the barn. People run toward the barn to find out what the tumult is about, including Jim Matthews. He knows Ethan and Tabitha were there. Jim hears Tabitha’s screams and knocking inside the barn. He removes the tool blocking the dark room’s door.
Tabitha is desperately searching for Ethan. Julie, Fatima, and Ellis arrive to the barn. Ethan carried in Ellis’ arms. Tabitha hugs Ethan. Jim hugs Julie.
EMT Kristi comes to Nathan’s corpse. It’s too late. No breathing. No heartbeat. Kristi looks at Boyd. Boyd looks at Father Khatri. A tragedy.
27. Father Khatri tells Boyd what happened. Jim demands to know where Sara is. Father Khatri says she ran into the woods. If she returns before night, they will handle her. If she doesn’t then it’s handled. (meaning the monsters will kill her)
Jim is very angry. Sara came to his home. Played with her kid. He yells at Boyd and Father Khatri. They sold this Town community as a family. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Jim leaves. Both look at each other with shame.
28. Julie tells her parents that she found Ethan running toward the Colony House. She brought him home. Jim thanks her. She did good. Julie takes Ethan upstairs. Tabitha meditates briefly. Then stands up and asks Jim for a Sharpie. She needs to write something down.
Tabitha: “Ask every question, right?” She writes: “Did we survive the crash?”
29 — EMT Kristi shares with Boyd her conversation with Sara. About bad things she would do for everyone to go home. Kristi didn’t realize Sara would try to kill Ethan. Boyd says it is not her fault. Kristi cries. It was nice to spend the night with Sara and talk and have a good time. Kristi rationalizes that if Sara took the scalpel from her Infirmary then it is her fault. If not hers, whose?
Boyd responds Kristi didn’t bring people to this place and didn’t plant thoughts into Sara. Kristi simply does the best she can, and a few days ago saved a boy’s life and she will save more lives before this is all done.
Like clockwork… the jukebox plays a song by itself: “If I had a Boat” by Lyle Lovett.
Boyd responds to the jukebox playing this song that he has just gotten the sign he looked for — (after he visited his wife’s graveyard.)
| FROM TV SERIES RECAP NAVIGATION | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEASON 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| SEASON 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| SEASON 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
