WiC Watches—The Terror: Infamy

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Eiji Inoue as Hideo, Alex Shimizu as Toshiro Furuya, George Takei as Nobuhiro Yamato, Miki Ishikawa as Amy Yoshida, Lee Shorten as Walt Yoshida, James Saito as Wilson Yoshida, Hira Ambrosino as Fumiko Yoshida, Naoko Mori as Asako Nakayama, Shingo Usama as Henry Nakayama- The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC

Episode 210: “Into the Afterlife”

RECAP

Yamato-san arrives in the afterlife to meet an old friend, and his entire family who died at Hiroshima, and wakes to a street celebration as the locals celebrate the dropping of the bomb. Yuko/Luz continues walking with the baby while Chester, Henry and Asako look for her. Chester locates Luz, but the baby is gone. Picked up by a family, Yuko murders the parents and takes on the form of the daughter.

Amy and Yamato-san try to work out their feelings in the ruins of their new life. Chester and Henry track Yuko. Recuperating at home, Luz finds a photograph of Yuko in Asako’s family album. (In a 1919 Japan flashback, Yuko dresses up with the help of young Asako to take the same photo before she travels to America to be wed.) Chester and Henry arrive at Yuko’s hiding place in a shack and realize she is preparing for a burial.

Chester and Henry find Yuko as she prepares to bury herself and the baby. Chester tries to trade himself for the child, but Henry attacks the yurei with a shotgun and old Japanese magics. Henry manages to overwhelm Yuko long enough for Chester to grab the baby. Yuko possesses Henry and wounds the fleeing Chester, then forces Henry to turn the gun on himself. The damaged Yuko recovers the baby and plunges into the open grave with it, but Henry’s magics (the sutras) prevent her passing.

Luz and Asako arrive in the graveyard to find Henry dead, but they cannot destroy Yuko. Chester calls on Abuela to come and perform the curandero ritual with Yuko’s bridal picture, which will allow Yuko to return to the time the photograph was taken. Taking his mother’s hand, Chester accompanies her into the afterlife. Returning to her former self, carrying her twin boys, Yuko enters a paradise of blooming cherry trees. Chester returns to the living world where Luz and their baby await.

At Henry’s funeral, Chester remembers a special moment with his father, and the photograph he took that day. Skipping forward to 1950, Chester runs his own photo studio in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. The group assembled that day for their Obon Festival photos include Yamato-san, Toshiro, the still-grieving Asako, Amy, a wheelchair-bound Walt Yoshida, and babies. Chester and Luz pose with three children. The Obon festival candles are lit, and the ancestors honored.

REVIEW

What did I think of The Terror: Infamy‘s season finale? Like the entire season, “Into the Afterlife” is a bit of a mixed bag, but the show’s strengths have always outweighed its weaknesses. This episode has some problems: the action stumbles around at times, with characters following easily manufactured clues and sometimes being kept on track with paper-thin explanations as to what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And while the news of the Hiroshima bomb is delivered in a wonderfully cinematic fashion, its effect upon the Japanese-American population (and the characters) isn’t explored with the personal depth such a monumental event demands.

That said, “Into the Afterlife” crosses the finish line a winner. The opening sequence with the dreaming Yamato-San seeing the dead of Hiroshima is superb. Yes, the episode can feel off-balance when it comes to the logistics of confronting Yuko, and the entire series has suffered from ineffective scare techniques, but the sad and vicious yurei is such a well-constructed tragic character that we can’t stop being mesmerized by her. And here in the finale, Yuko the monster is finally broken down into the brutally wronged and innocent girl at her core.

Led into the true afterlife by her son Chester (Taizo), Yuko finds peace in death with her unborn children. The surviving characters also find post-war peace and freedom in their new lives, but they also know the living can never escape their own sins, or the sins of their fathers (and mothers). Chester’s journey to save Yuko in the afterlife is a horror scenario turned upside down; darkness and cold are transformed into beauty, warmth and light. And here, at the end, The Terror: Infamy finds its poetry.

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