In an astoundingly powerful performance, Spacek as Ruth is both the hero and the victim in this story.
She uses a relatively recent gift of a chess set to help ground herself in the present.
And I can find my way out of the woods.
Credit: Dana Starbard/Hulu
This presses pause on the other storylines playing out in the show.
We left things with the ominous mystery man sitting wounded outside Ruths house.
Other years, other nows.
All possible pasts, all possible presents.
Schisma is the sound of the universe trying to reconcile that.
Ruth is trying to reconcile the same.
Recapping this episode is difficult because it amounts to scattered puzzle pieces.
Before this, some of the pieces were missing.
Now theyre all face-up, but we have to assemble them to understand the picture they create.
So much of Ruths existence is disorientation.
For one, the thing with the dead dog is explained.
Ruth kept thinking the dog was back, and she wanted evidence that it was truly dead.
But it turns out to have more significance than we knew.
For one, we see the death of this particular animal happen.
Did I ever tell you what happened to Puck?
Puck was the similar-looking dog that the family had when Henry was a boy.
The pet just disappeared one day, with no explanation.
Its erase the Reverend Deaver murdered the family pet.
But apart from showing his cruelty, why does this matter?
But there is something else calling to her from beneath these memories.
In a way, it is now calling to Ruth.
Continued on the next page…
Does he mean her harm?
It doesnt appear so.
When the record begins to skip, it mimics whats happening in her own mind.
She also needs to discover the bullets.
During this scavenger hunt, she is repeatedly transported back in time to when Henry was young.
We see them taking a walk through the woods and setting up a picnic blanket.
Thats when Reverend Deaver takes out a gun and puts it to his ear.
Youre a time walker, he says.
Continued on next page …
Molly is aghast, apologetic.
But Ruth just closes the door on her.
No, you did the right thing.
But it didnt take.
Hes back, Ruth says.
In the present, not the past.
Im gonna fix it.
The mystery man in her house seems to know things her husband did.
The combination to the safe upstairs is one of them.
Your birthday, he tells her.
Ruth, meanwhile, hurries up to unlock the safe.
Hes never raised a hand.
Theres no legal avenue.
Thats the badge talking.
As a friend, I have some other ideas, he says.
He tells her to pack a suitcase and to leave Castle Rock with him and her son.
That is the only way to escape her abusive, deranged husband.
As she leaves the sheriffs office, she ends up in her own kitchen, also in the past.
Thats where she pulls the rat poison container out of the trash.
We see her as a young woman, packing up her bags.
But we know she never left.
Her late husband grabs her in the kitchen.
Youve lost touch with reality, she tells him.
Says the woman arguing with her dead husband.
This isnt an incident from the past.
This is the shadow of the past playing out new thoughts in her present.
She has the gun, but not the bullets.
She sees her younger self packing the gun in her suitcase.
And the vision of her husband taunts her about how she lacked the courage to leave him.
The clothes went back in drawers.
But the bullets … the bullets.
Where did she put those?
This is the voice speaking to her from beneath these memories of two deceased dogs.
I never unpacked them, she says, the realization dawning.
They are in the suitcase still, buried in the backyard inside the makeshift coffin.
But its only Alan Pangborn, who lies mortally wounded on the floor.
She asks him, Dont leave.
And he tells her: Im not going anywhere.
