In the latest Outcast recap, Kyle struggles to deal with his mother’s catatonia and Reverend Anderson begins building an army…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s clear that Outcast is a show that will live in the margins between religion and science fiction with possessions and exorcisms taking center stage throughout the course of the series.
But the second episode that debuted this week titled “(I Remember) When She Loved Me” did a great job of not only giving us more background into the story behind Kyle’s original faceoff with a demon that lived inside his mother, but it also proved that not every hour will be filled with this “outcast” pulling one of Satan’s army out of a unknowing victim.
Instead, the latest episode was filled with torment from Kyle as he started to live with the regret that by exorcising a demon from his mother, he also more or less left her for dead. We also find out that Kyle won’t be alone in his battle against the darkness while the forces that surround the small town of Rome, West Virginia aren’t secluded to just one home on the outskirts of the city after we find a group of mutilated raccoons in the woods, disemboweled like something out of True Detective.
An all around interesting hour of television and that’s all we can really ask for, isn’t it?
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Outcast titled “(I Remember) When She Loved Me”….
Never Gonna Give You Up
Following last week’s debut where we are introduced to Kyle Barnes, the part-time exorcist is still haunted by the years he spent with his mother after she was possessed by some sort of entity that turned her into a vile, vindictive animal who tortured her son at every turn.
But long before Kyle’s mother was grabbing him by the hair and chucking him into a storage closet, there were happier times. Kyle remembers growing up with a mother that loved him dearly and that’s what made losing her all that much harder. She was a doting mother and he was an adoring son until one day something evil entered their lives and as Kyle watched her stare off into the distance before digging into the ground and covering herself with mud, he knew that their lives would never be the same.
Kyle can also never forget the moment when he finally locked his mother in the same closet where she used to torture him — and when the demon disguised itself as her sweet voice to get him to open the door. Flashes of Kyle’s accidental exorcism flash through his mind as he exposed his mother to the light of the sun and then punched the demon out of her. When it was over, Kyle was exhausted and sad and his mother was — for all intents and purposes — a vegetable.
Since moving back to his hometown, Kyle has started to go visit his mother more often now in the home where she stays in a catatonic state around the clock. After seeing the conditions where she lives, including a leaky ceiling and substandard room, Kyle takes it upon himself to pick up his mother and move her back to his house where he intends to care for her.
Never mind the fact that she needs round the clock care and he can’t even feed her properly, Kyle is determined to give his mother the attention she deserves. It’s clear Kyle, despite knowing what he did was right, still feels guilty for robbing his mother of a chance to live. He’s also convinced that she’s not really free of the demon because why didn’t she spew out a pile of black guck like little Joshua did? Why didn’t his mother wake up and return to normal like Joshua did?
These are all questions that Kyle has swirling around his head but chances are he’s not going to like the answers.
Anderson’s Army
Back at church, Reverend Anderson is no longer preaching about stories from the Bible that will teach about commandments or even life lessons to help his parishioners. Instead, Reverend Anderson is making it clear that there’s a war going on in their town and this time it’s for the souls of everyone who lives there.
In fact, Reverend Anderson is going to recruit as many good people as he can to make them aware of the real evil that’s seeping up through the ground and possessing innocent children like Joshua Austin. Of course some of those good people look like they want to jump Reverend Anderson’s bones like one particular single mom who even goes as far as inviting him over for dinner one night.
But as much as Reverend Anderson would like to indulge — or perhaps skip dinner and get right to dessert — he’s got bigger things on his mind. Like saving the people from whatever demon is lurking around every corner in Rome, West Virginia these days.
Whoever Did This
While Kyle’s brother-in-law Mark is still trying to wrap his head around Joshua Austin’s mother not pressing charges against him for beating the snot out of her son, Chief Giles has other issues to deal with including someone arriving at the police station with a plastic bag containing a raccoon that’s been gutted before being pinned to a tree.
The man tells the police officers that the woods near his home is filled with these same animals cut up and tied to the trees in some kind of ritualistic ceremony.
So Giles and Mark wander into the woods to find proof — and when they do it’s worse than you could imagine. Several trees along the same path are decorated by the animals strung up, disemboweled and hung for display in the exact way each time. Eventually, Chief Giles and Mark find an abandoned old trailer, but when the look inside, there’s nowhere there — only a ratty old mattress and what looks like the remnants of a place someone once called home.
But from the distance in the woods it appears that someone or something is watching Giles and Mark as they conduct their investigation. There’s more to this town than just demon possessions and it looks like evil is here to stay.
Happy Birthday
Megan comes to see her brother to drop off a few groceries at his request before telling him that she’s off to see his ex-wife Allison and his daughter Amber on her birthday.
Kyle begs Megan to take a gift from him to give to his daughter, even if she won’t know it’s from her father but she refuses at first. Finally, Megan concedes and takes the gift but when she arrives at Allison’s home, she doesn’t take the present inside.
Throughout the course of the birthday party, Megan can’t help but see the places her brother once called home and the family he’s so desperately missing since the altercation happened that cost him a wife and a child. Finally at the end of the night, Megan gives Amber the present from Kyle without telling her who it’s from.
Once she unwraps the present, Amber finds a book — the same book Kyle was reading on the day his mother fell to her possession — and from that moment forward she won’t let it go. It’s almost like she knew it was from her father even if he couldn’t tell her happy birthday himself.
We Have Him Anyway
Back at his house, Kyle meets with Reverend Anderson after he’s notified that Sarah Barnes has been taken from her care facility without authorization. It seems Reverend Anderson was listed as her emergency contact after she went into the home.
He tells Kyle that he can’t give his mother the care that she needs no matter how good his intentions might be. But Kyle didn’t bring his mother back to the house just to give her a better life — he’s convinced that he didn’t actually get rid of the demon that lived inside of her because why didn’t she wake up and go back to normal just like Joshua Austin?
So Kyle decides to go through the motions of the same exorcism that he used on the little boy. He showers his mother with sunlight and even opens the wound on his hand and sprinkles blood into her mouth but to no avail. Sarah Barnes is gone and Kyle is just going to have to learn to accept it.
Reverend Anderson helps Kyle get his mother back to the home but that’s where something strange occurs. A man (played by Star Trek’s Brent Spiner), who has been following Kyle all over town, shows up in his mother’s room and sits down on her bed. There the man tells her that despite all her efforts, Kyle still belongs to them. Despite all Sarah’s efforts to fight back the evil inside of her — “We have him anyway” he says to her. A moment later we see a single tear rolling down Sarah’s cheek — as if she’s heard every word this man has been saying.
As for Kyle — we see one final flashback to the day he exorcised the demon from inside his mother. It seems when she was saved, Kyle passed out on the ground and the black sludge did actually spew out of his mother’s mouth before finding him laying on the floor. The black smoke monster picked Kyle up from the ground and held him in its clutches before disappearing into nothingness as the police arrived to check on the boy and his mother.
From the look of things, this entity has been wrapped around Kyle for much longer than we could possibly understand and his relationship with this demon is only just beginning.
Outcast returns next Friday night at 10pm ET on Cinemax.
