WiC Watches—The Terror: Infamy
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.