Is it possible for a show to progress the plot each episode and yet feel so uneventful? Because that’s Helstrom. Yes, things are technically progressing, but it’s just so hard to care. So let’s take a look at episode 7 and see if there’s anything of note here.
1. Daimon vs Ana
Oh look, we’ve got Daimon and Ana butting heads. Again. Look, I have a sister, I know how frequent sibling arguments can be, but this is more of the same.
Daimon is blaming himself… for listening to Ana, who he also blames for losing the skull and their mother. So we get more of Daimon’s habit of making everything his fault and continuing the sibling conflict. He’s angry at Ana for sacrificing their mother to try saving their father, and even then, it didn’t work. He’s even angry that Ana’s calling their mother “Victoria” instead of “Mom,” which signifies how much of a stranger her mother is to her.
Meanwhile, Ana is angry at Daimon for letting the demon even stay in their mother for that long and build up strength (even though we saw in an earlier episode that he can’t exorcise her without killing Victoria, at least not without Ana’s help). She claims Daimon has been manipulated since day one thanks to his hangups over their mother.
Well, they’re both right, because they’re both just really bad at this. But hey, at least they’re consistent.
2. Familial Affection?
Speaking of Victoria, we catch up with her and Pete. While we once thought that the demon possessing Pete was the Helstrom father, it turns out it’s someone else: Basar, Cathara’s son. We heard before that Cathara has children, so it looks like they’re trying to reunite with their mother.
So as far as twists go, it’s not the worst.
We also saw that Pete’s wife was locked in the trunk of his car, marked for possession but not yet possessed. The characters believe that she was going to be used as a new vessel for Cathara, since Victoria doesn’t have much life left in her, but it’s also possible that she was meant to be used for Cathara’s daughter.
Whichever the intent, Basar will certainly need a new vessel, since Pete’s body is mostly destroyed from the skull. He draws a spiral symbol in his own blood, which apparently means “there is another,” but mostly looks like the red spirals we’ve seen in Marvel’s Knull-focused Venom events. That, of course, is entirely coincidental, as Sony still has the film rights to most everything symbiotic and spidery.
3. Yen is Back
Alright Helstrom, I’ll give you credit for restoring the closest thing you have to an interesting character. Once the keeper demon skull was gone, its grip on Chris Yen went away.
So we’re back to seeing how he and Ana get along. He can set boundaries, even when Ana tries to push against them, and is working hard to patch things up with Derrick after he disappeared. We also learn that he found Ana after she killed an abusive foster parent, and also believes that what she does is just as long as she only kills people deserving of death.
To that end, he’s been accessing the police database using Derrick’s account, which jeopardizes their relationship. Derrick is piecing things together, but Ana manages to throw him off their trail by “admitting” that she used his account to screen clients for criminal records. It’s the closest thing we’ve gotten from her to a selfless act for someone else.
Then she nearly kills Derrick with her powers. She doesn’t, in the end, proving that she’s better than what her father tried to make her. But it was close, and the closest thing this episode gave us to a tense scene.
4. Caretaker and the Blood
So where’s Caretaker been all this time? Tied up and under interrogation by the organization he works for, of course. We also meet Esther, a higher-up in the organization that was mentioned in a previous episode.
The Blood clearly isn’t a very nice organization. While Caretaker insists that there’s good and evil in everyone, Esther seems to feel it would be easier to just kill Daimon and Ana rather than take the chance the evil side prevails. The same seems to be true for the case of keeping possessed people in comas – they want a more permanent solution, even though it’s already been established that exorcising or killing the host just sends the demon back to square one.
Continued belowThey also have no qualms stabbing Caretaker with a variety of knives until they find one that gets a reaction from his scar – the same knife we see in flashbacks as a young Ana uses it to try escaping someone (presumably her father) and as it carves Daimon’s scars into his chest.
Of course, this leads to a major moment at the end of the episode. While Esther reaches out to Daimon to propose they work together, one of her underlings pulls out that very knife while searching Daimon for weapons. Then they shoot him.
Naturally, since Daimon is technically the main character, the bullet does nothing and his powers go wild, causing various members of the Blood to spontaneously combust while he screams and his scar burns. I suppose we’ll learn more about that next episode, but after seven episodes you’d think we’d have been given a little more information by now.
5. Daimon Isn’t Our Hero
Daimon and Ana are ostensibly the deuteragonists of this show. As far as comics go, Daimon Hellstrom has had his fair share of solo runs and team books, most recently “Strikeforce.” He’s an antihero, certainly, but still possesses heroic traits and drives that propel the story forward.
Not so much in this show.
I’m trying to think of what Daimon has actually done so far. The opening episode seemed promising, where he saw through a fake possession act and showed off his fire powers. Then we see him perform a proper exorcism, while the rest is just… waiting for someone to attack him then fighting them off. Outside of that, he spends all his time blaming himself and/or Ana for their mother’s condition and talking about how he’s not good with people.
Well, he’s not very good with viewers, either. I have yet to see any compelling character traits or growth that would make us want to root for him.
At least Ana has something in the way of drive, turmoil, and growth. We’re seeing something of a character arc with her. Daimon is just… there until something happens to him.
Then when he finally decides to do something and sets up a meeting with the Blood, everything starts burning. That’s our supposed protagonist, folks.
