1.7 "Adele"
It's one year before the events that have taken place and Thomas arrives home to find that Adele has attempted suicide. Back to the present and Serge and Toni are on the run from the police, walking through the forest but in circles. Lena has made it home to her family, and Victor takes Pierre to see little lights shining on the lake. There is no explanation as to what they are, but Victor thinks they're pretty. Pierre then takes Claire to his storeroom, where he shows her all the food and supplies he has stockpiled, as well as a goodly amount of weapons. She is shocked, but he tells her they may need to defend themselves soon.
Laure and Julie have renewed their relationship, and Julie tells her lover that she thinks she may also be one of the dead: she almost seems to wish it were true. With no power places like the Lake Pub and the American Diner are deserted, and Lucy tries to convince Simon not to continue pursuing Adele. At the Helping Hand, Vivianne Costa tells Camille that she starved to death when the original dam burst, but Camille cannot believe her as she has given three separate accounts of her death to different people. She then rather smugly tells Camille to look in the storehouse, where she finds the hanged parents of one of the children. Camille now feels responsible for their deaths, and knows that what Pierre was asking her to do is wrong.
It turns out that Laure lives next door to Adele, and Victor begins playing with Chloe on the trampoline. As they jump they talk, and as kids do they try to outdo each other. When Chloe says her father is an angel come back for her, Victor tells her he is dead too, then shows her a vision of her mother's suicide attempt. Shocked, thinking it's real and happening right now, the girl faints and falls off the trampoline. They can't revive her. Simon goes to talk to the parish priest, to try to find out if he really did commit suicide, but the police have been alerted and take him into custody. Lena's father takes her to the Helping Hand, reuniting her with her sister and mother. Lena is now much more accepting of Camille, but is disturbed to find some sort of lesion growing on her sister's neck.
Julie notices the marks on Victor's arms, but he will not offer any explanation. When Laure, who was away at the time of the incident involving Victor and Chloe, but is now investigating with Thomas, hears that Victor was involved, she rushes to her house where Julie begs her to help them escape. In the middle of a ceremony to commemorate the two parents who died, Sandrine collapses, blood pouring down her legs. Chloe regains consciousness, to Adele's relief, and tells her mother she saw her attempt to kill herself. Meanwhile, Simon is beginning to manifest lesions of his own, and when he picks at them the skin comes away in flakes. Toni and Serge find their way down to the lake and try to cross it, but when he surfaces Toni seems to be alone. There is no sign of his brother.
For reasons I've not been able to work out, Laure decides to take her two passengers back to the village, recrossing the dam, and then stops on a bend. Or, it could be that she can't get out, that some supernatural force is stopping the car getting out of the cursed town, sending them in circles. She does look surprised and offers no explanation as they stop on the dam as night draws in. Lucy turns to see a crowd of silent figures looking at her in the pub, and smiles as if she has been expecting them.
QUESTIONS?
What are these odd growths appearing on both Camille and Simon, and possibly already on Victor?
Can Victor show visions of people's deaths? Has he control of the mind?
Why did Adele try to kill herself?
How did Vivianne Costa die, and why is she so evasive about it?
Who are the odd figures seen in the Lake Pub, and are they same, or linked with, the ones Lena came across in the forest?
Where has Serge gone? Did he drown? Can the Revenants, like vampires of myth, not cross water?
CONNECTIONS
There seems to be a definite connection emerging between the miraculously-recovered (or dead) Lucy and the other Revenants. What role has she to play in the final act here? She led Simon out of the hospital and then made love to him. Can she be trying to raise an army of the dead? She has seemed odd from the beginning, and even when stabbed didn't seem really that surprised. Perhaps she had been expecting this. Perhaps this is, unconsciously, why she found herself drawn to the village a year ago. She certainly seems clearer in her mind now as to what she has to do.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
We learn more about the dam, that it broke originally, some time ago --- guessing about thirty years; Vivianne says she died shortly before Victor --- and that great hardship followed. People ate animals and pets to survive, and quite why it was so long before any relief arrived is not explained, nor indeed how long it was. In addition to the water level dropping there are now strange lights playing out upon the surface of the lake.
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
Seems Pierre's plan has backfired badly. In encouraging Camille to tell the parents of the other children that their loved ones were safe and waiting for them to join him, she has inadvertently put the idea in the minds of one set of parents that they should literally join him, and they hang themselves. This was a bad idea from the start, but typical of religion. Priests, popes and cardinals have lied to us down the centuries, twisting Christ's words, or those of Mohammed, or whoever you believe in or are told to, to suit their own agenda. God wants you to fight in the Crusades. God says homosexuals are an abomination. God demands you believe in him or we'll burn you. And so on. Man is at his very best an imperfect vessel for the words of God, if you believe in such, and to deliberately lie to the parents here, even if the aim was to comfort them, is at best a bad decision and at worst a reprehensible one.