Last episode gave us quite a lot of new information, perhaps episode 5 will let us see it play out… Or maybe we’ll get more bickering between our main characters. One or the other. Let’s take a look at “Committed” and see what it gives us.
1. Flashbacks
A good portion of this episode focuses on an important flashback: the day Victoria Helstrom was taken away. There’s a lot we can see there: a house in disrepair (although I would have preferred it if they didn’t use the same shot of cockroaches crawling on the table each time they established that), Victoria’s journal, and a contrast between her insistence that Ana will be returning that day and her own mad scribbling. It all culminates in the Behavioral Health Department arriving to take her away.
Then we repeat the same flashback, just a bit faster. It loops through that a couple of times, before the flashback starts changing (which we will get to in a bit).
What matters is that this establishes the moment where Victoria was institutionalized. More importantly, we see that Daimon was the one responsible for it. This comes up later in the episode where he explains he can’t let her go because he sees it as his fault. There’s a lot of guilt driving his decisions there. It can’t possibly be an easy decision for a child to get his own mother committed, so it’s been a driving factor in most of his decisions as a character.
Actually, it feels like the only factor at times.
2. Post-Possession Trauma
This episode also lets us keep up with Bryce, the college student that was possessed and subsequently exorcised. While we’ve seen victims of possession before, this is our first time seeing someone trying to return to life after being possessed.
Once more, the show focuses on trauma and how characters cope with it. In the case of Bryce, it’s having a clear effect on every aspect of his life, to the point where he’s ready to drop out of college. He’s struggling with everything from survivor’s guilt after everyone in his frat house was killed, the psychological torture of being possessed, the memories of the things the demon made him do, and more. This actually manages to be a pretty realistic look at the effects trauma can have on a person, even if it’s from a fictional supernatural force.
This also gives us another contrast between Daimon and Gabriella. He typically exorcises someone then passes them over to Hastings to deal with the psychological aspects, whereas Gabriella wants to take a more active role in helping them recover. While it is understandable that Daimon does not have the people skills to be of much help, it also really doesn’t help endear us to his character.
3. Yen and the Skull
Speaking of possessed people, Daimon and Ana finally catch up with Chris Yen. Well, to say he’s a bit of a wreck would put it lightly, but at least we finally get to see Ana care about someone. She actually describes him as her best friend, but at the same time, he says he’s tired of being her errand boy, so clearly she’s not very good at expressing her friendship.
There’s a lot going on character-wise, and we see Yen has lost more and more of himself to the keeper demon skull. Yet apparently he’s still got enough left in him to escape from Daimon, Ana, and Caretaker, then sneak into Saint Teresa’s, change into scrubs, hide the skull, and nearly sneak it into Victoria’s room without her noticing.
Well, it still ends up with him locked in a padded room begging for the skull back. Ana’s pretty upset, but everyone else is just kind of… apathetic. It still feels like a waste of what could have been a better character.
4. Victoria and Cathara
Meanwhile, being in proximity to the keeper demon skull is clearly having an effect on Victoria. When her repeating flashback changes, it quickly turns into an internal struggle against a mysterious threat. Eventually, Victoria gets a chance to speak with Cathara, the demon possessing her.
Cathara plays her role well, claiming to be another victim and insisting that if they work together, they can both see their children again. Given that we see Victoria’s body shutting down in the real world, it’s easy to believe that both their lives are at stake. In fact, the entire setup makes it sound like the Helstrom father is returning.
Continued belowEventually, though, Victoria sees through it and realizes that Cathara is weakening. Finally, she has the chance to fight off the thing that’s been possessing her for so long. The thing chasing them down? It’s the keeper demon, and it’s only after Cathara. As long as the skull is around, Victoria is back in her own mind.
So Daimon gets what he wanted, at least for a little while. Of course, he was one second away from destroying the skull because he thought it would save his mother, even if it meant sacrificing their best weapon against his father. So it’s really more the result of a lucky break than anything he did.
Meanwhile, if you thought Bryce had it bad, Victoria’s going to have enough trauma to never sleep again. We’ll see how that plays out in future episodes.
5. The Blood Bled Out
Last episode, we were introduced to The Blood, an organization that stops demons by trapping them in comatose bodies.
By the end of this episode, most everyone we met there is dead.
Caretaker does bring up the possibility of treating Victoria and Cathara the same way they usually do with possession victims, framing it as a humane way to prevent her suffering. Daimon is less than inclined, saying the organization has been trying to kill his family for decades, although Caretaker views it differently.
How much Daimon knows about The Blood and what they do is unclear, but Gabriella goes to show him exactly what they do at the end of the episode. Except she can’t, because everyone at the secret possession hospital has been murdered.
I’ll count that as a decent cliffhanger to end the episode on.
Is this the end of The Blood in general? Not likely. Caretaker is still around, and this was clearly just one of their bases of operation. It’s a vast and powerful organization, this is likely little more than a speedbump for them. But it also means there’s a good chance a lot of possession victims who were previously reported as dead will be out and about, so maybe things will get exciting soon. Maybe it’ll even be enough to make Daimon do something – half-way through the season is as good a time as any.
