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
The first season of AMC’s The Terror focused on the historical events surrounding the disappearance of the 1848 Franklin expedition, which was on a mission to search for the Northwest Passage. It was a great yarn that included terrific character drama, fantastic beasts, and men slowly going insane.
The second season of the anthology series, The Terror: Infamy, merges the worlds of ancient Japanese ghosts and the infamous forced interment of the Japanese-American population during World War II. Along with some cool kaidan folklore phantoms, the show explores potent themes of racism and cultural conflict, all set during one of the darkest chapters in America’s past.
Can AMC generate another great horror series that plunges into the grim mysteries of the human experience? They’re building on fertile ground. We’re going to watch every episode as it airs, updating this post as the series goes on. Let’s get started!
Kiki Sukezane as Yuko – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Episode 201: “A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest”
The Terror: Infamy is a ghost story, and the premiere episode makes no bones about it, charging out of the gate with a rapid succession of supernatural motifs: a seemingly possessed woman named Masayo Furuya dresses in traditional finery and commits brutal suicide; the lead character, Chester Nakayama (Chester Mio) hallucinates the gory laceration of his own arm; an eerie gust of wind knocks Masayo’s casket over and her body rolls out and her ghostly image flickers in Chester’s camera lens.
After the sufficiently eerie title sequence, we discover it’s 1941, and some members of the Japanese-American fishing community on California’s Terminal Island fear that some old Japanese spirits have followed them from the old country. The elderly Yamato-San (George Takei) brings up the specter of the bakemono, a kind of ancient malevolent spirit.
As the story gears up, we see the Japanese-Americans struggling against brutal racism in their community. We also get to know Chester’s Latina girlfriend Luz Ojeda, played by Cristina Rodlo — their onscreen chemistry is instantly electric. There are miscegenation laws on the books in America at the time, and now Luz is pregnant. Masayo brews up a home remedy for Chester and Luz designed to make Luz miscarry, and thus free the young couple from their “mistake.”
Chester comes into conflict with his parents as he yearns for a life as a photographer outside Terminal Island, while they hold tight to the close-knit community they’ve formed far from their homes in Japan.
Chester finds images of a blurry woman in his photographs of Masayo’s funeral, and her husband momentarily glimpses a young woman in a kimono (Yuko Tanabe, played by Kiki Sukezane) before he is mysteriously struck blind. Yuko later mysteriously appears to Chester and reads tea leaves for him in one of the most engaging and unsettling sequences in the episode.
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
“A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest” does a great job of establishing the time and place of the series. It’s a bit heavy-handed here and there, pouring on the supernatural sauce, but it’s still a good watch. And Infamy excels most in its quietest moments, which is a very good sign.
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The episode ends with the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the world shifts beneath everyone’s feet. Yuko proves to be something terrible and other than human, but she/it also might be protecting Chester and his family. Powerful themes and horrors are rising, and it definitely makes the viewer eager to find out what happens next.
The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Episode 202: “All the demons are still in hell”
Episode 2 of AMC’s The Terror: Infamy wastes no time in getting to the supernatural scares, as did the first episode. A Japanese elder sees the mysterious Yuko, and Yamato-san swallows old world prayer protections and warns of ancient Japanese phantoms such as the obaki.
“All the demons are still in hell” opens with the Japanese-American population being shipped out of their homes on Terminal Island and temporarily being housed in hotels. The elder Wilson Yoshida glimpses the ghost of Yuko, so we know what his future holds. Some of the men, including Henry and Yamato-San, have been separated from their families and taken to a camp in North Dakota. Chester returns to school to see his sympathetic mentor, Professor Henkoff, and shows him the strange blurry images appearing in his funeral photographs. Henkoff offers little guidance:
"Well, if you ask my old professor, he’d say it’s a combination of a slow shutter and a shaky hand; if you ask my old Jewish mother, she’d say you’ve been taking photos of things you shouldn’t be."
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama, Cristina Rodlo as Luz Ojeda – The Terror _ Season 2, Gallery – Photo Credit: Maxine Helfman/AMC
Chester runs into Luz in the school hallway, and she’s very much visibly pregnant, which could be a complication. Chester and Luz find a quiet place to talk things over; the chemistry between these two characters continues to be one of Infamy‘s strongest elements.
When the Japanese-Americans are informed they have 48 hours before being relocated to crude facilities at the Edendale racetrack, Chester takes on his father’s role in the family. Upon arrival, the families are billeted in a dung-spattered horse stall. Yuko appears at the racetrack cam. She seems to have both the Yoshida and Furuya families in her vicious sights.
Chester and Luz try to make a run for it, staying in hiding with professor Henkoff for a while, but neighbors tip off the FBI and Chester is arrested. Luz confesses to carrying his mixed-blood child, and she is interned with him. At the racetrack camp, Wilson sees Yuko, whom he recognizes, then steals a rifle and forces guards to kill him. Yuko, her head bleeding and nails discolored, appears to be deteriorating. Loaded into a convoy of buses, the Japanese-Americans are relocated to an internment camp at Colinas de Oro, Oregon.
So far, Infamy has drawn early and often from the ghostly well of kaidan Japanese folklore. The blurry camera images, freaky deaths and the weird nature of Yuko are loud, familiar and effective, but there’s also an undercurrent of unnecessary urgency pushing it along, as if the storytellers don’t trust their material enough to allow the supernatural elements to surface more slowly and naturally. If we look back at the first season of The Terror, the otherworldly horror of the Inuit-beast appeared later, and was far more enigmatic (even if, ultimately, it proved to be somewhat underwhelming). It took a back seat to the trials of the beleaguered men of the Franklin expedition pretty much from beginning to end.
There is a great story of damaged, courageous, mistake-prone and hopeful human beings flowing through The Terror: Infamy. This episode excels not in its rather familiar spookiness, but in its quietest, character-driven moments: Chester walking through the now hostile corridors of his school and witnessing Luz’s advancing pregnancy and the wrenching sequence where Luz see the army removing the Japanese-American children from St. Jerome’s orphanage “for security.”
Though episodes one and two have a slight by-the-numbers feel, the story progresses at a good clip, and contains some powerful imagery. The removal of the orphan children by American soldiers is brutal, and the look of the Oregon “war relocation center” parallels that of Nazi concentration camps. Infamy has the fuel to deliver immense, punch-to-the-gut dramatic power. And if at first I worried that the show might lean too heavily on its supernatural spookiness to the detriment of its wrenching human story, by the end of “All the demons are still in hell,” I am confident that isn’t going to happen.
Episode 203: “Gaman”
It’s May, 1942, and the Japanese-American prisoners at the Colinas de Oro internment camp are doing their best to live their lives as normally as possible. The Terror: Infamy likes to deliver its supernatural punches early, and this time it comes at the camp screening of a John Wayne movie, with the Japanese translation and special effects being delivered live (a cool sequence). Chester is struck by visions of Yuko’s victims that seem to emerge from the images he sees onscreen.
Chester and Luz remain a major focus, and their relationship faces unkind reactions from the Japanese-Americans around them. Chester discovers the US Army is recruiting prisoners to work as military translators, and spurns the idea of working for his jailers. The previously separated elders arrive in the camp, with Henry physically damaged by frostbite and in a state of paranoia, certain that the facility is full of spies. In his current condition, Henry’s immediate rejection of Luz is predictable.
George Takei’s contribution to the show as Yamato-San has thus far consisted mostly of whispering about old-world spirits such as bakemono and yurei, and when he and Chester witness the damaged Furuya-san choking his own son Toshiro (Alex Shimizu) in the mess hall while muttering about swallows, that once again confirms all suspicions. Furuya-san appears to have been possessed by an antagonistic spirit, and later, that spirit (Yuko) ends him.
Thinking he’s the target of the phantom’s rage and fearing for Luz and his family and friends, Chester believes the best way he can protect them is to leave. The only way out is to defy his father and sign up as an army interpreter and be posted far away. But Yuko is on a mission, and her motives remain obscure.
The Terror: Infamy excels in depicting its environments, and the spotlit interment camp feels as restricted and intrusive as it should. The belittling of the unmarried, pregnant (and Latina) Luz by the Japanese-American girls, and Chester’s belligerent response to the disapproving glances he gets for being involved with her, provide a nuanced angle on the theme of prejudice. We discover there are wealthier detainees in the mix, and they carry a higher social status than their more modestly-employed brethren from Terminal Island. The Chester/Luz relationship remains the show’s most engaging interpersonal story and it is fortunately given room to breathe.
Cristina Rodlo as Luz Ojeda – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
There continue to be some problems with Infamy that I was hoping would smooth out as the story progressed. Despite a lot of strengths — including the performances, historic realism and atmosphere — the show hasn’t been able to swap a distinct by-the-numbers plotting structure for a more organic and unpredictable dramatic flow. And while the ghostly elements supply a decent punch, the old-fashioned devices of cold, ominous winds and blurred photographs feel, well, old-fashioned (I won’t use the word ‘cliche‘). The mysterious being that is Yuko remains deliciously unknowable, however, and that’s a plus.
Many shows start out on uneven ground as the storytellers work out their groove. The Terror: Infamy has a lot going for it, but when you’re operating in limited 10-episode lifespans, you’ve got to find your mojo quickly. If Infamy wants to live up to the critical success of its predecessor, to be something more than just “pretty good,” it needs to make a leap to the next level, to a more developed, unique and unpredictable dramatic vehicle, and do it soon.
Note: “Gaman” is a Japanese Zen Buddhist term that can be described as a kind of silent, heroic endurance in times of great distress and suffering.
Episode 204: “The Weak Are Meat”
RECAP
The boldly titled “The Weak Are Meat” opens with Chester now stationed in Guadalcanal, serving as a translator/codebreaker for the US Army; he isn’t close to the front lines, but he and fellow Japanese-American serviceman Arthur Ogawa (Marcus Toji) are eyed warily by their fellow soldiers. Chester can’t sleep, and he’s certain there is a yurei stalking through the jungles around him.
Back at the interment camp, Luz struggles to gain acceptance from Chester’s stubborn father, Henry, but finds support from his mother, Asako. Luz is still seeing the Japanese midwife (actually the demon in its pretty Yuko disguise), who seems too intimately attached to the unborn baby. When an MP later stumbles across the increasingly decaying Yuko, she enters his body and throws him off a watchtower as if he’s drunk. Blaming the prisoners, the racist camp commander Major Bowen (C. Thomas Howell) has his troopers turn the place upside down looking for contraband sake, and end up arresting Walt Yoshida (Lee Shorten).
Luz continues to see the midwife/Yuko, who appears to be able to maintain her pleasant appearance in her presence, and announces that she’s having twins. Luz later finds out that twins are considered a curse in Japanese tradition, but she also forges a connection with Henry by honoring him.
In the Pacific, a sleepless and hallucinating Chester figures out how to locate a missing American sergeant named Crittenden (Josh Hudniuk), who is recovered spouting vicious Japanese curses. Later, Chester is assaulted by a group of hateful US soldiers, but the attackers are all killed by Crittenden, who is apparently possessed by a Japanese yurei and serving an Admiral Takahashi.
Luz goes into labor and Yuko hijacks the body of the attending nurse in order to be involved. The two infants do not survive. Chester’s family closes ranks around Luz in their mourning. As the Obon festival commences at the internment camp, the horrific version of Yuko arrives to possess the body of Dr. Kitamura and forces him to commit suicide.
REVIEW
The Terror: Infamy has so far been quite watchable despite some issues, and the show finds a more solid footing in “The Weak are Meat.” The time given to the characters and their personal dramas is paying off, and helps the largely standard horror elements pop better on the edges. The Chester-in-the-army storyline is a bit clunky, but the interment camp sequences — often focused on Henry and Luz — have found their emotional and logistical grounding.
We see the being Yuko for what she really is (or is it just another version of what she actually is?): a decaying corpse with great supernatural power. Yuko is the beating heart of the mystery surrounding Chester; within her intense mysteriousness there is a superb mix of brutality, grotesqueness and tortured beauty, and her gentleness as Luz’s midwife is deeply spooky. Luz has a big part in this episode, and the scene where she honors Henry is profound and touching. This installment serves up a healthy dose of horror, but once again, Infamy works best in its quietest moments.
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 5 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Episode 205: “Shatter like a Pearl”
RECAP
It’s February 1943, and Chester is still stationed in Guadalcanal; he’s learned of the deaths of his twins in childbirth and he’s resentful and disgruntled. At the Long Beach Embarkation Center, a yurei (Yuko) has infiltrated the ranks of the new Japanese-American interpreters shipping out for the Pacific island. Chester and Arthur interview a crazed Japanese POW named Ota who claims to be some kind of blood-drinking, threat-spewing spirit pursuing Chester and everyone related to him.
The interned population of the Colinas de Oro internment camp is forced to fill out a citizenship questionnaire, though a number are being jailed for non-compliance. Amy has begun an affair with the wealthy Ken Uehara (Christopher Naoki Lee) and secretly changes his defiant questionnaire answers that could condemn him. The emotionally destroyed Luz wanders the grounds in her nightclothes; her sympathetic father Bart Ojeda (Ruben Garfias) arrives to inform her that her brother has been killed in Africa, and he wants to take her home.
Christopher Naoki Lee as Ken Uehara – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 5 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Chester takes a photograph of Ota and it develops without a blur, so he believes the prisoner isn’t a yurei. After a violent screaming match, Ota relinquishes his undead facade and the two men bond in a quiet conversation about family and baseball. Meanwhile, the new Japanese interpreters arrive. The zombie-interpreter is carrying a duffel bag with the decomposing corpse of Yuko inside.
At the camp, Ken is humiliated when he is left behind as his fellows are rounded up and taken away to a higher security camp due to their questionnaire responses. Once Amy confesses to altering his answers, Ken appears to end their relationship. In Guadalcanal, Chester frees Ota, giving him his ritual blade so he can commit seppuku. Chester’s commanding officer covers for him, but the yurei-zombified Arthur attempts to abduct Chester in a jeep. Arthur is killed (or discarded) when the jeep crashes, and the corrupted form of Yuko crawls out of the duffel bag, reaching for the trapped Chester and saying, “It’s time to go now, Taizo.”
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama, Marcus Toji as Arthur Ogawa – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 5 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
REVIEW
The specter of the yurei, both real and imagined, is everywhere in “Shatter like a Pearl.” From the initial claims of the strange POW Ota to the zombified bodies of the Japanese-American interpreter and Arthur to the arrival of the ghastly Yuko herself, this installment is largely dedicated to the mysteries of the show’s thus-far unknowable ghost. But even with the horror stuff firing on all cylinders, the episode founders because characters are making questionable decisions in their universe to move the TV plot forward in ours.
If Luz is so obviously deranged by her trauma, why is her loving adopted family allowing her to wander the swamps half-dressed and unattended? Would any sane interrogator (Chester) actually release an enemy prisoner (who had been acting insane mere hours before) and then hand him a knife, leaving himself unarmed at the same time? The choices result in some fine visuals (Luz’s pond-visions) and dramatic scenes (Chester’s witnessing of Ota’s suicide), but its all undermined by poorly constructed motivations.
Miki Ishikawa as Amy Yoshida, C. Thomas Howell as Major Hallowell Bowen – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 5 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
One of the biggest things The Terror: Infamy had going for it was its clean and crisply-moving narrative, but the flow both bogs down and scatters here. The questionnaire storyline involving Amy and Ken is just too static and eats up eating a lot of screen time. The one-dimensional turd of a racist camp commander, Major Bowen, offers up little beyond what we expect of him. Chester’s interrogation of the Japanese prisoner Tetsuya Ota (played with terrifying and later sympathetic aplomb by actor Kazuya Tenabe) is a deftly unsettling sequence, but it suffers from being constantly intercut with the bland internment camp story.
One of the episode’s last scenes is its best: when Henry abandons his stoicism to embrace Luz as she departs the camp, followed by a knowing nod between him and Bart, two older characters who understand the agonies of life. The despair soaking this moment, harsh and heavy and emanating from the characters, decisively fuels every action; Infamy needs more of that kind of storytelling moving forward.
Kiki Sukezane as Yuko – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Episode 206: “Taizo”
RECAP
The episode begins with a flashback to Terminal Island, 1919: facilitated by Wilson Yoshida, the young, beautiful Yuko has arrived from Japan as a picture-bride for the drunken Hideo Furuya. She reveals she is pregnant and Hideo throws her out. A year later, the homeless Yuko gives her baby up for adoption in Los Angeles, then commits suicide by bridge jumping in view of a bakemono.
Yuko wakes in a traditional bed in Japan, attended by the mysterious woman bakemono. The room is located in a perfect garden bearing the crest of her ancestors. Things start getting weird, but Yuko isn’t sure what might be real or a hallucination. Then things get really bizarre. The woman reveals that Yuko is dead, and they are in their family’s eternal paradise. Horrified, Yuko seeks a way out, eventually destroying the demon by luring her into the gravel of the rock garden, which is really the ceiling of hell.
Hira Ambrosino as Fumiko Yoshida, Naoko Mori as Asako Nakayama, Shingo Usami as Henry Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
As the paradise collapses, Yuko escapes through a door leading into the underground; digging her way out, she emerges from the soil of a Los Angeles potter’s field 21 years later (1941) as a decayed yurei.
“Taizo” then shifts to the present day, landing in the 1943 Colinas De Oro “War Relocation Center” as Chester returns from his tour of duty. He’s met by his loving parents, Henry and Asako, who deliver Luz’s “Dear John” letter and worry about the curse following him. Letter still in hand, Chester visits the graves of his twin children and ends up sleeping through the night alongside them.
In the morning, Chester is awakened by the widow Fumi Yoshida (Hira Ambrosino), who blames the evil spirit following him (Yuko, who is glimpsed nearby) for the deaths of the people around them. The yurei Yuko gets busy, jumping into Asako’s body to tell Chester to find Luz and continue their family line; she calls Chester “Taizo,” the name she gave her infant son. She chokes Chester in a rage, but soon leaves Asako’s body without hurting her.
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama, Naoko Mori as Asako Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Henry and Asako must spill their secrets to Chester, revealing that Yuko was Asako’s sister and Hideo’s “picture-bride,” and that she committed suicide after Hideo shunned her. Chester is “Taizo,” Yuko’s biological son, adopted by the Nakayamas. The bereft Yuko wanders the Obon celebration night, abducting a baby in an attempt to take it back to “paradise” with her, but fails.
REVIEW
“Taizo” opens with a neat supernatural turn, carrying us through the last chapter of Yuko’s tragic life leading to her death, afterlife and ultimate return to the world as a vengeful yurei. It’s a loaded installment, revealing the backstory of the creature who haunts every episode. The showrunners give us good, spooky material, and let it play out for the entire first half of the episode. Kiki Sukezane does a great job portraying Yuko, both living and dead.
Naoko Mori as Asako Nakayama, Shingo Usami as Henry Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Yuko is on a rampage for onnen (restitution), and now we see why Hideo and Wilson were among her first victims. The showrunners give us the sympathetic side of Yuko’s story, but then deviously and expertly proceed to show us her frighteningly unhinged elements as well.
“Taizo” is perhaps the slowest-moving episode of Infamy so far, and absolutely the best. The time spent on Yuko’s story, both in flashback and present day, unfolds in neatly drawn layers. It’s a slow, eerie burn, and after that the dramatic reveals come on at a blistering speed. Poor Chester is buried under a tidal wave of disasters: war hauntings, lost children, a “Dear John” letter and finally the revelations surrounding his secret adoption. The final shot is as haunting as anything Infamy has conjured up so far.
Kiki Sukezane as Yuko – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 7 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Episode 207: “My Perfect World”
RECAP
“My Perfect World” opens with a zombified mortician applying a patchwork of fresh corpse skin on the decaying Yuko, who applies lipstick to her stitched-up face. Still separated, Chester and Luz struggle with the dilemmas in their lives. When the despondent Chester tries to walk out of the internment camp, he is arrested and trucked away. Sickness is slowly spreading through the Japanese-American inmates, and Amy and Ken are desperate to find a way to help.
Yuko enters the barracks seeking information on ‘Taizo’ and temporarily possesses Major Bowen when he tries to confront her. Chester escapes his transit guards by jumping into a river. When Ken visits Bowen in an attempt to elicit more help for the sick in the infirmary, the traumatized and now deeply paranoid Bowen attacks him. Luz dates a nice Hispanic fellow her father approves of, then finds Chester waiting for her outside her house; the lovers once again plot to flee.
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 7 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Amy finds Ken holed up in Bowden’s office, the young man desperate to force Bowden to call in ambulances for the sick. Amy makes the call on her own but the MPs catch her and the situation spirals out of control and Bowden has Ken executed. Chester breaks into the Catholic orphanage where he was abandoned and digs into his files, discovering he has a twin brother named Jirou.
Chester and Luz arrive at her grandparent’s home in Aguayo, New Mexico. Yuko possesses Bart Ojeda and learns of Chester’s whereabouts before destroying him.
Miki Ishikawa as Amy Yoshida – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 7 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
REVIEW
“My Perfect World” finds Chester and Luz on the run and Yuko hot on their trail. It also spends a lot of time in a secondary infirmary storyline involving Ken, Amy and Major Bowden, and the pace of the narrative slows down as a result. The scenes with Yuko deliver decent horror, but overall this installment feels as if it’s waiting for something (the next episode, perhaps), so it unspools an undercard idea (influenza breakout) to bridge the gap.
If you’re into the show — and you probably are if you’re still watching by Episode 7 — then it’s okay to spend some time with Amy and Ken, who are likable minor characters. There’s nothing seriously wrong with highlighting them in “My Perfect World”; the actors do a good job, but I wish they’d been given a dramatic through-line more connected to the central story.
Christopher Naoki Lee as Ken Uehara- The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 7 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
The scene where Yuko deftly manhandles Major Bowen is impressive, though I found myself wishing the show might do more with C. Thomas Howell’s character; Base Commander Bowen would be vastly more interesting as a conflicted character rather than a typical vicious bigot. Ken Uehara’s character develops well, however, turning out to be a courageous idealist instead of just a privileged pretty boy.
It’s great to see Chester and Luz back together again, even if it’s painful for both them and us: Derek Mio and Cristina Rodlo consistently get to play some of the most affecting scenes in the show, and they make the most of them. So, while “My Perfect World” isn’t the strongest episode of The Terror: Infamy, the progressions of the main characters promise it’s all still on the right track.
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama, Cristina Rodlo as Luz Ojeda – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 8 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Episode 208: “My Sweet Boy”
RECAP
Encouraged by Abuela (Alma Martinez), Chester works the farmland owned by Luz’s family in Aguayo, New Mexico, but he is obsessed with trying to reunite with his long-lost twin brother Jirou. Chester and Luz rekindle their love, but Yuko lurks nearby. It is January, 1945, and the internment camp is shutting down. Henry has been sponsored to work as a gardener and he and Asako are given $25 in reparations and a ticket home. Major Bowen returns from Washington DC.
Chester and Luz are married but Yuko has infiltrated the family, taking over Dona Maria (Gabriela Reynoso). Walt Yoshida (Lee Shorten) returns to the camp a war hero tasked with finding more recruits for the all Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment, but he’s conflicted when Toshiro signs up. Learning that Bart has disappeared, Abuela wants to perform an ancient ritual to learn if he is still alive. Amy lives in mortal fear of Major Bowen, but her concerns appear to be unfounded.
Cristina Rodlo as Luz Ojeda, Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama, Alma Martinez as Abuela – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 8 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Chester enters Abuela’s curandero ritual to pass over to the “realm of death” and discovers Jirou is dead. Yuko barges into the ceremony, hijacking Chester’s spirit so she can drag Jirou back into her eternal “paradise” with her. At the camp, Major Bowen captures Amy and starts torturing her because he feels she betrayed him. Chester, Luz and Abuela begin to unravel Yuko’s movements and murders and realize she had killed and possessed Dona Maria.
Yuko frightens Bowen with stories of the yurei, then manages to escape her ropes and kill him. Fearing Yuko’s intentions, Luz reveals to Chester that she is pregnant again. Jirou awakens in Yuko’s afterlife paradise.
C Thomas Howell as Major Bowen- The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 8 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
REVIEW
“My Sweet Boy” opens with one of The Terror: Infamy‘s biggest strengths: Chester and Luz’s relationship. The lovers’ awkward resumption of their affair is pitch perfect and heartwarming. It’s interesting to see how the Hispanic-American society of Aguayo embraces Chester as one of their own despite his different heritage; in this instance, there appear to be no racist attitudes lingering between the two minority communities.
With the yurei, Infamy dives deep into the Old World folklore of Japan, and in “My Sweet Boy,” the show plows into the old curandero shaman magics smoldering beneath the heavy Roman Catholic traditions practiced by some Hispanic-Americans. Bent on murderous revenge and able to facilitate travel between the lands of the living and the dead, the ancient spirits are still quite powerful in this fictional universe.
Cristina Rodlo as Luz Ojeda, Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 8 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
“My Sweet Boy” pulls a lot of story threads together, with Chester and Luz figuring out much about the nature and motivations of the yurei who was once his mother, a creature driven to madness by emotional pain. This yurei causes suffering because she is the embodiment of suffering. With two episodes left to go, we suspect that Chester and Luz might get through this journey okay, but there will be no happy ending for the agonized phantom that was once a girl named Yuko.
Episode 209: “Come and Get Me”
RECAP
“Come and Get Me” opens with the departure (“repatriation”) of the Japanese-Americans from the Colinas De Oro internment camp on January 29th, 1945, known as “leaving day.” Upon their return to Terminal Island, Henry, Asako, Amy, Yamato-San and Fumi discover their homes have been bulldozed away. Six months later, Henry and Asako live on Skid Row as the unfulfilled Henry works as a gardener in Hancock Park, Los Angeles. Asako visits Yuko’s suicide bridge, saying that everything is her fault.
Fearful of Yuko, Chester asks Asako and the bitter Henry to join him and Luz for the birth of their baby in Aguayo. Jirou (Pierce Kang) wakes in Yuko’s false paradise as the twisted yurei plots to capture the baby ‘Taizo’ (Chester and Luz’s new baby) and bring it back into the afterlife with her. Chester barricades everyone and Father Ysidro (Francisco Trujillo) inside Abuela’s house, planning to stay on the run after the baby is born. As usual, Henry and Chester butt heads.
Luz goes into labor. Father Ysidro leaves and returns, but this time he is possessed by Yuko. Luz, Abuelo and the Nakayamas escape in their car, hiding in a remote, abandoned military installation. Luz delivers a baby boy. Chester decides that the only way to save his son is to die, so Yuko can have her Taizo and leave the living world alone. Asako realizes that Yuko has possessed the baby.
Outside the facility, Chester waits to confront Yuko. Inside, phantom Yuko jumps from the baby into Abuela’s body and tries to escape. Asako stops her with an admission of guilt, revealing that Yuko was originally designated to marry Henry and Asako was to go to Hideo Furuya, but once Asako learned that Hideo was dishonorable she had Fumi secretly switch their grooms.
The infuriated Abuela/Yuko attacks Asako. Chester and Henry rush in to find Asako and Abuela bloodied but alive, but Luz and the baby missing. Chester rushes outside but the Yuko/Luz has escaped with the child.
REVIEW
Always great on the atmospherics, “Come and Get Me” starts out slow and easy, letting the sense of departure from a familiar place sink in as the characters leave the camp. As the episode progresses we watch the pieces of the narrative puzzle settling into place for a confrontation: Henry and Asako travel to Chester and Luz in Aguayo, fortifying the house and calling in a Priest as Yuko plans the abduction of their baby.
All along, The Terror: Infamy has been guilty of telegraphing many of its horror punches, and this time the Father Ysidro/Yuko twist is so obvious it blunts any sense of jeopardy. The Yuko spirit-jump from the baby (once it starts crying) to Abuela is obvious because she is the only expendable minor character in the room. By the time Yuko wanders off as Luz with the baby in her clutches, it all feels unfortunately familiar and predictable.
The reveal of Asako’s deep, dark secret works fine, but its effect gets lost in the choice to leave most of Yuko’s reaction offscreen. And why is Chester waiting outside alone with a pistol to fight a spirit he knows can work in both physical and/or invisible form and can pop up wherever it wants?
The Terror: Infamy has a lot going for it. But the effectiveness of its horror has always been inconsistent, and as the show leans more heavily on those elements, the flaws are becoming more apparent. We care about what ultimately happens to Chester, Luz and the Nakayamas, but the series finale has to make a leap in an unexpected direction — and find a darker, more profound truth — if Infamy is going to end up being truly memorable.
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.
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
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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