Aftermath picks up where last week’s episode ended. Dana is lost outside the avalanche shelter and Karen is in the bottom of a pit. “Here Is No Water But Only Rock” sees the family struggling to get back together after Mt. Rainier erupted.
Joshua grabs gas respirators and searches for Dana while Matt and Brianna are locked in the shelter. Once the door is closed they cannot get it open so Matt searches for a way to get out.
Josh finds Dana by the RV trying to get inside. He forces her to put on a mask and as she is claustrophobic he struggles to keep the thing on her face.
Karen wakes up at the bottom of a pit. A volcanologist finds her and lowers a rope. She climbs up and finds her savior has a broken leg. She doses him up with morphine and puts a splint on his leg. They begin to search for a way out.
At the RV, Josh and Dana have to squeeze under the vehicle when a dragon lands next to them. Matt starts a fire to deplete the shelter of oxygen to force the door open.
Karen has to leave Kevin and she hunts for an exit out of the cave they are in. Just as she finds a way out the mountain rumbles and she is trapped again.
She makes her way back to Kevin and she sees etchings on the cave wall. As she looks at the ancient art, one of the female prisoners she killed in an earlier episode turns up and gives her the bullet that killed her.
Dana convinces Brianna that their mother is still alive. Karen is fading in and out of consciousness at the bottom of the pit. Kevin did not exist. Dana finds her mother and they get her out. The family then decide to go home.
Oddly, Karen still has the bullet that the prisoner gave her.
They all head back home only to find it partially destroyed and the ground had been salted. A neighbor has become a fever head and Karen leaves his wife a gun.
Josh and Karen talk and agree that they should head east. They also think the dragons were trying to show them which way to go.
Aftermath has focused on each family member in different episodes. This was Karen’s moment. Trapped in the mountain, she experienced her own visions and it led her to a conclusion.
Later the “bullet” turns into a piece of black stone.
Dana notices that time has changed since the beginning of the apocalypse. It is, she tells Brianna, different. She points out that their birthday was last week.
After all the new people that the family had picked up and tried to help, they are now back to family only. It is interesting to note that neither Karen or Joshua offer to take their fever head neighbor’s wife with them.
Anne Heche killed it in this episode. The whole scene inside the mountain was tense and off kilter. It was very convincing, so much so that when she ends up back in the pit, it was surprising.
By the end of the episode, the family are tighter than ever. Despite the deaths of Devyn and Martin, as well as Jane, they have all bonded. The kids have grown as well.
Aftermath this week lost some of the obvious mysticism of last week, except for those visions in the cave. The imaginary interaction between Karen and Kevin, plus the dead prisoner who gives her the “bullet,” gives us an insight on how Karen sees herself.
She is a strong willed woman who can protect her family. There are, however, doubts. Kevin’s ramblings show her own doubts about her skills and the prisoner is a sign of her guilt at having killed those women at the camp.
It will be interesting to see where the show heads now that they have a new direction.
Aftermath airs Fridays on SyFy.
Cast:
- James Tupper – Joshua Copeland
- Anne Heche – Karen Copeland
- Levi Meaden – Matt Copeland
- Taylor Hickson – Brianna Copeland
- Julia Sarah Stone – Dana Copeland
Guest starring Ryan Bruce as Kevin Bailor
