'Prodigal Son' Episode 5 offers confusing details from Malcolm Bright's past even as the visions continue to haunt him

Malcolm just needs some sleep as he hasn't slept for days. And his nightmares and memories are only becoming more and more vivid
PUBLISHED OCT 22, 2019

Spoilers ahead for Episode 5 'The Trip' of 'Prodigal Son' 

This episode, Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne) spent a good deal of time exhausted. The episode began with Malcolm convincing himself to sleep like the "damn dead".

However, visions of his past and particularly that of his father Dr. Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen) and the "girl in the box" haunt him making it impossible for him to sleep. 

Unable to sleep, Malcolm goes out for a walk and sees a station wagon parked by the side of the road. When he approaches it, he sees something stir underneath a blanket.

Then he sees someone shackled inside the car. Just as he is about to flip and call for attention, it turns out that the station wagon had a dog inside it. 

Malcolm just needs some sleep as he hasn't slept for days. And his nightmares and memories are only becoming more and more vivid.

Although he still can't make sense of what they really mean, they keep haunting him and making matters worse. Malcolm decides he needs a murder to focus on so he can keep himself sane and finally go to sleep.

After much begging in front of Gil (Lou Diamond Phillips), Malcolm is assigned a murder. This leads him to a night club where a sudden shooting from a rival gang ends up blowing a bag full of drugs in his face.

Now that he's high on drugs, Gil asks Dani (Aurora Perrineau) to escort him home. Things are going just alright and Malcolm is in "high" spirits when he is around Dani but the minute he finds himself alone in the bathroom, the visions come back. 

He leaves the bathroom only to see the trunk turn up in front of him and a lady under the covers behind him. Panic-stricken, he runs back inside the bathroom and finds himself in what looks like his father's cell.

He turns around to see himself dressed like his father. His subconscious tells him to stop ignoring him and try and think about what his dad does, what he did.

The subconscious suggests looking for context "to stitch all this crazy together" and directs him to a box of items that Malcolm had hidden under his childhood bed. 

When Malcolm retrieves the box, he sees old items and photographs from what looks like Malcolm and his parents' trip to a cabin of some sort in the same station wagon that he saw at the beginning of the episode.

He then sees a vision of his father prodding him: "during this missing time, what did you do? What can't you remember?" 'Prodigal Son' airs on Mondays at 9 pm ET/PT. 



 

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