'The Outsider' Finale Preview: Promo hints at Holly-El Cuco showdown in cave, Andy and Yunis noticeably absent
Slow, understated, detective potboiler, grey; ‘The Outsider’ has been called many things in the last ten weeks. HBO’s adaptation of this Stephen King southern gothic horror is about to come to an end and one can’t help but feel sad about that. For one, it has been one of the most genre-defying examples of horror. For another, outstanding performances from Ben Mendelsohn, Marc Menchaca, and Cynthia Erivo have made every episode of the show a pleasurable watch.
But all good things must come to an end, right? Episode 10 of season 1 is thus aptly titled ‘Must/Can’t’.
The penultimate episode of ‘The Outsider’ saw Ralph (Mendelsohn), Andy (Derek Cecil), Alec (Jeremy Bobb), Holly (Erivo), and Yunis (Yul Vasquez) being attacked by Jack (Menchaca), on the orders of the mysterious El Cuco, a shape-shifting bogeyman whose existence was finally addressed to a certain degree only in the last couple of episodes.
Jack’s trained sniper aim found at least one victim. Alec was killed. The episode ended with sounds of more shots, leaving viewers wondering if others too had met the same fate as Alec.
In the finale, as per HBO, the group will find itself in a climactic showdown in their last-ditch effort to root out El Cuco. That much is evident. But the finale has to address many, many questions. For starters, what exactly is the nature of El Cuco? Is it a lonely being, or are there more like it? The latter has been hinted at but, true to the show’s style of keeping everyone in the dark, it hasn’t been sufficiently proven.
“When I was little, my father would say: a man knows a man, but an outsider knows an outsider,” says Holly in the promo for the finale, as we see visuals of her ducking in horror, in all probability reacting to Jack’s attack on the group. This is, perhaps, the first reference to the show’s title throughout the series. It makes sense to have something like that happen in the last episode of the season.
As the promo continues, we see Ralph too reacting to raining bullets. The ominous absence of Andy and Yunis in the promo may be a reason to worry. For some time now, Andy’s death in the series has been a matter of speculation on the internet.
In the meanwhile, we also see the district attorney telling Glory, Terry Maitland’s wife, that there may have been a development in the Frankie Peterson murder case that began this whole story. Terry who was accused of the murder was killed by Frankie’s brother. Since then Glory has been a pariah in the town.
In the previous episode, viewers saw the DA receive news of another young boy who was found dead near a hiking trail; the Modus Operandi matched that of Frankie’s murder. While this development may lead to Terry’s name being cleared, it brings us to the ominous conclusion that more than one of the creatures we call El Cuco exists. Because how could El Cuco be in two states -- Tennessee and Georgia -- at the same time?
The promo sees Holly and Ralph finally entering the cave, the lair of the creature. As they see carcasses, Holly observes that the creature has been feeding. The group had been counting upon the fact that the lack of feed may have weakened the shape-shifter, which would have provided them with an opportunity to move in for the kill. But if the creature has been feeding, that changes everything. Not to mention the fact that a large group of people hunting the El Cuco had now been reduced to just two. The odds are definitely stacked against them.
The promo sees split seconds of a lot of action including fire here and there, ending with Holly’s most crucial question, presumably directed towards the creature: “What is your name?”
'The Outsider' finale will air on Sunday at 9 pm EST (8 pm CST) on HBO.