'Soulmates' Episode 5 Preview: What cult does Charlie Heaton's Kurt join in search of his perfect match?
Our beloved resident weirdo-turned-'It Girl' Nancy Wheeler's boyfriend from 'Stranger Things' aka Charlie Heaton is about to make his anthology debut in AMC's 'Soulmates'. But that's not the only interesting thing about this week's on-show portrayal of how effed up science and technology can make this business of love. The matters of the heart, when offered up to science, can bring in some clinically tested perfect match, as the show's concept suggests, but there's a downside to these certified soulmates too. Take for example Heaton's character Kurt, who joins a self-growth organization that helps people cope with the loss of their designated soulmates. Sounds empathetic, right? But wait, it gets darker.
The official synopsis provided by AMC for Episode 5 'Break on Through' states: "Devastated to discover that his soul mate is dead, big-hearted Kurt finds faith and opportunity in the arms of The Church of Righteous Transition, an organization that promises to help those whose soul mates have passed on."
The trailer shows Heaton with his thick southern accent — again a remarkable feat for the talented young British actor — and it only gets more thrilling here on. The teaser opens with Kurt talking about his dead soulmate Heather, whom he had never met. The bandages on his wrists hint at possible suicide attempts, which is probably why he commits to the self-help organization. The teaser then proceeds to showing Kurt at the facility, where participants are pretty much dressed as Amish people, being urged to drink a mind altering liquid before all comes crashing down and Kurt starts throwing up. In all of this, the impressionable, naive boy's only hope seems to be the significantly mature fellow recruit of the cult, played by Malin Åkerman.
Another teaser from AMC shows Kurt interacting with Åkerman's character as part of a therapeutic exercise where they pretend to be each other's deceased soulmates, and it's obvious the two are quite smitten with each other. So when the previous teaser culminates and the two can be seen running away, spewing out vomit, speculation arises over what happened. Was it a part of a suicide pact? Is suicide how the cult propagates reuniting with the soulmate? It's eery bit morbid and deplorable, the way these organizations can sometimes profit off of people's misery, and Episode 5 looks like a glaring portrayal of the same.
One would think this was like Prime Video's latest sci-fi dramedy 'Upload' where science has gone far enough to upload dead people's souls into a virtual reality system where people can continue to live on in the afterlife as a hologram, but 'Soulmates' is beyond disturbing. There's no comedy, only enormous amounts of fear surrounding the vested interest of some self-help groups which more often than not turn out to be corrupt cults.
'Soulmates' airs on Mondays at 10 pm only on AMC.