'The Outsider' Episode 6: Gibney makes El Cuco an official suspect, is she the next victim?
Spoiler alert for 'The Outsider'
In the previous episode, 'Tear Drinker,' we saw PI Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo) decide that Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) was innocent.
Maitland, a Little League coach, who was publicly arrested for the rape, mutilation and murder of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson (Duncan E Clark), claimed he was innocent before he was shot and killed by Peterson's older brother, Oliver Peterson (Joshua Whichard). On the case are Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) and Gibney, and the suspect drawn in is more supernatural than factual.
In this episode, 'The One About the Yiddish Vampire', Gibney presents her findings and speculations about the connection between Peterson's murder and two other child murder cases. Anderson is skeptical but Yunis Sablo (Yul Vazquez), another detective on the case, suggests they pay Claude Bolton (Paddy Considine) a visit.
Bolton, a local bouncer was seen on security footage to have been scratched by Maitland's doppelganger the night of Peterson's murder and so being the last person that had contact with Maitland, he's definitely worth talking to.
On her way to present her findings, Gibney witnesses the death of Tracey Powell (Drez Ryan), Heath Hofstetter’s (Martin Bats Bradford) cousin, whom she saw at the graveyard two days ago when she was taking pictures. She asks her detective friend and romantic interest, Andy Katcavage (Derek Cecil), to check to see if there was anything on him worth knowing. They find out that Powell's fingerprints were found in the car of the William sisters, the sisters that Hofstetter was accused of murdering. From the pictures taken, Gibney also noticed that Powell had the blistering scar at the back of his neck, just like Officer Jack Hoskins (Marc Menchaca).
Her presentation got her a highly judgmental attitude from her colleagues and a loud rant from Glory Maitland (Julianne Nicholson), Terry's wife. The reaction of her colleagues that the boogeyman could be real is quite valid and while Anderson does not want to believe anything but facts, Maitland's widow Glory can't bring herself to believe that the reason her husband is dead is because of an entity that feeds on grief. It's a lot to wrap your head around.
Jeannie Anderson (Mare Winningham), on the other hand, welcomes Gibney's keen interest in solving the case. Gibney presents that there are three accused — Maria Caneles, Heath Hofstetter, or Terry Maitland — all with awful crimes, all with prosecutors and defense with airtight evidence and all with doppelgangers. Gibney believes that there are about 24-27 days between murders, and in that time the entity takes a new form while having a henchman, first Powell and now Hoskins, prepare for the next murder.
Jeannie, Jessa Maitland (Scarlett Blum) Maitland's daughter, and Merlin Cassidy (Jakob Gruntfest), a boy that stole the van in which Frankie Peterson was kidnapped, have all been visited by a "hooded" man. While drawn out, all the sketches look absolutely similar. When Gibney finds "residue" on the dining table where Jeannie said she saw the figure, Gibney thinks the creature is shedding and going through a transformation and during that time will have people infected to do its dirty work for it. The infections keep going when its victims come in contact with the next. The odd fluid was also found on Terry's clothes in the barn at the start of the investigation.
Meanwhile, Hoskins has been getting painful warnings from El Cuco, asking him to stop Gibney from going forward with the investigation, the same warning the "hooded figure" asked Jessa to give Anderson. El Cuco or the "malevolent force" has been writing "stop her" on walls and on Hoskins' hands.
After being unable to stop Gibney, Hoskins gets a horrid beating from his late mother. El Cuco had visited him in her form. At the end of the episode, we see Hoskins invite Gibney to the barn to show her "something" she should see, and while in the car, Gibney notices the blistering rash on the back of Hoskins' neck. Knowing what she does about El Cuco, she tries to turn back only to have Hoskins' turn the wheel back to the barn.
So, Powell seems to have been Hofstetter's accomplice and Hoskins may be being set up as an accomplice for Bolton. But then who was Maitland's accomplice? The episode was a fairly slow one but established a flow in the narrative direction towards relieving the possibility of the supernatural being real.
‘The Outsider’ airs on Sundays at 9 pm EST (8 pm CST) on HBO.