The Outsider 1.9: A Bit of Clarity

So we finally get a bit of clarity about what's going on in The Outsider 1.9, the next-to-last episode of this season, on HBO last Sunday night.

El Cuco the monster is definitely affecting two human beings, Jack and Claude, in two different ways.  Jack is apparently a human who is driven to do very bad things, like ambushing the good guys in the very last scene.  Claude has been duplicated, and his double is an evil being who looks like Claude, and is out to do some horrible things.

And a bear cave seems to be a focal point, or even a modern point of origin, for that monster.   We learn that two kids and their rescue party got killed when the cave caved in in the late 1940s.   Evil Claude is holed up there now.  The good posse was on the way to get him, when Jack opened fire.

Both Jack and evil Claude were tipped off about the approaching cavalry when Claude's brother told good Claude that the good guys were on their way.  Another supernatural quality of the doubles is that the bad double knows everything the good double, or the original, knows.   The lawyer should have tarried over the chicken at Heaven Chicken a little longer - that would have prevented the hell that greeted Ralph et al as they made their way to the bear cave.

Just one more episode to go, and I was glad to see that next week is the finale not of the series but the season.  The Outsider has been a strange narrative, and while I'm not devastated that it's ending, I'm not likely to pass it by if it comes back on the screen some time in the future.

See also The Outsider 1.1-2:  Two Places at the Same Time ... The Outsider 1.7: The Tear-Drinker ... The Outsider 1.7: The Guy with the Neck ... The Outsider 1.8: Two Monsters


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music