There is one more episode in season 2 of The Exorcist and they have raised the stakes to new levels in the penultimate episode. Ritual and Repetition picked up from the morning after Andy broke free from the bed and started terrorizing his family. The first thing we see is Marcus dragging Tomas, who is still in his demo-induced fog, into a room and tries to wake him up to no success. He sort of stores him there for now and tries to figure out where Andy might have gone.
One of the cool parts of the episode was Marcus playing detective a little bit. He wanders over to the neighbor’s house to see if they happened to know where Andy is and he stumbles upon the bodies from Andy’s victims of last week’s episode. He looks around the house in search of clues as to where Andy might have gone. After seeing a broken frame and a bloody pitchfork, Marcus is able to find the trail that leads him to an old barn on the island where Andy has taken the kids and Rose.
Andy is doing his best Jack Torrance, from The Shining, impression this episode. His murderous ways appear to have only just begun as he has now tied his foster children and broke one of their ankles. He is about to begin killing the kids, when Rose speaks up. She calls him out and so he decides to start with her. Jump to her hovering over a well and Andy is talking to her and counting down from ten, as he counts boards covering the hole fall through. When he gets to ten she falls in. When he goes back in to get the next victim he is tripped and Verity gets free and runs away; he chases after her.
Meanwhile, Tomas is being shown what he could have by the demon. If he wanted it he could go back to Chicago and become a bishop of the church and even possibly be the first Mexican Pope. The demon takes the form of Casey Rance, the girl who was possessed in the first season, and offers everything to Tomas if he just stops being an exorcist. I was super excited when I saw her in this episode. At the end of the episode Mouse wakes him up, but not before he sees the real Andy and tells him to keep fighting.
Speaking of Mouse she has one of the most badass scenes in this episode, it was like James Bond badass. I knew she was a badass, but not this badass. So, she in on the ferry and two guys from the Vatican are looking for her and spot her truck. She hides underneath it and ends up tripping one of the guys and by the time his buddy is checks under the truck she is using the other guy as a shield and shoots him. It was pretty unnecessary, but totally cool.
In the woods Andy is still searching for Verity and Verity is doing her best to hide from him. When he eventually catches up to her, he is about to start beating her when Marcus shows up. They have a pretty awesome fight, but you can only fight a demon so well until they overpower you. He ends up holding Marcus up by the neck until he is weekend by Tomas (before Tomas wakes up) and Marcus gets another good shot.
I liked this episode, but not as much as the others. The acting was great, but there just seemed to be too many weird things happening. As much as I loved the Mouse acting like James Bond moment, I don’t know that it was necessary. Another part that was weird to me is after Andy chases Verity, the other kids get out and check to see if Rose was okay. She is alive and well so they get her out. Don’t get me wrong I’m glad she is alive; it just seemed sort of cheesy. Especially when she finally gets out they all share a group hug. Like seriously, you guys know there is a man possessed by a demon on the island and actually wants to kill all of you. Get the fuck out of there.
Overall I would give this episode a 4/5 I think. It was less scary to me then the past few episodes have been, but they made up for it with the great fight scenes. I also think they did a great job setting up for a great season finale. I guess we will find out.
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