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An explainer at the beginning of the episode tells you what is happening, which is inordinately helpful even if you've seen all the episodes. The town of Ravenswood signed a Pact years ago that traded five children's lives for that of any Ravenswood soldier in danger. When Miranda and Caleb showed up in town -- being descendants of the first victims -- they threw everything off, and now that Miranda's dead it's only her uncle Collins's jar of her hair that's keeping her around and on the property. When she broke the jar, she escaped to that Max Hell dimension Caleb died saving her from. Another historical couple, Thomas and Esther, entombed themselves in the hopes of bringing Caleb and Miranda back, which I guess led to their reincarnation.
What we learn this time is that Thomas Rivers and Esther Collins were their parents, which is double-sad considering what happened once their kids were dead. Through several of Remy's dreams -- fraught with demonic and ghostly interference that mostly involves eyeballs and terrifying real-life scarecrow attacks, but helped by her mother's experiences with lucid dreaming -- we learn pretty much the whole story, if you can believe it:
A preacher named Gabriel Abbadon brought the Pact in question to the town council, Esther bailed but the rest of the men signed it, and then Gabriel delivered the signed Pact to somebody in a Collins hearse (!) before abruptly turning into an unkindness of ravens and screaming his ass off into the night sky. Typical Ravenswood preachers, always doin' that.
Also, whoever is running Little Demon Girl Max and Dillon has the power to put them in a "Grinder," which of course is the best part, because nobody wants to end up in a Grinder. (Least of all Max and Dillon, with their beautiful ungrinded faces.) So Dillon, at Max's behest, spends the episode trying to sow dissatisfaction in Olivia's relationships, resentment and suspicion of Collins's motives toward her family, and in the end he swipes her v-card with (I think) Max hanging around, eating ice cream and being the bomb.
Miranda doesn't know how to deal with Caleb's dual admissions -- that he broke up with Hanna, but not in order to be with Miranda, who is a dead person -- so she hurls herself into solving the mystery of the hair-jars, thinking that will be a way to convince Mrs. Matheson to stay away from Collins, because even a Black Widow shouldn't be dating draculas that keep hair in jars. This means her story is mostly about trying to haunt the shit out of The Grunwald in order to locate them, and getting attacked at every turn by a Scary Smoke-Monster Heat-Wave Ghost that lives in the mansion's air ducts.
At first it seems like The Grunwald is using the Heat Miser ghost as an attack dog, but later she saves Miranda from getting flayed by it, and then in the awesome end scene, she summons it with candles to assure it that she still loves it. As in like, Bygones. Sorry I yelled at you for eating another ghost that tormented me all day but I was getting really irritated by ghosts in general and I wanted to get back to my knitting. Oh, and there's this massively satisfying face-off between Grunwald and Olivia where they vibe at each other in this restaurant, and it's hard to explain why, but it was fantastic.
So: A lady puts her eyeball in a cup of coffee, I forgot to mention that. Scarecrows falling out of trees on you like the jagulars of the Hundred Acre Woods. Old white guys consigning other people's kids to death in the relentless pursuit of war profiteering. An evil preacher who is sometimes ravens. Grunwald is psychic friends with the central air conditioning. Collins feels entitled to swan around the Matheson house when nobody's there. Miranda still thinks Caleb's life is all about her even though in reality that is not even a little bit true. Olivia will not die a virgin, unless it turns out that Dillon is actually another ghost or monster that doesn't exist, in which case I think the bylaws state she still is.
week: The answers continue rolling out on what I am starting to think is the best television show of the modern era, as Ravenswood PD investigates some creepy knife-related goings on at the Matheson house, Miranda pries into Grunwald's relationship with the Smoke Monster, and Caleb deals with Uncle Dad's surprise arrival. Also, Remy is weirded out by her raven-y dreams, and Olivia quote "tries to keep it together," which, good luck on that one.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
I never really did have a handle on the Ravenswood situation so I am grateful that, coming back and paired with PLL, they gifted us with a little Caleb River voiceover about what the hell is going on with this show. Are you ready for some info? Like, did you know:
- In 1917 the Ravenswood Town Elders signed a secret Pact
- Since then, no soldier from Ravenswood has ever died in active combat
- But the price for this ongoing miracle is that for every war, five teens must die
- Such as Original Miranda and Caleb, who were teens who died
- And maybe were reincarnated thanks to Thomas & Esther's suicide entombment
- Which maybe also means they can do a curse-reverse and reverse this Curse
- And also a jar of a ghost's hair will keep it on your property
- But if they break that jar and leave, they might get tricked by fake moms
- This is the first time that happened also
Did you know those things? I didn't know any of those things. Literally my job to know those things, missed 'em all. Kind of intuitively felt that some of them were true? But like, I wouldn't have placed a five-dollar bet on any of them being true for sure.
Caleb and Miranda were knockin' boots, old-timey style, when they heard a strange music and went to investigate. Lo but there was a weird cabin and night was falling, and they did see all manner of conveyances parked outside of it. "That's my father's automobile!" Caleb said, gamely method-acting by saying the word super-weird, as a nod to the era, as though he had never before said that word because of it just being invented. "And that is my mother's horseomobile!" Miranda agreed. Inside yon cabin, all kinds of shit was going down.
Preacher: "Let's sing a song on page 36 of your hymnbook before the Nathaniel Hawthorn business begins in earnest..."
Esther: "This isn't right! No hymns, no devil's bargains!"
Menfolk: "Esther, this is man's business! Take several seats!"
Esther: "But it is about children! Specifically five of them, teens, or what we call in the old times 'middle-aged.'"
Menfolk: "Moms are stupid. Stupidly trying to not sacrifice children to the Elder Gods."
Esther: "Moms can't help it! War is dumber than moms!"
Preacher: "It is true that war is a beast. It consumes the young. I offer a way to save mothers' tender hearts. Except for five of them."
Menfolk: "Haven't you read the Bible? Men are in charge of who gets sacrificed and which moms get to cry. Sit your ass down or you're out of here."
Esther: "Thomas Rivers, you know this is wrong."
Thomas: "Esther Collins, you shut it. I am too scared of war for your nonsense."
Preacher: "Leave or stay, nobody cares about your woman feelings. Let's sing this fucking song and get it over with."
And lo, they did turn to page 36.
And night did Esther Collins book it out of that motherfucker and wrote it all down in a diary that she put in a box that she put in a bank that was hidden underneath a high school where teens would later smoke pot, and gave the key to another Rivers guy in case anybody ever had any questions about what was in there.
NOW
Olivia: "So since you're reincarnated from these people, what the hell is she talking about?"
Caleb: "It doesn't work like that. But I guess that's the night it all went down."
Miranda: "And then I guess we eloped and died, and those two fools locked themselves up in a tomb so we would get reincarnated."
Luke: "I am skeptical as a rule, but I have to say this checks out."
So I guess at some point -- right after his kid dying, I'd imagine -- Thomas realized that it's fine and good to trade other kids for your kids, but sucks when yours is the kid that gets traded. Like that thing where you push the button but somebody dies that you don't know, and then at the end of the story the box goes somewhere else, to somebody you don't know, and maybe they will push it and you will die. A wonderful story, badly treated by Richard Kelly in his terrible The Box movie, but somewhat more artfully expressed here on this show, where it's a metaphor about war that is itself a metaphor about war. Is your mind blown? That is crazy to think about.
Remy: "So my mom is alive, but now five teens..."
Miranda: "Ahem."
Remy: "So now four more teens..."
Miranda: "No offense, just wanted it on the record. Don't worry, I don't want the rest of you guys to die or anything. Maybe just Caleb, but that's sex-related and not about a Curse."
Olivia: "Speaking of you just coming back from Rosewood after breaking up with your girlfriend there, Caleb, I also want to mention that Uncle Collins dug up Miranda's body to steal more of her hair for his hair-jar, which is why she's back unable to leave the grounds."
Miranda: "Which again is fine, because last time I left the grounds I fucked up bigtime by getting tricked by a fake mom and a scary demon girl into living in a crummy house I thought was heaven. A very mean trick to play on a ghost, and one I regret falling for."
Caleb: "I don't care about some hair in some jar somewhere. Let's figure out this Preacher guy. He sounds like epic bad news. If we can figure out where his infernal power came from to create this Curse, we can destroy it."
Remy: "Yeah, his name is right there in that book."
Caleb: "Gabriel Abaddon?"
The book explodes in fire! It catches them off-guard, because how books don't normally do that, but they bounce right back like they always do, and clean that shit up before returning to their conversation.
Olivia: "Also this page 36 song, that seems important."
Remy: "And here's a necklace with a baby picture in it, that's weird. I better hold onto that and sleep with it and go crazier and crazier."
MATHESON
Olivia: "Mom, is that you? Why do you sound like a dracula?"
Collins: "It's just me! I brought over an orchid and let myself into your house because that is how I do."
Luke: "I'm going to start crying right now if you don't quit it."
Olivia: "Are you fucking our mother? Did you stab our father to death? Where did you get a house key to come inside here and do gardening?"
Collins: "I called her on the phone at the store and she said to do it so the orchid wouldn't get cold in the hell dimension weather of this town."
Olivia: "That checks out. But I am still very mad."
Collins: "I guess I'm going to bounce but I did want to mention how good of a man your father was. He hated my ass, but I would never stab him. Unless I had to, for my strange reasons. Later!"
Mathesons: "Bye."
Olivia: "God, I hate that guy. Like irrationally."
Luke: "I just hate everything. Maybe it's allergies."
MIRANDA
Miranda: "I feel like you're avoiding me."
Caleb: "I feel... the opposite."
Miranda: "Remember when you died?"
Caleb: "Shut up about when I died. I barely even kissed you."
Miranda: "Okay, how was Rosewood?"
Caleb: "I dumped Hanna. Because of you. She told me to take care of you, and instead you died within the first thirty minutes."
Miranda: "Get to the part about me."
Caleb: "Oh, okay. There is no part about you."
Miranda: "But if she doesn't know I'm dead, then she must just think you're relocating to be in love with me!"
Caleb: "First of all, fat chance. Second of all, who cares if some girl on some other TV show thinks you're a bitch? Your ass is dead."
Miranda: "Well, I never!"
She vanishes and he runs through the entire conversation in his head to make sure he was not the bad guy there. He wasn't, but also when the girl you live with is in love with you and also a dead teen, maybe show some sensitivity.
GRAVE GROUNDS
Luke: "No offense, but you look like hell."
Remy: "I know! I'm punchy so that doesn't bother me."
Luke: "You need some sleep."
Remy: "You need some sleep. Me, I'm going to go crazy about this necklace."
Luke: "That is also a plan. Call me if you get sleepy, due to not sleeping, and slowly going crazy from that or from the many other factors."
DILLON
Olivia: "...And they were friends before my parents got married, but now it's like, Why are you in my kitchen? How are you walking around in full sunlight? Why are you stealing dead girl hair for a jar?"
Dillon: "He sounds like the enemy of my devil employer. You should trust him even less than you already do."
Olivia: "Okay, I have to go. Sorry about our date I've just decided we're not going on."
Dillon: "My parents, if I even have parents in reality, are going out of town. You should come over tomorrow and we can get into virginity topics."
Olivia: "Okay, I've been intending to have sex with you anyway. It's a deal."
COFFEE SHOP OF HORRORS
Remy: "Can I have some more coffee? I fell asleep, like an indigent."
Barista: "Sure! Remind me, do you take that with cream and sugar in it? Or just MY EYEBALL!"
Remy wakes up, freaking out, and everybody is staring at her, and for some reason she remembers the barista, before she was down an eyeball, singing that song from page 36. Kind of a motif.
"Jerusalem" is an unofficial England anthem, adapted to song from a William Blake poem around 1916 and I guess all the rage at this point in Ravenswood history. Blake, I've been looking to connect him to the show for awhile -- "And all the Arts of Life they changed into the Arts of Death in Albion" -- and his general creepiness, which influenced Lovecraft pretty much directly. I wouldn't have connected it to the show without a friend, Ginger, but now it makes total sense. We think of him as this doggerel guy but that's because we weren't allowed to study his major works, which are a shitstorm of crazy. This stanza particularly (It's so true! The second verse of every hymn always gets weird!) makes me think of Ravenswood:
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
"Dark Satanic Mills" is like, the best possible name for the town, going back to the Gothic Romance source material we're orbiting (we're even stuck on "Sawmill Road," for that extra New England touch). Oh, and while we're on the subject of things that went over my head, Hannah C pointed out that Hinchley and Trumbull -- of Hinchley, Trumbull & Collins -- are the Karloff and Price characters in Comedy Of Terrors, 1964, which is about a bunch of mistaken identities and fake-out deaths in a funeral home. Cool, right? Such a lovely, strange program we're watching, I love it.
VARIOUS CONVERSATIONS
Olivia: "Hello, anybody there at Caleb's house?"
Miranda: "Just me, because I cannot leave, being dead."
Olivia: "Time for some girl talk!"
Mom: "Just like that, you want some scrips? I'm Dr. Feelgood over here?"
Remy: "I don't know. I just hate dreaming lately. It's like somebody grabs the dream remote and switches to the nightmare channel. I see things, I don't know what."
Mom: "Like, things are normal, and then they're not. Something else is going on."
Remy: "I feel like somebody's showing me stuff."
Mom: "Somebody is."
Remy: "Freddy Krueger?"
Mom: "No, obviously you. Why doesn't anybody get this about dreams? You are the writer and the producer of your dreams. Everybody in your dreams is you. Unless you happen to be under a sleepwalking Curse involving scarecrows, and then sometimes that's not true. But almost always, it is."
She then trains her daughter in lucid dreaming, grabbing the dream remote -- if you will -- and fast-forwarding to the part of the movie where the people can do that, control their dreams, etc. Sounds like Mom's pretty good at mommin'.
Olivia: "So how's Caleb?"
Miranda: "Broke up with his girlfriend so she won't get involved in our mess."
Olivia: "Same with Dillon. If he didn't live here, I would totally dump his ass."
Miranda: "Hey, did you guys ever bone?"
Olivia: "What on Earth made you ask that? Or think it's okay to ask that?"
Miranda: "I died a virgin. It bums me out. The guy I'm in love with, I could have sex with, if he was dead. Which he isn't, and he doesn't love me back. So it's on my mind."
Olivia: "Well, if it helps, so am I. Which reminds me, I should go. Have sex, I mean. So I don't die like you and be a virgin forever like you."
Caleb: "Man, I can't stop thinking about this Preacher, rather than my various dead and alive girlfriends and past-life girlfriends."
Luke: "Did you by any chance bone while you were both dead?"
Caleb: "What on Earth made you ask that? Oh, never mind. No, we didn't bone. We barely even kissed!"
Luke: "...There it is."
Olivia: "I mean, what the fuck with this orchid. Right? Right? Like what is he, my new dad? My new vampire dad?"
Miranda: "Speaking of you, let's talk about me."
Olivia: "Okay, those jars. Let's find the jars and then... I can show them to my mother! No way will she date a hair-jarrer. She wouldn't even let dad do fantasy football!"
Miranda: "That didn't sound like talking about me, but I agree we should team up. Let me go try and haunt The Grunwald again real fast."
She does. It does not fucking go well. Right at the moment The Grunwald has had enough of her shit, a warm golden mist of hellfire comes all up in Miranda's life, laying her out on the rug and burning her ghostly flesh. Then The Grunwald comes back into the room, like she didn't know that was going to happen.
Miranda: "So that sucked. I felt like a tuna steak."
Olivia: "Maybe it's another jar ghost that feels differently about the jars."
Miranda: "Maybe it was The Grunwald. Sheer creepiness, expressed as heat."
Olivia: "If it stopped when she came back in, maybe it's a spirit. A servitor or egregore or good old-fashioned monster familiar. Cat that becomes heat waves or some shit."
Miranda: "Uh yeah, maybe that. Or maybe she is just an old weird bitch."
Mom: "Hang onto that haunted necklace before we do this. That's probably a good idea. Now, fall asleep and dream, but lucidly."
SOME RESTAURANT
Olivia: "Mrs. Grunwald, how lovely to see you among the living."
Grunwald: "Olivia, lovely. How's your mother?"
Olivia: "Ask that grown man you babysit. That motherfucker won't leave her alone."
Grunwald: "They've known each other a long time and she's had a rough time of it. What is the problem?"
Olivia: "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Miranda Collins."
Grunwald: "That was so classy how your family turned up at the funeral and then you crawled around on the bathroom floor and then you all got in that big fight with the cops."
Olivia: "Do you ever think maybe she hasn't quite moved on?"
Grunwald: "No, because she is dead. We buried her. Multiple times."
Olivia: "But what if you could put hair in a jar and that would make the ghost stay around?"
Grunwald: "To capture a soul in something that small, it would have to be very powerful..."
Olivia: "We found 'em once, we can find 'em again."
Grunwald: "And then what? Listen up, my dear. You think you have the answers, but you don't even know what the questions are. time you step to The Grunwald, please do try and come correct, won't you?"
REMY
While Miranda and Caleb rehash their shared death and longing, and how she kind of wanted him to stay dead and he kind of was feeling her on that, but how they can never be together until that happens and also he just broke up with Hanna five minutes ago, Remy has a dream.
She gets almost to the creepy cabin, then is attacked by a haunted scarecrow that comes up behind her to be creepy, then drops on her out of a fucking tree, then is also in her bedroom. Then she wakes up screaming, so it leaves. Mom's like, "Isn't lucid dreaming fun? Kinda trippy!"
LATER
Luke: "And that's when it dropped on you out of a tree? Like Tigger?"
Remy: "I think it got scared by how good I was dreaming, so it resorted to less subtle tactics like dropping onto me. It's actually kind of encouraging they're on the defensive."
Luke: "I wish that you told me you were turning into Dream Warriors, but okay."
Remy, verbatim: "This is more than just a dream, Luke. It feels like a journey."
Luke: "Dramarama! What do we do about it?"
Remy: "I am definitely going to be doing some sleepwalking now. You can babysit me."
Luke: "Anything, anything."
Hilarious cut to, everybody is now in Caleb's studio apartment, watching Remy sleep in his bed. I have no problem with being pee-shy, but the idea of closing my eyes while dead and alive people stare at me, I feel like I finally get it. Olivia immediately gets a call from Dillon, who will not put it off: Tonight is the night, stop fooling around and let's get to fooling around. Olivia thinks about it, decides that every time she hangs out with these people she ends up almost dead, and decides to swipe that v-card post-haste. So now she's out. Remy's okay with it because they are like, barely friends.
Dillon: "Satisfied?"
Max: "Don't worry about me, I'm just the grinning child-harbinger."
Dillon: "I've got this under control."
Max: "You better, or it's the Grinder for both of us."
Dillon: "No way, I like girls!"
Max: "Settle down. Let's go get some ice cream, at some point, since apparently Olivia can't see or sense me, which means I may well be creepily watching you when you do it. Maybe with my head turned all the way around, just for extra awesome."
Remy finally starts sleepwalking, so the boys say bye to Miranda and follow her out the door and down the rickety stairs of the carriage house, bringing along a baseball bat for, Luke cutely explains, "self-confidence." Meanwhile, Olivia chills with Dillon and makes sure he knows tonight's the night, through staring weirdly at him, in possibly a graveyard. Olivia knows how boys tick.
COLLINS
Miranda spooks The Grunwald all over the house, desperately haunting her with like, writing in jam and whatever. GIMME THEM JARS, she ghost-talks, and Grunwald just shrugs and wipes it up. NOT KIDDING RE JARS, she squeaks, and Grunwald oils the hinge, and so on. Finally Miranda's like, "Bitch I am not kidding." Right in her ear, so suddenly that she drops her knitting! She was knitting a sweater for little Collins and now she'll never remember where she was. The evil that ghosts do.
The Grunwald: "Listen. I get that you're angry? But you need to chill."
Miranda: "I will be more than angry if you don't stop fucking with us. Jars please!"
The Grunwald: "Okay and I know you hate being stuck in these two gross houses, but also that's a big deal too."
My theory is, if the jar ghosts ever get out, they go in the Grinder to feed the Preacherman. That's why Max and Dillon were so precise about getting Miranda good and marinated, before the dumb Five got her out of that trick house. So this means Collins and The Grunwald are protecting the ghost teens, until such time as the Curse is reversed by Caleb figuring things out. (Or more likely, Remy figuring it out and doing the heavy lifting, and then Caleb doing whatever actually needs to happen.) But Team Max can't tempt ghosts away from the funeral home as long as the jars are okay, so they just have to wait, and also do other evil stuff too while they're waiting.
Anyway, then the Heat Miser attacks again, and this time The Grunwald saves Miranda from it by barking harshly at it. So now Miranda has two things to be mad at her about. I think maybe if The Grunwald stopped grunwalding around all the time and just said like one thing in plain English, this all would be over quite quickly. But she won't, and that's definitely a good thing.
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
Remy starts singing "Jerusalem" as she's heading toward the cabin, and then -- this is so neat to watch but hard to explain -- the flashback world and the current cabin flash back and forth, depending on if we're Remy or we're with the boys. Kind of like how it was when Miranda thought that shitty house was a nice house, but even more overwhelming because of the music and changes in light and did I mention the scary scarecrow attacking them in real life while Remy watches the whole Pact play out for herself.
So that happens, for a while, and then finally they vanquish the scarecrow, and Remy heads outside to see the last part, which is once they've signed the Pact, the Preacherman takes it out to a carriage that says on the side... Hinchley, Trumbull & Collins! A person or persons who already lived in the town, and thus is even creepier than the council just falling under the spell of this one weird guy.
Who stares right into the camera, laughs like he is going literally insane, and then explodes into ravens. I wish I could say I was expecting that, but one thing you never expect with this show is: The shit that happens on this show. Can't be predicted.
Remy breaks it down for the boys, including the funeral home connection none of us knew about -- and the fact that the Original kids were there and saw it all go down -- and Olivia and Dillon ride through the night talking about how they love each other (maybe they have already done it, that's what I thought the first time I watched it) while Max sits invisibly in the backseat, licking her ice cream and making all-too-frequent eye contact with the driver of the vehicle.
But even creepierly, back at the funeral home The Grunwald picks up her knitting from the earlier poltergeist activity, lights a huge candelabra to summon the Heat Miser, and then accepts its apology with a graceful "I love you too."
WEEK
Something creepy under the floorboards summons Mrs. Matheson's old foes, the Ravenswood PD, back to their house of horrors. Caleb's Uncle Dad shows up, and I'm guessing Caleb doesn't have much time for him. (Or he breaks up with him and then Collins is like, "Is it because you want me to be your dad now?") Meanwhile, Remy and Olivia keep doing their usual stuff, and Miranda investigates The Grunwald further, which is clearly the most exciting thing you could say now that we know she is friends with ghost babies that can burn people and are just hanging out in the air vents of her house.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, True Detective, The Blacklist, Ravenswood, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook.