'The Terror: Infamy' episode 6 'Taizo' reveals why Yuko has been haunting the Japanese community at the internment camps
This article contains spoilers for episode 6: 'Taizo'.
This week on AMC's anthology horror, 'The Terror's second season Infamy's sixth episode we finally find out what has the vicious yurei masquerading as the evangelic Yuko, scorned. That, and of course, the making of a yurei.
The episode begins with a flashback from 1919, which is 21 years prior to the story's current timeline set in the middle of the Second World War. Still, in Terminal Island, the flashback shows Yuko as a new bride of Hideo Furuya - a sleazy drunkard who wanted a bride. He calls her exquisite and tries to ease her into having sex, but before any of that can happen, a visibly intimidated Yuko sheds her robes only to reveal a growing baby bump. Hideo, furious and enraged, calls her a whore which could probably refer to her working at a brothel as we have seen the show's protagonist Chester coming across Yuko's spirit at their local one, and then get told that there's no Japanese girl tending at the said brothel. Back to the flashback: despite Yuko's ardent pleas, Hideo shuns her and kicks her out of his house and Yuko is believed to be on her own ever since.
A year passes, and we see Yuko hiding at what looks like an American barrack where soldiers dump surplus wasted groceries. Yuko has a baby and fends for the two of them picking up on the negligibly appetizing ration dumped by American soldiers until she realizes she can't raise a baby like this. She decides to give her baby away at a missionary, but as the nuns take the child in, Yuko spirals into self detest, blaming herself for a 'moment of weakness', because "What is a woman worth if she can't raise her own child?"
Devastated, Yuko goes to the local river to jump off the bridge and end her pain but is stopped by a mysterious woman who implies that she is too aware of Yuko's intentions. She tries to change Yuko's mind, but the young mother does what she had intended to do and jumps in the water anyway - moments after which the mysterious woman returns and sees Yuko's body floating in the water.
The next scene shows Yuko waking up in a very Japanese house filled with trees, gardens, and the same woman nursing her back to health. But there is something very off; Yuko is warned to not go near the sand around the garden of the house, among other things, and there's an ominous buzzing of flies that is usually heard around decaying, rotting matter. Things just keep getting more and more suspicious until the point where Yuko accidentally lands on the sand she was warned against, and suddenly rotten, decaying hands grab her by the foot and start pulling her. Her savior once again arrives on time and is able to save her, but things just keep getting more and more morbid because every day Yuko wakes up, the other woman says the same words about her sleeping well, and the buzzing of flies is constant.
Eventually, Yuko is able to put two and two together, and protests to the woman insisting she must stay there, saying she is a mother and needs to go back to her child. This is when the big reveal comes: Yuko is told all she deemed her life was gone as she really died that night. The mysterious woman turns out to be a similarly ominous presence whose insatiable appetite for vengeance is what has kept her alive, and Yuko is told the same is the case with her afterlife. But despite the comforts promised by the other woman in this paradise of an afterlife, Yuko wants to go back to her child and ends up tricking the woman who saved her to step into the sand and get dragged inside.
With the other woman gone, the skies darken and suddenly Yuko can't access the indoors of the house she was being nursed at. Instead, she has to dig through layers of mud and eventually emerges as a decaying, rotting corpse, 21 years later in a graveyard. It all makes sense now why Yuko would haunt the Japanese community of Terminal Island; her 'onnen' or hunger for vengeance is what brought her back and she satiated herself by killing Hideo in one of the previous episodes. But why the others? Could it be because one of the families is raising the child she gave up for adoption?
Find out next week on 'The Terror: Infamy's episode six, that airs on September 23 at 9pm, only on AMC.
