‘Them’ Episode 9 Recap: Origin

The story of the man called Epps is a story of loss. When we meet him here in Them Episode 9—though we’ve seen him before, nearly a hundred years later—he has lost his family to the hardships of a winter in the wilderness. As a result, he has lost the true conviction of his Christian faith, lost it to anger with a God who demanded his wife and son as a sacrifice for unknown ends. He has lost the feeling of fellowship with his small religious community of German immigrants, whose happy families and pity for him enrage and disgust him. He is losing his sight. He is losing his mind.

But this lost man begins finding things again. He finds a boy (Kai Richard) in a bush near the graves of his family, and adopts him as his own. He finds a pair of pioneers (Cranston Johnson and Nona Parker Johnson) hoping to make their way north when their wagon wheel breaks, and welcomes them into his community. With the help of the man in the couple, he finds water in a newly dug well his fellow elders were prepared to abandon as fruitless. He finds his faith renewed.

To a fault.

Because while Epps was, for a time, able “to see past my own revulsion and to open my heart” to the newcomers, the other members of the community are not. They blame them for tearing the country apart—a country they very much see as their own by right and not that of the newcomers, even though they speak with the familiar accents of Black southerners rather than the unfamiliar ones of German immigrants. The others begin taunting the newcomers, forcing them to work. They see the success of the well as the result not of divine providence, but black magic.

But just when their racism and suspicion seem poised to topple Epps from his position as a respected, if slightly resented, leader, Epps finds something else, something provided to him by his new “son”: a passage from Leviticus, instructing him that those outside the community may be treated as property. And he finds pride, not the sinful pride of which he was once afraid, but the righteous pride of a faithful servant.

He begins to see the newcomers as distorted and devilish. He begins to see himself not as a servant of God at all, but as “a brother” to Him.

When it happens, it happens fast. The woman finds a cross Epps has dropped on the ground. Through his blurry vision he sees her as some kind of corpse-thing. He berates her, and she goes into labor. He has her and her husband locked in the stables, with the other “animals.”

His son sets them free. They try to escape. They fail.

In a sequence so hideous the camera seems unable to bring itself to show us—the screen freezes, goes red, with censorious black bars superimposed—the elders blind the newcomers with a red-hot iron. But we are made to look at the horrible voids left behind, for a long time, a painfully long time.

The woman, who is still in labor through all of this, curses Epps and all his fellows. They retaliate by lynching the couple, hanging them from the beam of their meeting house and setting them on fire, as the Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You”—maybe the most beautiful song in rock and roll/R&B history—plays on the soundtrack.

Nearly instantaneously, the entire village bursts into flame. Everyone dies, except Epps and his son, who is not a boy at all.

This entity in the form of a boy—and that’s just one of many forms he takes—extends to Epps a deal, a covenant. “I am the one you worship in your heart,” he/it explains. “I answered when He kept silent.” He continues: “You prayed to triumph over death, and so it shall be,” he/it says. “You prayed to shape the world, and so you shall.” All Epps has to do to claim eternal life is vow to destroy the lives of Black people wherever he finds them. He takes the deal, and dies.

In East Compton, he is born again.

Directed in stark black and white by Craig William Macneill (Channel Zero) from a script by Dominic Orlando, “Covenant II” is reminiscent at turns of The Witch, The Lighthouse, Hereditary, There Will Be Blood, episode eight of Twin Peaks: The Return. Like its predecessor “Covenant I,” is one of the most brutal things I’ve ever watched in a lifetime of watching horror. It, like Them, is a masterpiece.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch THEM Episode 9 ("COVENANT II") on Amazon Prime