'The Outsider' Episode 9 sees Jack kill Alec but do the sniper bullets take Andy as well?
Episode 9 — the penultimate chapter — of HBO’s southern gothic horror ‘The Outsider’ began with a flashback to 1947, with a boy playing hide-and-seek with his brother. After that, they run towards the woods. This flashback is revisited throughout ‘Tigers and Bears’.
As Ralph (Ben Mendelsohn), Holly (Cynthia Erivo), Yunis (Yul Vasquez) and others try to figure out their next move to capture and possibly kill El Cuco or whatever the creature is, we begin to see for the first time that Ralph’s position has shifted. A staunch non-believer in the supernatural so far, he has now begun to accept that 'it' may be real.
Back in 1947, in the woods, the older brother tells the younger one about a secret entrance to the caves that would let them enter without paying the fee. They enter. While they play, their father, now worried, ventures into the woods to find them. His search eventually leads him to the caves. There, he hears his children calling him for help. When he gets a bunch of people and returns, and enters the cave, all of them end up trapped inside the tunnels during a cave in. They all die with no food or water.
In the meanwhile, Claude is left contemplating how El Cuco is affecting him. He’s so disgusted with the idea that it may be inside him, watching and hearing whatever he watched and heard, he throws up.
At the same time, in Cherokee City, the District Attorney receives news of another young boy who was found dead near a hiking trail. The Modus Operandi matched the case of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson with whom the story began.
As Andy (Derek Cecil) and Cynthia walk around the area where El Cuco attempted to abduct another child in the previous episode, Andy notices the direction (that they saw in the video provided by Tennessee police) El Cuco fled to did not lead toward any of the cave entrances. When Holly checks the cave directory, she finds some residue on it, the same kind she saw at the Anderson home after El Cuco visited there. The same that was found on Terry Maitland’s (Jason Bateman) clothes in the barn.
After speaking to the boy who almost got abducted by El Cuco, Ralph figures they should check out the cave where bears scraped their claws against the rocks to sharpen them, the same one El Cuco-Claude promised to take the boy to in the previous episode. This connects to the events of 1947 because it was the same cave where the people got trapped and died. And among those people were ancestors of the Boltons.
As the team heads out to the cave entrance, we see El Cuco order Jack (Marc Menchaca) to head out of the cave. Jack then sets up his sniper rifle and fires. His shot kills Alec Pelley (Jeremy Bobb). There are several more shots that could be heard after the scene cuts to the credits. The cliffhanger would suggest that at least one more person may have been hit. A good bet is that it was Andy, whose death was somewhat prophesized a couple of episodes ago.
As far as penultimate episodes go, in typical ‘The Outsider’ fashion, it was slow. But It is the show’s slow pace that makes it a gripping watch.
'The Outsider' finale will air on Sunday at 9 pm EST (8 pm CST) on HBO.
