From has been hurtling toward an epic Season 2 finale for the last few weeks now, offering one banger of an episode after another in a story that continues to ramp up the fear, tension and suspense, while offering up new clues, revelations and mysteries—not to mention new terrors in the night.
And in the day now, too.
Here are the big things we learned in ‘Ball of Magic Fire.’
- Sarah says something that I think is extremely important when she’s having her awkward conversation with Kenny. She says that her brother, Nathan, was always terrified of cicadas. Now the town is being haunted by the creatures, inside and outside of dreams. This episode we see Randall, Maryelle and Julie swarmed by cicadas—one in the forest, one in her home and one strapped to a bed during detox at Colony House. Sarah wonders aloud if all these horrors aren’t just the fears of the people who have died here, now haunting the living. Could the monsters, the ballerina, and all the rest be the fears people brought with them from wherever they came?
- There’s a brief connection to this when Tabitha and Jade are looking over the pictures Victor’s sister drew. They see Civil War soldiers, which Jade has had visions of, in the pictures, and Tabitha reminds him that these were from the stories Victor’s mother told her children. Some of these monsters and visions could be the fears of Victor’s sister, from old childhood stories.
- Then there is the nursery rhyme, that only the bus driver recognizes. “They touch, they break, they steal. No one here is free. Here they come, they come for three, unless you stop the melody.”
- Various characters have now heard this, or heard parts of it. The woman killed from her dream was saying the first half. Elgin’s dream is finally revealed as the second half. Kenny heard both halves in his dream last week. The “three” in question now appear to be Randall, Maryelle and Julie, but only because the napping lady (who had it coming, seriously) is out of the picture. So how does one “stop the melody”?
- The answer could be in the pictures. Tabitha tells Jade about her dreams of the tower, which Victor’s sister drew, and which is clearly the lighthouse. She wonders if the children really do just need saving, and her visions of those scary kids are just them asking for help. Could this lighthouse and the nursery rhyme be connected? Do they need to go to the tower to stop the melody?
- Boyd’s Bile Bullets™ don’t work. Bummer. Then again, it seems that killing Smiley set all this other stuff into motion, so maybe that’s for the best. Is it all just a game, a puzzle, as Jim believes? Killing a monster is the first step toward the next piece of the puzzle, and from there, well, a journey down from the tip of the spear into . . . whatever fresh new hell awaits.
- The old granny lady is still super suspicious. She just happens to know that Fatima is pregnant? And this sparks Elgin’s dream memory? She’s already basically handed morphine over to a drug addict, so . . . I wonder. Randall is paranoid and delusional but it doesn’t mean he’s wrong about a mole. And nobody would suspect a kindly old lady.
- Why is it that every time Ellis tries to intervene and help somebody attacks him?
- Poor Ethan. He’s really going to be messed up after this. He’s already about to lose his mind. I wish that he’d been there when Elgin had described the little boy in white. This is the boy, in Elgin’s dream, that says the nursery rhyme. He’s also pointed Victor to safety and appeared to Ethan. It’s hard to know if he’s a force for good or evil, though.
- The ballerina music playing in the RV was so spooky. It was also kind of funny to see Randall go from defiant to practically having an accident in his pants in like ten seconds flat.
All told, a crazy episode that sets up the finale nicely. I’m fully back onboard with this show, though I wish they would tone down the F-bombs. I’m not even that bothered by swearing. I myself swear. I just don’t think everybody needs to drop an F-bomb every other sentence. The old limits of network television have some distinct benefits—one of which is forcing writers to use more creative frackin’ expletives!
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