Season 3, Ep. 3: Mouse Trap
1 — The voice on the phone says: “Daddy, are you there?”
Jim answers: “You are not my son.”
The voice asks: “Why did you let Mommy go? Why did you want her to die? Is it because you didn’t love her anymore?”
Jim asks what do you want? The voice says: “To help. You need help, Daddy. You should be watching Julie and Ethan. You shouldn’t let them play outside so close to dark. Daddy, are you there?”
Jim drops the phone to the ground and heads out in search of Julie and Ethan in the barn.
2 — Boyd walks along the road ringing his bell to alert everyone to go to their houses. Night time is nigh.
Jim exits Kenny’s house and walks along the road calling for Julie and Ethan. He finally finds them by the stable feeding the animals.
Jim asks them both to come home right now. Ethan says they are not done yet. He insists now louder.
Boyd shouts at Jim asking if he’s okay. Jim says he is talking to his kids, rejecting Boyd’s concern rudely.
Both kids stop feeding the animals and walk in front of Jim, who escorts them back to the house.
Boyd asks if the kids are okay. Jim responds yes, and apologizes for his attitude. Jim asks if things are getting worse around here. Boyd stays silent. Jim reads that as a yes and leaves.
Boyd resumes ringing his bell along the road.
3 — In Camden, Maine, Henry wakes up on his sofa to the loud breaking of glass. Tabitha is in the kitchen. She dropped a glass. Henry asks her to be careful not to cut herself, but startling her causes that to happen. She stops collecting the glass pieces and opens the faucet to cleanse her finger’s wound.
Henry asks if Tabitha spent all the night in the basement viewing those paintings. She should sleep. Tabitha responds that she needs answers.
She thinks there is something in those paintings that she might be missing.
Henry finds bandaids in the cabinet and helps Tabitha unwrap one. He asks if this Boy in White lured her to the top of the lighthouse and then pushed her out the window. Tabitha says the Boy in White didn’t lure her there. She went to the lighthouse because of the children locked in the tower.
Tabitha explains Victor took her to the Tree of Bottles where the hole in the tree teleported her inside the Lighthouse — which is the tower where the children are locked. Victor said his Mom, Miranda, had gone off to save the children as well the night she died.
Henry says it is ok. She can say it. The night she died. Henry accepts the fact that Miranda died a long time ago. He thought all of them had (Victor and Eloise).
Tabitha hears the clinking of glass outside. She walks in that direction inside the house, curious about it. Tabitha asks Henry if he can hear that. Henry asks: “The bottles? Of course, I do. They are hanging on a tree in the backyard. Miranda used to call it the bottle tree.”
4 — At the Colony House, Victor walks from the outside wall toward the nearby tree, counting his steps and looking at one of his sketches to guide his counting. In Season 1, Victor usually counts the steps between the house and the trees to measure them often in search of changes. He told Ethan in Season 1 or 2 that the trees are moving closer to the Colony House, and that’s bad. As you might remember, Victor hadn’t visited the Tree of Bottles in a long time, and when he arrived at the spot where he last saw it, the Tree of Bottles was no longer there. It moved a few yards from where it used to be. Victor begins to dig the ground beneath the second tree.
5 — In the Sheriff’s station, Ellis asks Boyd how he even knows that this is possible.
Boyd responds: “I don’t but the talismans, they keep those things from getting into the houses. Maybe it can keep them from getting out of something.”
Ellis says they are not talking about capturing a stray dog or a coyote. They don’t know anything about these monsters.
Boyd says maybe it is time for them to learn more about the monsters. They can’t just sit around playing it safe.
Ellis scolds his Dad. He spent the other night in the forest and it almost got him killed. Then he almost gets everyone killed with the music box and dying in their sleep.
Boyd counters with Kenny and Jim sleeping the other night in the woods and came back with food to feed everyone. The point is it won’t always work out the way they want it to. That doesn’t mean they can’t take risks to learn more about the monsters and how to go on the offensive.
Donna enters the Sheriff’s station. She asks what the fuck is going on after she sees both go silent. Ellis reveals their discussion about capturing one of the monsters. They capture one and make it talk.
Donna gets angry. How will they make them talk? By torturing them? They have shot those monsters with shotguns point blank and all they do is smile. They are not human.
Boyd says Kristi performed an autopsy and found out they were human at some point. Boyd wants to do something.
Donna asks how he plans to do that. Boyd responds he is working on it. Donna says then work harder. Boyd looks like a teapot about to release steam and turns around and sits with his back facing Donna.
Donna says she also misses Tian-Chen, but she doesn’t want to see Boyd go out there to take his pound of flesh and get killed because of some half-baked plan. She scolds Ellis and warns him not to encourage his Dad. Ellis got a baby on the way.
6 — In the Colony House, Clara cooks a large piece of meat to feed some of the residents. Fatima enters the kitchen and asks about the meat. Clara offers some, but Fatima rejects it. She is filling a cup, but suddenly the smell of the meat makes her almost retch. She leaves the kitchen and heads outside the house.
Fatima is seen walking on the snow toward the greenhouse. There is a tall pile of rotten vegetables a few yards from the greenhouse.
She looks around to make sure no one is spying on her, then grabs two rotten vegetables and eats them. She grabs a third and fills her mouth eating from the remaining one, too.
A blurred figure moves along tending to the laundry on the rope. Tillie sees Fatima next to the pile of rotten vegetables, chewing something. Then sees Fatima grab a fourth rotten vegetable from the pile. Fatima turns her face around and both stare at each other. Both stand still. Seconds later, Fatima drops the rotten vegetables back to the pile and turns around to leave.
7 — Kenny, Kristi, Dale, Jade, and Roger arrive at the old settlement in the woods. They encounter the effigies. Dale looks at the effigies and says that’s terrifying. Kristi can’t believe people actually lived out in this part of the woods.
Jade shares his point of view from a scientific perspective. The position of those effigies makes him think whoever lived in this old establishment might have used them the same way they used the talismans. As a form of protection against whatever is in this part of the woods, warding off evil spirits. Dale responds: “Oh, that’s even more comforting.”
Kenny says that happened a long time ago. What matters is now. They have people back in town who are hungry now.
The previous day, Kenny and Jim gathered as much vegetables as they could from around the lake’s shore and stored them in the rightmost shack.
Kenny asks Jade, Dale, and Roger to collect the vegetables in the shack. The rest of them to follow him to the lake to forage for anything else they can find.
8 — In Kenny’s house, Jim serves food to Ethan in the kitchen. Jim says he cooked the best he could with what they had left. The good thing is when Kenny and the others come back with more food, they will be off the rations regime. Julie enters the kitchen. Jim says he made some lunch and offers her some. She says no.
Ethan asks who is going to bury his Mom, Tabitha. Jim scolds Ethan not to talk like that. Ethan wonders if her body is just lying on the ground somewhere in the woods with bugs and spiders until she rots. Jim won’t have any more of that.
Ethan persists and asks what if someone finds her and can’t recognize it is Tabitha because all they find are bones? Jim loses it, slams the casserole against the stove, and cusses out.
Ethan stands up and runs away to his bedroom. Jim apologizes. Julie stands up and leaves after saying: “Really gunning for parent of the year, huh?”
The telephone rings.
Jim picks up the phone and quickly hangs up.
9 — In Camden, Maine, Henry shows Tabitha the Bottle Tree in the backyard. He says Miranda also built sculpture installations all over town, but the Bottle Tree was her favorite. Henry asks Tabitha about the Bottle Tree she found in that place. If this one in their backyard was similar to the one she described to him.
Tabitha says no. It was different. Tabitha walks around this tree and explains the one that Victor showed to her had an opening inside the tree. One that you can step in. It would just take you somewhere.
Henry asks if she means something like teleporting. Tabitha says it doesn’t matter. This tree in the backyard has no opening.
Henry says this Bottle Tree is not the original. Miranda created installations all over the place around Camden, like he said earlier. Henry says the original Bottle Tree Miranda created is in a park located a few towns over. That’s where they ingested the acid drug together. That’s the tree where all these visions of Miranda’s started.
Tabitha asks how far the tree is. Henry responds 30-40 minutes from his house.
10 — Boyd uses a saw to cut wood planks. Father Khatri asks Boyd if this is some part of his nefarious plan. If he thinks he can trap one of those monsters. Boyd has lived in this place for a year and a half. He’s lasted long by any standards. Kept most people alive who otherwise would have died. Why change things now?
Boyd responds lot of things have happened in the past few days. Father Khatri taunts him at least he has a solid plan. Lure one of the monsters into a house. Put a talisman on the outside of the door to trap the monster in.
Father Khatri says Boyd can’t see what’s staring at him right in the face. The monsters said that they wanted to break Boyd. Change him. So far so good, because the Boyd he knew would never do something so stupid like try to trap one of the monsters.
Boyd says the Boyd he knew got Father Khatri killed.
Father Khatri says Boyd should get off that cross every now and then.
Boyd says fuck you, man.
Father Khatri says he died because he was trying to help people. Same as Tian-Chen. “You have any idea how arrogant it is to diminish that sacrifice by making this all about you? But I like your fancy art. It’s nice!”
Boyd says what he is building is a Memory Board. The graveyard has no markers, no headstones, just bodies. Probably bodies all over the place. They should have a place for their names. Father Khatri’s. Tian-Chen’s. Boyd thinks better when he works with his hands. “Leave me the fuck alone!”
Boyd places the Memory Board on the wall inside the church.
11 — Sara tries to put the Christmas figurine that her brother Nathan gifted her years ago. Kenny slammed that figurine against the ground, shattering it, a few days ago. Sara wants to glue each of the pieces she could find.
Someone interrupts her work, knocking on the door. It is Victor.
Sara asks Victor to come inside her house. He asks if she has a bedspread. They need to build a fort. Then he will tell a story.
12 — In the Colony House, Fatima fixes the bed sheet. Tillie knocks on her door. Fatima refuses because she’s not feeling well (a lie). Tillie says behind the closed door that she used to lick eggshells when she was pregnant with her first kid. Tillie couldn’t stand the sight or the smell of her favorite foods. But crack an egg and leave it on the counter, and she would lick the inside of the eggshell. She would even sneak them out of the garbage when her husband wasn’t looking.
Fatima opened the door.
Tillie continues. It happened in her second trimester. The whim lasted 3 weeks, then stopped mysteriously as it began. Whatever is going on with Fatima eating the rotten vegetables, Tillie promises it will pass.
Fatima says: “Yea, maybe.” Then breaks into tears. Tillie comforts Fatima. It’s okay.
Fatima says she can’t talk to anyone about this sickening whim. She thinks the people here will think she is crazy like Sara, and Ellis is so happy and working so hard to be encouraging that she doesn’t want to scare him with the news that she is craving rotten vegetables.
She doesn’t want to tell him how scared she is about the baby. What if there’s something wrong with the baby?
Tillie says every first-time mother has these feelings.
Fatima reveals to Tillie that she is not supposed to be a Mom. She was told she was sterile. Yet, somehow, in this place, she managed to conceive.
13 — In Camden, Maine, Henry and Tabitha enter his car and buckle up. Henry turns on the car and music starts playing in the cassette player: “Blue.”
Henry says it does that sometimes. That cassette has been stuck in there for years. “Blue” was Miranda’s favorite song.
<In Season 1, Ep. 4: A Rock and a Farway -- the song "Blue" by Joni Mitchell plays in the jukebox at the Diner. That is the scene when Boyd eats dinner with the Matthews for the first time since their arrival, and seconds later, Sara reels in pain and sees the words: "Kill the boy" carved on her left arm, then collapses to the ground with a seizure.>Tabitha is distracted. Henry asks what’s going on. Tabitha says “Blue” is her and Jim’s favorite song. Henry says: “Small world.”
14 — In the old settlement deep in the woods, by the lake, Dale, Roger, and a female resident sort vegetables in their baskets and bags. Dale complained that Donna knew exactly who was gonna draw the short straws to assign the task to come to this place to collect the food. Dale yells at Jade for not helping at all.
Jade is busy with his notebook of symbols and drinking from his flask. The three of them say Jade has been losing his shit lately and he is dead weight.
Jade says if they want to whisper they should actually try to whisper. He can hear them. Jade stands up and tries to help, but Dale continues to criticize Jade. This causes Jade to leave the old settlement and go alone into the woods — a lot of snow on the ground. Jade takes a piss by a tree to relieve himself.
Jade notices next to him a rock painted red. He removes the snow from the top, then turns and sees another larger rock painted red as well. Further, he sees a dead map hanging from a tree. A large nail impaling his head to a tree. This man is not from the Town or the Colony House.
Jade approaches the corpse, and suddenly the man grabs Jade’s jacket. Jade is horrified and asks to be released. Dale walks toward Jade, who looks like strangling himself with no one around. Jade snaps out of the vision and angrily leaves the place. He’s had it.
15 — Kenny uses a scissor tool to cut blueberries from a small tree. Kristi approaches him and says his bag is full. She changes the subject and says she can only imagine what he must be going through after Tian-Chen’s death. She doesn’t know what magic words to say to him.
Kenny interrupts her and asks where is her bag. Did she come to play nursemaid or to work and bring food to the town? She says she came along because she cares about Kenny.
He says that’s great, why don’t she care about him while she does her fucking job collecting food resources. They only have two hours left of daylight.
They are interrupted by some turmoil nearby. Jade and Dale are returning from the woods, and Jade is manic. He wants to get the fuck out of this old settlement and return to town. Kenny says they are too far from the town and he won’t make it before nightfall. He should stay in the old settlement with them.
Jade says he played along with the short straw people comes to help gather food thing, and he sincerely wanted to help but he doesn’t like this old settlement and he is getting back to town. Kristi stops Jade. She says he won’t make it to the town in time, and she doesn’t even think he will make it to the stone hut where the talismans came from.
Kenny says they have shelter here in the old settlement and a talisman for protection. If they go back to town empty-handed, people will starve.
Jade says good luck and leaves. Kenny tells Kristi if Jade hurries he will probably make it back to the talisman hut before sundown.
Kristi ignores Kenny’s words, and runs after Jade asking him to hold on. Jade is going the wrong way. He doesn’t even know where he is going. She asks him to slow down.
Suddenly, Kristi screams in pain. A bear trap snaps her leg. Kenny and Dale come to her aid.
Kristi must know about bear traps because she tells them to search for a release mechanism. They remove snow in search of the mechanism. Jade finds it, but the release mechanism breaks.
16 — In the Diner, Ethan dries a pan and gives it to Bakta. She gives him more pans to wash in the back. Boyd enters the Diner and salutes Ethan and asks what they are doing. Boyd looks at the broken jukebox with pieces of glass and forks still on the table.
Kenny broke it earlier in Season 3, Ep. 2: "When We Go" when the "Celebration" song played in the jukebox.Ethan responds they are cleaning up the Diner and making sure it is the way Tian-Chen would like it. Boyd says he is sure she would appreciate that.
Boyd asks Bakta how she is doing. Aside from all the things that have happened recently and how a nursery rhyme her grandmother told her years ago somehow– Bakta sighs, she doesn’t know how she’s doing, to be honest.
<Reference: Season 2, Episode 9: Ball of Magic Fire. Bakta deciphered the music box words from a nursery rhyme her grandmother told her in her childhood. The rhyme says the music must be stopped to save the three. This helps Boyd figure out that he had to return to the Tower Ruins to stop destroy the music box to save Randall, Marielle, and Julie who were catatonic, screaming in agony, and dying.>Bakta asks if it is always been this bad and if things could get worse. Boyd tells Bakta that no matter what, they will win and they will find a way home.
Ethan returns from the back and asks Boyd what if there is no way home. Boyd responds there is a way into this town. There must be a way back home. Ethan insists there might be no way home. Tian-Chen thought she was going home, and so did his Mom, Tabitha.
Boyd says they are not giving up on Tabitha. Ethan responds maybe he should give up on his Mom.
17 — Kenny continues to manually open the bear trap to liberate Kristi’s leg, but he can’t. She is hurting bad. Dale says this bear trap must have been here for decades. He says it might be a good thing because all that rust probably saved her foot.
Jade brings a branch and Kenny asks him to go away and run back to town (as if Kenny just wishes Jade to die and doesn’t care). Jade says they need to get Kristi out of here before nightfall. Kenny thanks him for the Captain Obvious moment and tells Jade to get the fuck outta here.
Kenny uses the branch to try to open the bear trap, but it snaps in half. Jade says they need something that can give them more leverage. Jade has an idea and asks Dale to come with him.
18 — In the Colony House, Tillie and Fatima walk to the living room and find Elgin finally sleeping. He’s still got some crochet on his hand. Tillie grabs a box of Tarot cards from the drawer. Tillie says the Tarot cards will tell them if Fatima’s baby is okay.
Fatima hesitates and tries to leave. Tillie insists on proceeding with the Tarot reading, but Fatima snaps at her with an insult calling her Kooky, batty Tillie. She confided in her about the baby and her cravings, and she wants to read Tarot.
Tillie takes offense and says it is fine if Fatima doesn’t believe in the Tarot, but she bets before Fatima found the fallen tree in the road, she didn’t believe half of the shit that has happened in this town at night. This tarot helped Tillie at a critical point in her life.
Fatima agrees to the Tarot card reading. Tillie says these cards were gifted to her by a gal named Gertie, long before she arrived at the fallen tree in the road. She was at the same hospice care as Tillie’s husband. She did a reading for her after her husband died.
Tillie asks Fatima to shuffle the Tarot cards. She thought at the time, the Tarot was silly. But now she thinks those cards told her about her cancer and about this place. The signs were in the cards if she had known how to read them.
Fatima asks if she can now read them. Tillie responds a lot better than she was before. Tillie places 4 cards on the table and tells Fatima to ask a question. Let’s see how the cards answer.
Is my baby okay? Tillie says let’s see what the cards have to say. A crow crashes on the window next to Fatima without breaking the window. A second crow crashes through the window, breaking the window, but still alive.
The crow flies frantically throughout the room and crashes against the wall, waking Elgin.
19 — Jade and Dale run toward the effigies. Jade remembered one of the effigies contained a metal rod. Dale says he thinks it is a very bad idea. Jade says there is nothing else strong enough to pry that bear trap open. Dale asks if he really wants to start pulling apart the ancient tower of holy scary shit.
Jade says he’s sure whoever built it decades ago won’t mind. Jade removes a second rod from the effigy causing it to fall to the ground without the support.
Jade and Dale use their rods to pry open the bear trap. Kenny pulls Kristi off the bear trap. Kristi says her ankle is dislocated. They need to reset it.
Kristi asks Kenny to hold her foot tight, Dale to hold her shoulders, and Jade to hold her other leg. She asks Kenny to keep his hand above her foot and his other hand under her ankle.
Jade lifts his eyes and sees a vision of the man he saw earlier. He is now standing in front of them. The man holds a skull in his hands. He raises the skull and drinks from it. A lot of blood spills from both sides of his mouth as he drinks from the skull as if it were a cup. Then the spirit offers the skull to Jade to drink from it.
Kristi asks Jade to focus. Kristi countdowns and Kenny strongly resets her ankle causing a lot of pain as she screams in agony after the loud snapping sound. Kenny asks them to help bring her back to the shack.
20 — In the bus, Randall is carving a rock. Looks like drilling two holes with his knife to carve a skull. Suddenly, Randall hears a buzzing noise. He can see a cicada on the window. A swarm surrounds Randall and he panics. Boyd enters the bus and sees the scene. Randall is curving his body and swatting the air in front of him. But Boyd sees nothing there.
Boyd shouts at Randall and says it’s just him. Randall snaps out of whatever he thinks he experienced.
Boyd asks Randall that tonight they should switch accommodations. Randall should sleep at the Sheriff’s station. Boyd will sleep in the bus.
Randall asks why. Boyd says he wants to watch the monsters when they come out of the woods tonight to see what they are up to.
21 — In Maine, Henry asks Tabitha if she is alright. She feels a bit carsick. He tells her to open the cabinet in front of her. There is a pack of crackers that might help her stomach. Tabitha opens the cabinet and finds an exact copy of the bracelet Jim lost and the one Tabitha found in the Diner’s storage room. A third leather bracelet.
<Confused? The leather bracelets mystery is revealed in Season 3, Episode 10. It is a big shock.>
Tabitha asks where Henry obtained this leather bracelet. He responds Miranda crafted it for him. Tabitha says she is so stupid. This can’t be real. Tabitha went through a magic tree and traveled to a lighthouse. Like something out of a fairytale. She woke up in a hospital that happens to be here. Henry happens to be here. This leather bracelet was his mistake. This was too far.
Henry doesn’t understand.
Tabitha says she made this leather bracelet for her husband Jim a long time ago, and he lost the leather bracelet. Then she found the leather bracelet in the Diner. Tabitha asks Henry: “We’re not really in Camden, Maine, are we? It is just more of this place, torturing me, punishing me, right?”
Henry asks her what she is talking about.
Tabitha is freaking out thinking she is still trapped in the place and that all she has experienced since waking up at the hospital is part of the monsters’ sick games. She asks Henry what happens if she leaves the car and doesn’t play along. Will she reappear at the hospital and the game resets?
Henry says they are just a short distance from reaching the park where the original Bottle Tree is. She can’t leave him now. She says things she said, tells him Victor is alive and just decides she is going to give up and run away?
Tabitha tries to open the door to leave the car, but he stretches over her legs to hold the door closed. He accidentally accelerates the car and it crashes. Henry and Tabitha wake up inside an ambulance.
The cop named Acosta, lifts the lunchbox and says so you are the lady with the lunchbox that ran away from the hospital. She read the report at the hospital.
Tabitha asks how Henry is doing. The male nurse says he is monitoring him. The ambulance stops suddenly. The female cop, Acosta, knocks on the window to ask why he stopped the ambulance.
… the driver found the fallen tree on the road…
| 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 |
