'NOS4A2' Season 2 Episode 1 Review: Manx is back eight years later, Vic is on the brink of insanity
Spoilers for 'NOS4A2' Season 2 Episode 1 'Bad Mother'
In the season premiere of AMC's 'NOS4A2' appropriately titled 'Bad Mother', we see Vic Mcqueen (Ashleigh Cummings) get visions about her previous season's fight with immortal Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto). Thinking she had burnt him to death in Season 1, Vic was not expecting her son Wayne Mcqueen (Jason David) to ask her who Charlie was. News on their little TV screeched that Charlie was dead in prison but Vic was sure that, that wasn't true; she doubts she finished the job eight years ago. This was a rather calm season premiere, as we see Maggie Leigh (Jahkara Smith) ask her Scrabble tiles if the Rolls-Royce Wraith was dead; Bing Partridge (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) try to hunt down the Wraith and Charlie's daughter Millie Manx (Mattea Conforti) discover something new in Christmasland.
The beginning of the episode sees children in the real world speaking of Charlie and his deeds of killing children as they attempt to scare their friends, while in twisted Christmasland, 'a world of thought', Millie hears the voices of the children from the real world echo in the snowy forest.
"Charlie Manx is in a coma, but he can still kill you because he's magic," said one kid. Millie decides to push one of the many kids in Christmasland with her into what looks like a fragmented portal and the kid emerges into the real world scaring the kids with his monster teeth and screams. As the boy from Christmasland runs behind the kids, he disappears into thin smoke as all the lights in Christmasland turn off. Millie simply whispers, "Father." At this point with the lights out in Christmasland, viewers would assume that Charlie is dead. But of course, from the trailer, we know that's not true. The interesting suspense here is we wonder how Charlie is brought back to life? Charlie is a powerful Creative (we'll explain this later) that feeds off the souls of children and put their remains into Christmasland - a place he had conjured from his twisted imagination where every day is Christmas and unhappiness is illegal.
In the real world, eight years have passed and Vic has settled in with her son Wayne and her beau, series newcomer, Jonathan Langdon's Lou Carmody. In the midst of family time, Wayne asks his mother who Charlie is. Vic immediately gets flashbacks of when she lit Charlie on fire last season and decides to give Maggie a call. Maggie is a purple-haired librarian with a Scrabble Bag portal to the universe and she had helped Vic try to take down Charlie. The Scrabble Tiles in the bag had revealed that Vic would be the one to find Charlie and she did, but Vic thinks she didn't finish the job - he's not dead. Vic asks Maggie to ask her tiles where to get a new Knife which is an object that allows people called Strong Creatives like Vic to cut the fabric between the real world and the world of thought, resulting in them having the ability to access their Inscape. Inscapes are imaginary worlds that Strong Creatives dream up and can be brought into the real world through the help of knives. Examples of Knives include - Charlie's 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith and Maggie's Scrabble Tiles.
While Maggie urges Vic to let go of the past, Vic finds out from Wayne that their friend Sam had found Lou a bike and when Vic picks it up, it turns out to be her Knife, her motorbike. With her Knife, Vic is able to open The Shorter Way, her Inscape, which is an imaginary bridge that allows her to travel to places in the world to recover lost things. She tells Lou she can use her motorbike to find the bridge and kill Charlie for good. As she fixes the bike she hears Christmas music and a phone ringing and realized that she hadn't picked up Wayne from school - she is already affected by the possibility of Charlie being alive. The next morning, as she plays with Wayne outside their home, she reveals to her son that Charlie is a bad guy that takes away children from their parents forever and how her friend and Wayne's biological father, Craig Harrison (Dalton Harrod) had died in Charlie's car - the Wraith. Here is where Vic hears phones ringing and Wayne does not. As she goes around her home, and her garage cutting phone cords and putting cellphones in the oven, she picks up a toy phone screaming "Stop calling here." On the other end of the line, was Millie threatening Vic to stop messing with Christmasland or Charlie will kill her - Vic of course delivers threats of her own. At this point, Wayne is overly terrified of what looks to be his insane mother.
Vic takes her motorbike and makes her way to the bridge. The left inner side of the bridge always shows the destination Vic will end up at and this time, it read 'morgue.' There she finds the remnants of Charlie in the autopsy room and rams a knife right through his exposed heart. When she returns, her home is on fire. She explains to a furious Lou that her gift comes with a cost and because of her repetitive use of the bridge to fight Charlie, she's torn in ways she doesn't understand. While Lou proposes professional help, the end of the episodes sees Vic leave on her motorbike as the bridge states her destination as the Lake.
While we knew that Wayne is about to be Charlie's next victim, thanks to the trailer, we're glad that the premiere didn't immediately bring that narrative in. The show has always taken its time with its narrative and the premiere promises a supernatural season as we wonder if Charlie's or Vic's death is closer. It was an episode that definitely brought back its ideal mysticism and without having shown whether Charli was alive, it managed to show us the danger through Vic's very rational fear. With the episode taking its time exploring the beginning of Seasons 2 plotline, it not only gave viewers time to develop insane fan theories but left room for so much character and narrative development.
In the midst of Vic uncovering her visions, we see two other interesting and intertwining plot lines. Maggie, after having read an article titled 'Serial Killer Manx dead in Denver' asks her tiles if the Wraith is dead - they read 'YES' as Maggie falls down crippled by a seizure. As for the Wraith, it sat in the garage of a man who had found it and put it online for sale. The man had responded to Bing online and so posing as a man named Ethan Anders, Bing makes a visit to the man selling the Wraith. There he finds out that the engine isn't in the Wraith and after knocking the man out with what we think is "gingerbread smoke", he forces him to put back the engine. With that, we see Charlie's dead heart start beating and all the lights in Christmasland turn on.
As usual, excellently shot and directed, it's an eerie and intense beginning to another chapter of Vic's and Charlie's battle - we're always ready for more.
'NOS4A2' Season 2 episodes air Sundays at 10 pm ET on AMC.