In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Caleb keeps having these dreams about Miranda's new heavenly existence, where she has parents and a little sister and all the pajamas she can wear. But what she's not really noticing is that everything is super creepy and her little sister Max is the creepiest of all, and her head goes completely around and she is bros with demons under the bed, and all kinds of bad things for little girls to be into.
The Gang takes apart that box Caleb was left by his Uncle Henry, who then died of fright. It's full of secrets and drawings and photographs and awesome flashbacks, but not much info. After another sleepwalking jaunt by Remy, and with dreamboat Dillon's help, they finally figure out that they need to break through the wall of the basement of the Vault coffee shop, which used to be a bank and now is a secret grave for dead weirdos.
Turns out that the original Caleb and Miranda were betrothed, and got married at sea right before the boat accident that claimed their 1918 version of the Five. Two other kids, Thomas and Esther, decided that by walling themselves up in the bank and starving to death they could make Caleb and Miranda reincarnate and break the Curse. It sounds nuts, but would explain why Caleb and Miranda look so much like Caleb and Miranda.
After several false leads -- some provided by The Grunwald, who seems interested in keeping them out of the house where Miranda actually is, and in fact urges Collins to dig up Miranda's bones to steal more of her hair at one point to keep this from happening -- they arrive at the house where Miranda and Caleb were going to live when they got married, and where our Miranda is now hanging out thinking it's heaven.
That was the saddest part to me. They work their way through a thousand scary things and when they finally get to the bedroom it's not all cozy and sweet at all: It's moldy and rotten and falling down, and she has no idea. She is fully in the trap, and it's kind of embarrassing but mostly sad for reasons I can't really verbalize.
Anyway, after all this travel through the creepy house -- including several run-ins with Max, who is the little Redcoat girl from earlier episodes and who starts jumping out at them randomly in her Redcoat outfit, singing nursery rhymes and talking in a demon voice -- they finally get Miranda to confront the demon impersonating her mother. That part is heartbreaking when she realizes she's been super dumb. Then Caleb remembers from his dream how the closet has a door in the back that goes out into the second-floor space over the yard, and everybody gets out except Caleb, who dies.
Even though he spent a lot of the episode making romance plans with Hanna Marin and even thinking about a visit to Rosewood to see her -- a huge step back toward romance and life -- once he's dead Caleb is cool with just settling down and being ghosts with Miranda. But she firmly sends him back to the real world, after a complicated but very sweet kiss goodbye that makes them both look like champs and very nice people.
At the hospital, everybody is very happy to see Caleb alive -- even Luke! -- but just when you think everything is going to be okay and they're going to figure everything out in January when he wakes up, Dillon heads off for coffee and a secret meeting with Max Redcoat, who is a fucking demon and therefore is no good to be friends with.
Dillon was too dreamy to be nice! Olivia should have kept him out of it but instead he helped her figure it all out and now they are back together! So he reveals to us that they (meaning him and his demonic buds, at the behest of various townspeople and maybe monsters or undead preachers) have been playing this whole season as a trap to get the Five into that house together, and that "He" is very pissed that their hard work was for nothing. Max seems worried, but then goes to some witch dimension and plays with ravens, so I guess her job stress is relative.
Year: Caleb wakes up, Miranda fucks around with The Grunwald's head, the Twins try to figure out Uncle Dracula's place in their lives, and we meet possibly the originators of the Curse, who seem like a cross between Watcher's Council assholes and the confused deacons of those Hawthorne stories where you end up accidentally a Satanist.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Caleb found another misplaced uncle, who went nuts in the middle of the night and then gave him a key to an underground county office that eventually produced a magical box. Miranda was very upset that Uncle Collins was keeping pieces of her dead body around, even though clearly it is a tradition having to do with the Curse, which is clearly not of his doing. When Caleb bitched at him about it, that old dracula bitched right back. Luke kissed horrible Tess, and Miranda ran off with something seeming to be her mom.
GHOST MORNING
Miranda: "Mom, why are we in that same bedroom as every other scene? Has this show been in Heaven the whole time? And if so, where is The Grunwald?"
Mom: "Yes. Pajamas all the time, for everybody."
Random Dad: "I am here also. Heaven means chocolate-chip pancakes for you."
Miranda: "Did you know that because of lovely bones-ing me?"
Mom: "Yes and here is a closet full of clothes!"
Miranda: "In life I wished I had more outfit options, due to being a poor orphan. Then I died, and there was just the one outfit. But now I am double-dead."
Parents: "Yep, that's why pajamas. If you die one more time you get a Prom dress. That you will never wear to Prom, due to your several deaths."
Like everything else in Ravenswood, the clothes immediately start whooshing around on their own, because they are haunted.
Miranda: "Wait, are these clothes haunted?"
Clothes: "Yes! By a little girl named Max."
Miranda: "Is this little blonde girl my sister?"
Parents: "No, we just found her in the yard. She seems pretty cool."
She is not! The second Miranda goes back to shopping in her Ghost Closet, the little girl Max's head turns completely around! That is not cool, Max! Put your head back the other way! It was okay when you were just playing with a blonde doll that was a smaller version of you with candlestick curls and a spooky expression -- that's totally normal and wouldn't faze us at this point -- but you turn your goddamn head back this very moment.
MIDNIGHT SOCIETY
But then, Caleb wakes up! I guess he was just dreaming about Miranda in Heaven. But with this show, usually Caleb's dreams are not really dreams but more like straight up what is going on with Miranda. So I guess what is going on with Miranda is: A mean, scary trick.
Luke: "Maybe everything isn't always magic. Maybe you just had a bad dream about our dead friend. Did you wake up crying?"
Remy: "I called your sister to this meeting, not you. If you are not down with the ghost talk, why not just fuck off? I bet Tess doesn't ever talk about ghosts, or even have a Curse on her. Besides like her entire trashy life I mean."
Caleb and Olivia have weird feelings about this happening in front of them. Caleb doesn't even know who Tess is probably, and plus all he wants to do is talk about ghosts, 24/7. Olivia has no idea what is going on either, but she is okay with her brother crying since let's be honest, what was he planning on doing anyway. But just like with the constant objects of Ravenswood be-our-guesting around the place of their own accord, it is best if we just don't talk about it and pretend it's not happening.
Olivia: "Taking your dreams as fact, then, she's with her parents, right? That sounds safe. If my dad was alive I would be on top of the world instead of hanging out with his burned-up dead girlfriend all the time. And my mom would be half a train wreck instead of a whole one."
Caleb: "Except this girl Max with the head turning all the way around. That detail gives me pause, vis-à-vis her safety in what we are provisionally -- but almost certainly incorrectly -- referring to as Heaven."
Olivia: "On to the contents of this magical box. Here I find old time-y photographs and lay them out, like Tarot cards..."
Luke: "And a map, signed by 'S.L.' and dated 1918, the year Caleb and Miranda died..."
Remy: "The original Caleb and Miranda, you mean."
Caleb: "And here's a letter, unsigned just like Henry weirdly said, from Caleb to Miranda..."
Remy: "The original Ca..."
Caleb: "Yes, it's to be presumed that this old time-y stuff will continue to reference the original Caleb and Miranda, not the ones who are dead or at this kitchen table or both."
Luke: "What does it say?"
Nothing worse than flashbacks usually, but this one is beautiful. Perfectly Edwardian. They look lovely, like a nouveau cover on the Saturday Evening Post. If I was back then I would always be walking around parks like this, carrying a lady's parasol or just chilling by a bench, like how they did back then.
Caleb 1.0: "Miranda, I am totally in love with you. I hope we don't die of a Curse."
Miranda 1.0, silently: "Check out my crazy floppy hat!"
Olivia: "That's romantic, but also they're dead."
Luke: "It makes me cry."
Remy: "Shut it. I'm sure she didn't cut him loose because he kissed a garbage person."
Luke: "#LukeLovesRemy."
Remy: "Suck my #HoneyRoastedDick, Matheson. So this isn't even a whole map of Ravenswood? Just one specific, creepy part?"
Olivia: "Why, it's a box of questions! Not of answers!"
Caleb: "I have a question, how come this is a picture of the bedroom Miranda was just in with the parents and that girl. Plus that wallpaper, I recognize it too. I was staring at it before I noticed that little girl's head turning all the way around."
Remy: "Let's track down Henry and ask him about it. I'm sure he'll be easy to find since presumably he's still roaming around town in his pajamas."
Caleb: "Sounds good. For now, I gotta go see what Uncle Collins wants. Besides my young wolf blood for lunch, I mean. Then we can carpool to the nursing home..."
Remy: "No offense but I'm not driving the four of us anywhere. Ever."
Luke: "If we're gonna die, we're gonna die. The nursing home is only over like four haunted bridges."
Olivia runs off with the box, and Remy tells Luke to suck it some more. She is wearing a sweater made of many sweaters, each one a different kind of kiss-off.
MATHESON
Luke: "You only bake when you're freaked out. What do you have to be freaked about?"
Olivia: "I'm in the mood for snickerdoodles!"
Luke: "Snickerdoodles for breakfast? That sounds like a Mom move."
Olivia: "Not if we're calling it brunch. Move that magical box so I can get started."
Luke: "Last time you did this was when Dad was stabbed brutally to death, and I gained ten pounds. Think of my body!"
Olivia: "Do you want to talk about the Remy situation or not?"
Luke: "It was my fault, not hers. I should have kept a secret that I did not."
Olivia: "You screwed up and then didn't get credit for being honest? What a grownup world we live in."
Luke: "Also, Dillon things you're blowing him off for the Midnight Society."
Olivia: "I'm protecting him from getting stabbed to death. It's not about picking new friends."
Luke: "If I'm going to be the one cheering you up, frankly, we are both dead meat."
COLLINS
While a haunted computer virus haunts Remy's computer emails and deletes them, Collins unzips a body bag and hopes Caleb isn't still mad at him for calling him crazy even though Collins is the one who keeps a specific hutch just for teen death trophies.
Collins: "Sorry for your loss but I am the only secret uncle alive today."
Caleb: "Uncle Henry! I only talked to you two times and now you are dead. And it looks like you died super scared..."
Collins: "Yes, he bears all the medical hallmarks of being SCARED TO DEATH!"
Caleb: "Is that in your medical opinion?"
Collins: "In the opinion of somebody who's handled every dead body in this whole town going back 474 years, most of them dead from this very cause, yes it is."
CALEB
While he is telling Remy about how their schedule is now free this afternoon due to Henry dying of fear, his window slides open of its own accord, so he hangs up the phone to go shut it. Behind him is a skinny dead boy in a white t-shirt with blood coming out his eyes, who glitches and vanishes before Caleb even sees him! Before he can even wonder why his house is so haunted all the time, a knock at the door suggests we're about to... There she is!
The Grunwald: "I brought lunch to your carriage house since it's so weird everywhere else."
Caleb: "I'm not a guest anymore, I am a caretaker. I can take care of lunch myself!"
The Grunwald: "I can be the nanny of two grown-ass men just as easy as one. Oh look, a picture of a bedroom I certainly have never seen with these old witch eyes."
Caleb: "I can't believe that your shirt is entirely doily today. That is so pimp."
The Grunwald: "Look, Miranda's with her family now. She's home."
Caleb: "You mean the creepy haunted house where you live?"
The Grunwald: "Don't sass me, bitch. Miranda's father was a teacher. After the wedding he moved closer to the college... You want the address?"
Caleb: "Sweet!"
The Grunwald: "See how much better it works when you don't question me?"
MATHESON
Olivia is looking at old people pictures and listening to girl music when Dillon arrives. I love their house so much but it still is not as distracting as his slicked-back good-boy hair, which signifies an aching sadness and worries about the future, as opposed to the mopsy Dawson Leery fantasia that is usually up there. He carries a leather messenger bag and is approximately three feet taller than Olivia. Also, he drives a cool car.
Olivia: "Dreamboat, stop acting so happy to see me. It pisses me off."
Dillon: "I miss you in a completely normal way."
Olivia: "Me too! But it doesn't help. Also, don't look at this box of stuff. It's Caleb stuff."
Dillon: "Are we all jealous of Caleb now? Sweet, I can bitch about that all day."
Olivia: "No, he's just an orphan wolf-ling. I am not with him in any sense except for trying to figure out why that crazy old man gave it to us in such an abstruse way."
Dillon: "Can I help you go through it and figure everything out?"
Olivia: "Sure, but only if you are okay with snickerdoodles and getting murdered."
THE VAULT
Luke: "Can we talk about what we talked about? The other thing we talked about."
Remy: "No, I think it is settled that you kissed gross Tess -- oh look, she's calling you now! -- and so if you want to be in Midnight Society you can, but we are not dating."
Luke: "I feel really bad about it! I told you about it because I feel bad about it! That means you're supposed to be okay with it, Olivia told me so."
Remy: "Olivia's relationship seems functional enough, and Dillon is great, but that doesn't mean she knows everything. Hop on your bike, bro."
THAT HOUSE
Has the saddest picket-fence situation. It looks like a haunted Dust Bowl museum. The address, written in The Grunwald's crazy witch grandma handwriting, really adds to the effect. Of all the times for Caleb to go out on his own, now seems like a bad idea. But I guess everybody else is busy having conversations about him all over town. Here's hoping there are no creepy blonde girls in the yard or else he will have to take her home and pretend she's his daughter.
MORTUARY
The Grunwald: "Look at this mother with his eyes all freaked out. Too bad he died of fear."
Collins: "He knew it was going to happen the second his ass started running around handing out amulets."
The Grunwald: "Caleb's looking for Miranda. New Caleb and Miranda, I mean. You have to do it tonight."
What is it!? I hope it involves tons of candles. I hope that Collins has to put on an opera cape and light one million candles and then do sorcerous things with his shiny knife and then Miranda comes back and she's like, "Did you see that shit with the head going around like that? No sir!"
CARRIAGE HOUSE
Caleb: "Hey, stranger! Not much, just hanging around my gorgeously appointed studio apartment in a graveyard, wearing the tightest possible waffle henley like some kind of lumberjack."
Hanna: "I am wearing an amazing sweater with Scottie dogs on it and wondering why you won't tell me anything about Ravenswood."
Caleb: "I mean, what's to tell? Uncle Collins is a dick and I'm trying to help her get out of Ravenswood."
Hanna: "Are you bringing her home with you? I mean, she's nice and I did order you to go there and help her, but..."
Caleb: "Hanna, I love you. Trust me, you have no competition."
MATHESON
Dillon, hair perking back up: "I don't think it's actually a map. Remember when I took that drafting class at Cicero College last summer? Taught by noted teen contractor and architecture professor Tobias Cavanaugh?"
Olivia: "Yeah, he seemed real sad all the time but maybe that was just his face."
Dillon: "Well, these numbers up here in this spidery hand represent the scale. An inch is just ten feet. And the elevation is negative. You're looking at a blueprint for a basement dungeon."
Olivia: "Cool, let's look it up on everybody's favorite search engine, Schmoogle. Ah, no results. I guess no architect has ever had the initials SL."
Dillon: "Remy is better at this, let's ask her. I will go with you, to be involved. And die."
She kisses him because you never know how your boyfriend feels about you until you Schmoogle dead architects together and then die.
HANNA!
Hanna: "I have an idea. You know how sometimes Ravenswood and Rosewood are eight hours apart and sometimes mere minutes depending on the phase of the moon? So I checked the Farmer's Almanac for this weekend and it said the signs are auspicious for us to get busy, so I made a reservation at Ravenswood Inn."
Caleb: "For who?"
Hanna: "For us! And whatever ghosts are around, I guess."
Caleb: "Cancel that and make a reservation at the only restaurant in Rosewood, the Applewood Grille. I will come see you instead."
Hanna: "Then can we just skip dinner?"
Caleb: "We can eat takeout, and cuddle like teddy bears!"
Hanna: "Did you seriously just say that to me? And why did it give me a boner?"
CARRIAGE HOUSE
That darn window opens itself again while Caleb's asleep, and that boy is back staring at him with the eyes bleeding, but Caleb isn't here today, Mrs. Torrence. He is in the other house where Miranda and Max are wearing pajama after pajama.
Caleb: "Miranda! You are not in Heaven but in a house near campus! That little girl is bad juju!"
Miranda: "Max? She's just a lost little girl."
Caleb: "You are, and I kind of am, but she is not. She is a bad thing."
Smashing and crashing from the closet full of clothes and little girls. Caleb opens it, and all the clothes move around at them. But where is Max? She is not here. But what is here, though, is a secret passage way into the yard or a strange dimension or real life.
Caleb: "Door Number Three! We gotta go back to the real world where you are dead and there are no pajamas, ever!"
Miranda: "No, I got Max and I got my pajamas. I'm good."
She climbs into bed with Max and they stare at him like he is the creepy one, and not literally everything else that is going. Miranda falls asleep, and then a horrible sound starts happening under the bed, so Max goes to check it out, and then smiles a most frightful Max smile, jolting Caleb awake. How great is Max? Max rules.
So while Caleb is upstairs having another panic attack, Collins puts on his cutest hipster suspenders and heads downstairs... To dig up Miranda's grave!
Man, Collins is always doing the most unexpected thing, but also the best thing. If you asked me what I most wanted to see this week, I wouldn't know until just now that the correct answer would be and always would have been, "Uncle Dracula in leather braces, digging up his niece's corpse in the foggy dead of night, with a shovel. Hair a bit messy."
BEAUMONT
I'm not entirely sure where she is, but how Remy got there is by sleepwalking and then breaking and entering. Oh, it's the basement of the Vault. Into which Remy has sleep-broken, because awake or asleep, the girl loves coffee. Good thing Luke is awake -- and blowing up her phone like an obsessed sad sack -- because he and the Midnight Society immediately join her there while she straps up her bloody break-in hand.
Luke: "Why didn't you tell me of your sleepwalking? That's dangerous for a teen!"
Remy: "You can't even handle your own shit, crybaby. How are you supposed to deal with my infinite problems? Especially if you're busy kissing Tess, the worst one of all?"
Olivia: "Hold up, you kissed Tess? That's the dumb thing you did? Now I'm pissed too!"
Caleb: "For what it's worth, I don't give a fuck about any of this."
Caleb is wearing a cat burglar costume like he is married to Melissa Gorga and flashing his flashlight in everybody's faces, because how dare they have dating problems when his girlfriend is a variable amount of miles away in another dimension.
Luke: "Okay but just so everybody knows, I feel bad."
Remy: "What else is new. Now, submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, the story of the girl who was sleepwalking a few minutes ago. I woke up down here and I felt like I was in the right place, or like I was led here..."
Olivia: "Maybe Miranda is in everybody's dreams? Pulling Caleb into strange pajama dimensions, steering your body into coffee shop basements..."
Caleb: "I don't want to talk about Miranda. Any of the Mirandas."
Olivia: "The Vault used to be a bank."
Remy: "Yeah of course. It was the Ravenswood Savings & Loan, built on Main Street in 1918 and later relocated to the Ravenswood Mall."
Which, picture the Ravenswood Mall for a minute. All toy stores of toys that stare back and say stuff too quietly for you to be sure what they said, and shoe stores of haunted shoes that used to belong to murderers, and those weird memorabilia stores with like a fake fichus and a carved oak throne and picture frames with ghostly pictures inside that almost seem to resolve into images but then it's just smoke again. I bet the Hot Topic at Ravenswood Mall is the shit. I bet they got a smoking cauldron with the eyes of literal newts bobbing around in there and instead of Slipknot playing it's a chorus of the actual damned, singing pop medleys. I bet that's where Uncle Collins gets all his fancy Dracula clothing and leather suspenders and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic merchandise.
Caleb: "Why do you people all know this shit?"
Remy: "Well, I know it because I'm Remy. Olivia, I have no idea."
Olivia: "Have you noticed that it's 1918? Or that S&L is the same letters as SL? Or that we are in the basement of it?"
Luke: "Yes to the first, nobody to the rest yet. 1918. The year Caleb and Miranda 1.0 were murdered."
Remy: "Wait, so now you believe us? That somehow pisses me off."
Luke: "I have accepted that it is real, on the way to stopping it. I am now on the same page as the rest of you have been since the pilot. Congratulations to me!"
Olivia: "...Wait. Got it. 1918, S&L. We're standing in the map."
Everybody heaps validation on Olivia because she comes off so dumb unless you talk to her, and away in his bed Dillon feels his palms itching with her getting more and more into Midnight Society and less into their hetero-normative performance of gender. Then she remembers there's a whole other room in the basement, and Luke gets the door open.
As Collins digs up Miranda's bones, Luke smashes his way into the other part of the basement -- smashing through the walls of a bank, okay, with a sledgehammer -- the music goes nuts on everybody.
The Grunwald: "First of all, this is by far the cutest you have ever looked. Damn."
Collins: "Thank you? Hand me those scissors so I can steal more of Miranda's dead hair for my hair-jar collection."
The Grunwald: "Okay and you have to hurry because Luke is very strong for being such a big baby, and he's about to..."
Find some dead bodies behind the wall? Damn, that music wasn't kidding around. That is legitimately freaky. Meaning that every time these kids came here to drink coffee -- which is, conservatively, six or seven times a day -- they were drinking coffee and watching Luke cry just a few feet over the heads of some dead teens, just chilling out behind a wall.
I sincerely hope they were alive when they were walled up in there, like in Cask of Amontillado; it's a bummer situation for sure but at least that way he'd get to tell her what the end of that letter would have said if he had gotten to finish it. (Unless she was like our boundary-free Miranda: "Oh, that intimate and personal love letter? I wrote it and signed it for you and put a stamp on it and mailed it, NBD." Or whatever they had instead of email back then. "I already gave that to the pony that delivers our mail in these olden times.")
Actually, it's not them, they died at sea. It is another couple of teens, as Luke is about to figure out with his literacy skills. Luke is also a dab hand at lighting oil lamps, as long as we're listing his virtues.
Caleb: "This masonry was clearly constructed from the inside, which is even crazier than the other idea. They did these themselves!"
Luke: "No food or water down here. They were in it to win it."
Remy: "Guess they figured it would be more fun than a Curse."
Olivia: "Or this big hairy spider on my arm!"
Caleb: "Two skeletons don't bother you, but..."
Olivia: "I grew up in Ravenswood."
Remy notes a ring in the pile of the dead people, but can't fish out without first making a truly remarkable sound of the willies. Luke goes through other pictures, and Olivia finds more of a letter, and Remy finally snatches the ring.
Remy: "It's identical to the one in the box."
Olivia: "I guess he liked it. Oh, and this letter is the matching one from Miranda, saying the things she said in that flashback."
Miranda 1.0: "I want to be married, but not until death. After death. Forever and ever."
Caleb: "So they were writing wedding vows?"
Luke: "Yeah and here's the wedding registry. Married by a ship's captain."
Olivia: "So they grabbed three friends and got on a boat to get married and then everybody died? But then they came back here and built a wall and died some more?"
Luke: "No, this is a different dead couple that did this. Thomas and Esther. They have a book about the Curse where they wrote all of this down. Apparently they thought sacrificing themselves inside a bank would bring Caleb and Miranda back? And then Caleb and Miranda could reverse the Curse. Do a Curse-reverse."
Olivia: "They would come back to life?"
Remy: "No. They would be reincarnated into a couple of homeless wolf babies."
Caleb: "I have a girlfriend! She is awesome! And besides, any racing of my heartbeat on the Knight Bus was because it is haunted and there was a scary ogre. Not because of Petrova doppelgänger love nonsense."
Luke: "Hold on there, buddy. I think if we can believe anybody, it is this very trustworthy pair of insane corpses that walled themselves up in this bank because they were in a cult. I mean let's show some respect."
Olivia: "Maybe my brother is going overboard with this whole 'believing' thing, but the upside is that Miranda and Caleb coming back is that they can break the Curse."
Caleb: "It would be nice if we didn't all die, but I don't think we are Chosen Ones."
Remy: "Maybe that's why she can't move on and is always getting stuck in graveyards and pajamas."
Luke: "Here's a picture of Miranda 1.0 standing outside another random huge house."
Caleb: "Maybe that's the one The Grunwald was talking about and she didn't know it."
Remy: "Isn't that the creepy old house..."
Caleb: "Be more specific."
Remy: "The one on Sawmill Road."
Caleb: "Nope, still not..."
Olivia: "The haunted one."
Caleb: "I give up."
Olivia: "We'd run past it when we were kids. I mean, it was creepy as shit. If you're gonna be the haunted house in Ravenswood, you gotta go hard."
They drive to the even more haunted house down the road from the various other haunted houses, and it truly is very haunted: dead trees, hella fog, and the double front doors open by themselves. Once again, in this episode only, the people notice things like this happening and even remark on how weird it is.
Olivia finds a haunted parlor with a haunted grandfather clock, and the two pristine Redcoats of the small twin Redcoat people; it gets very cold in there suddenly.
Remy: "It really is like they left a hundred years ago."
Caleb: "But this clock! Don't you have to wind these?"
Suddenly that thing starts striking like it's time. Olivia exercises prior restraint on them that, if she pees, they can't make fun of her. The electric candle sconces start flickering on, and a ton of candles start flickering.
Max appears in front of the candles, in her Redcoat outfit that one second ago was on a dress form awaiting her, and informs them that Miranda's waiting for them... IN HELL!
Oh man, it is so scary. The devil voice of her saying "IN HELL" like that, goodness. Then, Max does her scary smile and adds a scary laugh!
It's so great, it's sad that the Midnight Society is already down the stairs to get the fuck away from her. But they are locked in.
Caleb: "I don't care for that little girl."
Luke: "Yeah, I don't think Miranda is here."
They talk about how they can't leave but even if they could, they shouldn't, because Miranda is trapped somewhere, either here or in hell. Then Max stars singing "Ring Around The Roses," and jumps up in Remy's face asking her to come play whatever demon kid games. She is such a good little actor! And I don't think the similarity to Alison is a mistake, although that's a rabbit hole. Mostly, I just wish this kid was around all the time. I want to see her and The Grunwald have a witch fight.
Miranda, meanwhile, is brushing her hair obsessively in her pajama bedroom, but when the door opens and the Midnight Society floods in, the room is all decrepit and shitty. It made me very sad for some reason, to see her standing in that desolate place. Isn't that so sad? Just crumbling walls and curtain sheers rotting apart. Thinking it was Heaven, thinking she was finally home.
Caleb: "This place is not how you think it is. You are embarrassing yourself right now."
Miranda: "It's cool, my parents will be here soon."
Olivia: "I vote no on that shit."
The ceiling starts falling apart on them, and a nail rips itself out of one stud and into another, slashing a hole in Luke's face. Luckily, Caleb had that dream that there was a secret door in the back of the closet that leads out into the empty air, a story above the ground. You would never think of that if you hadn't had a dream of it, since it is unrealistic and makes zero sense. But there it is, so they all jump out of there, but then Miranda balks.
Caleb: "This whole thing is a trap. The house, your parents, Max... It's just like the girl on the bridge, it's all fancy lies to get us where they want us."
Lilah: "Miranda, you need to come with me right now! It's all golden and warm out in the hallway."
Miranda: "You see her, right? I'm not completely a fool? You do see my mom?"
Caleb: "Sweetie, no. You got played in a serious way."
Miranda asks Lilah if she remembers teaching Miranda to ride a bike when she was three, and Mom's proud, and Miranda's like, "Fuck you, bitch! My parents died before I learned to ride a bike. It is like all I ever talk about! You don't even listen!"
Lilah: "It doesn't have to be real for you to be happy."
Miranda: "That is the opposite of the truth, you ghostly asshole!"
The house shakes itself apart, and Miranda teleports downstairs. Before Caleb can jump out there and join them, he gets knocked out of the window by a falling beam, which instantly kills him.
When he wakes up, it's just Miranda because they are not in normal Ravenswood but double plus Ravenswood where it's just dead people. She picks him up off the ground, and he takes a while to understand why he can suddenly feel her touching him.
Miranda: "There's maybe time for you to go back. I think you should, probably."
Caleb: "No, I think I should stay dead. It feels right to be dead here with you because we are both ghost clones with a ghost love."
Miranda: "Okay, here's a kiss. But it's just like a normal friend kiss."
They cry and he puts a sweet finger on her forehead, like a bro; he wakes up in the hospital, with Dillon and Luke overjoyed that he is still around to distract their girlfriends. But then it doesn't matter, because everybody is back with their person: Remy's holding Luke's hand like it's by accident, and Olivia's all about leaning on Dillon for support during this troubling time of a homeless teen they barely know being alive and well.
THE GRUNWALD
Collins: "So do I need to get these jars out for their parts?"
The Grunwald: "Nope, they're still alive. You can lock that box of teen-part jars with that big old key and just go back to creeping around."
Collins: "It's a mystery how I feel about this, but at least I still look amazing."
THE HOSPITAL
Dillon: "I'll get coffee for everybody so you guys can stare at your nearly dead friend."
Redcoat Max zooms by Dillon at the coffee machine, indicating that he is fucked.
Or evil. He follows her around a corner into more and more dimly lit areas of the hospital, and by the time he gets to the room where she's chilling out, he is most assuredly evil. This at least explains the hair.
Dillon: "What the fuck, Max? After everything we did to get them in that house..."
Max: "What can I tell you? They have bonded quickly. Almost like some kind of Pact."
Dillon: "He seemed to be very unhappy."
Max: "Uh oh."
MAX-TAG
Hanging out in a Hitchcock-ian green screen graveyard, Max delights in a larger-than-usual unkindness, wheeling overhead, and then she holds out her Redcoat arm and laughs maniacally as a raven lands on it. Then she looks directly at the screen with a haunting grin, because when you get away from whoever He is long enough to play with the ravens, you are welcome to gloat a little.
So what do we have? The whole show has been a trap, going all the way back to the bridge accident -- and therefore a Conspiracy involving Dillon and Max, and various townspeople -- intended to keep the Curse in play by separating Miranda and Caleb and killing this version of the Five. Not averse to using multiple tricky spirits and realms and fake moms in service to Him, whoever He is.
And then an opposing group (possibly including Mr. Beaumont, the dead Mayor, the Chief of Police or Ben Price but not both of them, and/or the Five) that goes back, probably even past Thomas and Esther. Probably the remnants of every War, not just those two nuts and Abby Wheeler, but also the Fives and their satellites, every time.
And then you've got The Grunwald/Collins contingent, who seemed to be trying to keep them out of the trap in some ways, but are also powerless or conflicted. The Grunwald says she keeps the balance, so maybe she can't ever interfere, but she sure was interested in him digging up Miranda before they got to the dead kids in the bank. I wonder what would have happened then? I wonder what the hell is ever going on with them. I don't care exactly, because I love everything they do and everything about them, but it's also something to be curious about.
YEAR
Miranda taunts The Grunwald, the Twins confront Uncle Wiggly about their parents, and a creepy preacher man in a saturno -- the scariest of all possible hats, and therefore probably Him -- leads an old time-y Young Goodman Brown-type of ritual with white dudes in waistcoats that is most certainly where this bullshit started.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Homeland, Hostages, Ravenswood, and Masters Of Sex for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a column for Tor.com, Geek Love.