Foreshadowing buried in clunky exposition, cliffhanger endings, and characters (minor and major) dropping like flies? That’s the sound of The Following’s penultimate episode last night, “Silence”.
To give credit where credit is due, the writers waste no time in getting to Carroll’s master plan, which is riddled with bodies, ex-wives, and burner phones. But is all the fun set-up we’re treated to in “Silence” leading up to a disappointing finale?
After Hardy is told by the FBI that Carrie Cook read Claire’s coded poem-message to bait Carroll, he confronts her, only to find out that a poem that corny takes two people to write. Claire and Joe co-wrote the little diddy the weekend they got engaged, wonder how this shitty prose wasn’t a major tip off this dude was possibly a psycho. Anyway, Hardy knows best and what’s not best is keeping Claire in his apartment while she paces around and has no discernible plot. He sends her back to Witness Protection, not before a forced-awkward make-out session conveniently located near Hardy’s gun stash.
Remaining Korban members part ways with Joe and Emma, ready to die for their final mission. Once they’ve taken off, Carroll pulls the old 1-2-I wanna see if my ex-wife is really dead, on Emma. He attempts to defend himself, saying he merely wants to “possess” Claire for leverage, assuming that’s why she really sent him the message. Also, closure. Trying to kill your ex does seem like it would require that. Carroll sends Emma and Andrew off to scout out the place where penning this prose went down, to see if it’s the trap Emma says it is. When Joe goes to Emma later to smooth the situation between them, he doesn’t need no stinking flowers to win her over. He let’s her know how utterly devoted he is to Emma now, basically passing the torch to her. In the likely scenario that Joe, ya know, finally fucking dies.
Hope you didn’t forget about Pastor Kingston, who receives a burner phone call from Carroll with instructions, he’s to receive a sign from someone outside that’ll lead him to his really pale looking son. Doesn’t look like the future is real bright there.
The sign ends up being Korban member Angie lighting herself on fire to distract FBI. A cover for Kingston so he can get into a sketchy, awaiting van. Let’s hope God is with Kingston cause he left his bodyguard in the dust. Team Rogue give Kingston’s bodyguard the shake down, he easily hands over the tracker he placed on Tanner. Ryan and Mike follow the tracker to the church that Joe Carroll and Co have taken over. This is where worlds start to collide – minus the Grey’s. For now.
Rudely interrupting Mass, Carroll trots out Kingston Tanner accompanied by machine guns, taking over for the pastor’s service for today. Ten bucks “Death is just the beginning” is season three’s tagline.
Outside the church, a chick trying to stop Hardy, Mike and the ATF from coming inside, shoots herself in the head. Just another day in The Following!
Once Mike and Hardy get inside the church solo – cause: TEAM ROGUE, DUH they discover Korban has come prepared, they have explosives wired everywhere.
At the same time, Claire uses gas to escape her service protected car. At least all the characters are doing something, no matter how stupid? That’s what I’ve rationalized in my mind.
Carroll’s service is in full swing, he reunites Kingston and his son, Preston. They bond over watching Preston gut Courtney from last week, which isn’t entirely fair, there was A LOT of editing done to that video. Hardy, for one, was yelling: DON’T DO IT – YOU DON’T HAVE TO in the background. Actually, best leave that out.
Carroll compares himself to God in the sense that he’s actually real, and God is just someone you bitch to in your brain at night. Bad after effects tell you they’re “Live Streaming” this event, Joe Carroll out to prove there is no God, only him. I don’t even think HE believes that. But it brings us to our choice, Kingston has to pray to God or Carroll, who ever he thinks has more sway over his son’s life. There is a right answer to this one, unlike most spiritual quests though.
Kingston smartly chooses Carroll, but it doesn’t seem good enough. It’s all looking bleak for both Tanner boys. Hold on, it gets worse. Another Carroll experiment in creating killers, kill or be killed, will the Son kill his Father or vise versa? Hint, you die either way. Preston grabs the knife, trying to get run at Carroll, gets gun butted instead. Whoops. Kingston’s decision ultimately ends up being slitting his own throat. The old Following standby for shock and gore.
Back with Claire, she ends up falling into Emma and Andrew’s waiting trap. She heads right to them, all alone. Claire went all the way to Jersey only to get herself in a stand off with Emma. Silly Claire, if only it was that simple to shoot Joe, immarite? Emma kills Robert so she can kill Claire all by herself, she intends on lying to Joe about the whole thing, since he confessed his love for her earlier and all. Claire doesn’t end up killing Joe like she wanted, but she does throw Emma through a window after stabbing the hell out of her. With what? I don’t know, the gun she stole from Ryan gets lost pretty fast, and the whole scene is super dark. It was the like writers were like, “fight scenes are so tiring, shoot it all in the dark!”. Better than nothing, I guess.
Williamson flexes his favorite horror movie trope too, they always have to check the dead body, don’t they? Claire really kills Emma twice. So we know she’s really dead, but no one ever really dies on this show, unless they get another TV gig. For now, there go the season three conspiracies about Emma taking over.
Surprises come in three’s for Claire, The Grey’s twins turn up, happy to see Emma all dead. Will this be the end of Claire? Probably not, it seems horribly unsatisfying if she and Carroll don’t see each other at least one last time.
Speaking of Carroll, in the church Team Rogue does their thing, endangering the preachers son by firing off premature gun shots. Mike comes out of his hiding spot, offering himself up to Carroll for letting Preston go. Carroll accurately senses his boyfriend Hardy can’t be far. As Carroll counts down to shooting Mike in the head, it cuts to black another shot is fired off, before we find out if Mike dies by Carroll’s hand or not.
Will Mike’s character go by way of Deborah of season one, or will Team Rogue live to fuck up another day? Should we start the prayer circle for Claire? Watch most of these questions go unanswered next week in The Following season finale!
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