'The Outsider' Episode 6 preview: Holly explains bogeyman theory and some lurking evil, Jack loses his mind
In the middle of its season right now, HBO’s adaptation of the Stephen King southern gothic novel ‘The Outsiders’ has so far teased much and revealed nothing. We know that Terry Maitland’s (Jason Bateman) guilt in the murder of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson is very questionable. We know that there have been very similar murders (at least two others) in different parts of the country. We know that there is most likely a supernatural element at play. But we still can’t explain any of it.
So, what can one expect next? Episode six of the show is titled ‘The One About the Yiddish Vampire’. All the episode titles so far have provided subtle clues about what the underlying mystery is. The last two episodes have alluded towards a bogeyman or similar shape-shifting apparition that may have taken Terry’s form to kill Frankie. This one calls it a vampire. More specifically, a Yiddish vampire.
While Jewish vampires may sound outside the usual, Elon Gilad wrote in Haaretz in 2016, “The first references to vampires in Judaism are in three Hebrew books written in the Middle Ages: 'Midrash Shmuel' (the aggadic commentary on the Book of Samuel); 'Sefer Hasidim', an important book on the laws, customs and traditions of German Jewry at the turn of the 13th century; and the related book 'Sefer HaRokeah'.”
So, can we be sure that the mysterious entity in the show is a vampire? It would be consistent with a couple of things. For one, Officer Jack Hoskins (Marc Menchaca) was bitten (or maybe scratched) by something on his neck that seems to be driving him insane. In Episode five, we saw that he wasn’t the only one afflicted by such a thing. The man, who was known to one of the other “murderers”, ultimately kills himself. It would also be consistent with the creature’s suggested bloodthirstiness. One still has to wonder why the creature is Yiddish.
As per IMDb, the episode’s synopsis says, “Holly presents her theory about the connection between two other child murders and the Frankie Peterson case; while Ralph remains skeptical, Yunis suggests they start looking into Claude, the last person to have contact with Terry.”
Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo), a private investigator with a sense of the supernatural, has been trying to understand what was going on. In the preview for the episode, we see her present her findings. She says, “there are times when to see things clearly, you have to expand your sense of what reality might entail."
Speaking to the group consisting of detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn), Terry’s wife Glory Maitland (Julianne Nicholson), Ralph’s wife Jeannie Anderson (Mare Winningham), Jack, state police detective Yunis Sablo (Yul Vazquez), and Terry’s lawyer Howard Salomon (Bill Camp), Holly presents the very visibly-irrational theory.
“Every culture has tales of creatures that go back through time,” she says as the video intercuts to some kind of pagan-looking festival with people in animal masks. “I don’t know this presence. But I do know that it’s evil.”
Glory, unhappy with the implication of the otherworldly, shouts, “this is your plan to exonerate my husband? The bogeyman? Are you insane?”
Despite Ralph claiming “there’s no such thing as evil in this world without a rational explanation,” we clearly see him, Holly, and others trying to devise ways to prove this theory. We see further ahead Holly explaining whatever this apparition is, it is drawn towards pain; following which, we see Jack hallucinating about his long-dead mother. We also see the bloody words “Stop her” appear on the back of Jack’s hands out of nowhere. Whether this too is a hallucination is unclear at this point.
An apparition or not, one thing is clear: Jack is losing his mind and is likely to do something soon. The promo video quickly cuts through glimpses of the episode where we see Holly exploring a cave, followed by more sights of the strange festival. Whatever is going to happen ahead in the show, it can’t happen soon enough!
‘The Outsider’ airs on Sundays at 9 pm EST on HBO.