Dead of Summer Season Finale Review: She Talks to Angels (Season 1 Episode 10)

“She Talks to Angels,” the season finale of Dead of Summer, is an exciting, emotional hour of the series. It both neatly wraps up the first season while leaving enough on the table to absolutely warrant a second (and third and fourth and… you catch my drift) season.

In a word, it’s successful.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still a few eyebrow-raising overly corny (or nonsensical) moments.

We open on Amy cleaning herself up after having violently butchered Deb and Margot’s friend whose name I can’t for the life of me find via Google or recall. That’s the first of the (many, many) “Uh, what?” moments — how the heck did Amy clean all that blood off of her so quickly/thoroughly?! There’s not a speck anywhere, and she apparently does it (and hides the bodies) fast enough to not arouse suspicion from Alex/Jessie/Garrett about what’s taking her so long.

Maybe that’s one of Malphas’ assorted demon powers? Quick-cleaning?

Anyway, it winds up not mattering that Amy successfully plays nice for a hot sec. Though Amy/Malphas wants to escape Stillwater (which, apparently, effectively controls the demon and prevents it from unleashing its full powers), they can’t. Holyoke, in what I guess was his final act as an alive(ish) ghost person, passed along his “light” to Jessie.

The details are a little murky, but from what it seems, Holyoke was bound to the lake as much as the demon was. Light and dark, both trapped there, so that Malphas could never escape.

Amy reveals this once Garrett’s car breaks down at the border of the camp, preventing them all from leaving. So in all it’s like two minutes of the gang not realizing Amy is evil. Then she goes full Michael Myers psycho on them, needing to kill Jessie/Holyoke’s light in order to leave the camp grounds.

I have to say, this demon is… not very smart. At all. Like, if I were a demon wanting to escape into the world to wreak havoc in this situation, I would have simply feigned ignorance about why we couldn’t leave camp instead of announcing the situation (“I am a demon and must kill you now in order to leave!”) and then killed everyone when they didn’t know what was going on. Simple. Easy-peasy.

I also don’t get what the point is in leaving Alex, Jessie, and Garrett alive to begin with. What is the purpose of Malphas/Amy having faked being good/cured at all? Why not just slaughter them all and stroll out of camp unencumbered? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

OK, anyway: Amy conjures up the spirits of the dead in order to help trap/kill Jessie and the guys. Joel, Cricket, Blotter, and Deb all appear over the course of the installment, apparently controlled by Amy/Malphas. Groundskeeper Dave, for whatever reason, is not important enough a ghost to make an appearance.

Disappointingly, the dead counselors (and Deb) are literally just zombie figures. They don’t operate on any kind of psychological level, which would have been more interesting and a better use of their actors. There is no “You let me die!” or “We were friends!” tormenting or anything. They just walk around, being dead and vaguely menacing.

The majority of “She Talks to Angels” involves Jessie, Alex, and Sykes running from Amy as she chases them with an axe. Sykes is picked off first (getting stabbed with glass when demon Amy lurches through a cabin window).

The show pulls a neat trick where we’re made to believe that Sykes successfully escaped Amy, only for a closing moments reveal that he’s actually dead and has been throughout the entire second half of the finale — he’s the new Holyoke, in fact.

As the trio is fleeing, Sykes is forced to stop because of his wound. Rather than slow the other two down, he opts to remain behind and fend off Amy. Off-screen, there are several gunshots, but we don’t actually see Sykes die, which allows his later reappearance to come off as him having survived.

In reality, there are a few things that tip off/hint at Sykes actually being dead.

The major one? He’s no longer suffering from his injury. Miraculous healing? Nope. He’s totally dead.

Jessie’s kiss right before he died allows Sykes to become the new Holyoke, allowing him to work against Amy/Malphas with Jessie (and Blair and Drew, who return to camp after Anton creepily informs them that the battle isn’t over) and preventing him from being one of the dead controlled by Malphas.

Alex is also killed (via axe to the chest) by AMalphas (see what I did there?) when he opts to remain behind to fend Amy off and allow Jessie extra time to escape.

The finale is peppered with an assortment of flashbacks — we don’t get a Blair-centric backstory episode at all, which is weird. Instead, we see several of the counselors immediately prior to their leaving for camp.

Alex’s flashback scene contextualizes his sacrifice. His mother confronts him for his dry cleaning thievery. When he comments that his father was weak and that he (Alex) takes what he wants, his mother lays into him, telling Alex that his father sacrificed everything for their survival. With that background set up, Alex’s final sacrifice (of his own life, towards saving the world from Malphas) makes perfect sense.

That said, it’s too little too late for me. Alex has been largely useless and unlikable all season long. I just don’t care for him and his sacrifice leaves me cold. Especially since he flicks out a switchblade, literally not even remotely attempting to fend off Amy’s axe. How is that supposed to slow her down even a little? I can’t take that dude seriously, even in his dying moment.

In the final third, Drew, Blair, and Jessie manage to lure Amy into a circle of lake water that they’ve purified. Via radio, Sykes attempts to play Holyoke’s recorded piano playing (the song that can weaken the demon), only to find that Amy has erased it. Luckily for the group, Joel’s camera caught the piano playing when Jessie and Joel were brought back in time by Holyoke to witness his death.

Who knew that cameras could record events in ghost-induced time travel moments! I’m kidding. It’s actually a pretty great moment when Garrett realizes that Joel recorded the piano playing and plays it, weakening Amy and zombies Deb, Joel, and Cricket. This allows Jessie the chance to axe Amy right in the head, killing her.

It’s really a perfect moment, because it solidifies Jessie as the true hero of the season. It is Jessie who defeats the demon, finally — with an assist from the others, of course.

The slow reveal and transformation of Jessie from a completely one-dimensional mean girl to the legitimate protagonist across the second half of the season is wonderful. It’s easily the most unique and interesting thing about the show.

Garrett’s reveal to Jessie that he’s actually dead in the end is a heartbreaking moment. Seriously, major kudos to Paulina Singer and Alberto Frezza in this scene. The moment isn’t quite long enough to play out to its full emotional potential, but it’s still very, very sad.

An upset, but still strong Jessie walks out of camp with Blair and Drew supporting her as ghost Garrett has an emotional reunion with his ghost Dad as he walks into the lake, returning the demon essence of Malphas that leaked out of Amy and into the canteen to the lake where it is bound. Garrett also vanishes. It’s unclear whether he is able to move on or if he’s bound to the lake as Holyoke once was, meant to ward off any who attempt to conjure up Malphas.

This seems to suggest that Malphas isn’t actually defeated, but rather just re-bound to Stillwater, allowing future seasons to take place post-1989. Stillwater is for sale, after all — and someone will definitely buy it.

As for our characters this season, most (Cricket, Joel, Alex, Deb, Garrett, and Blotter) are dead but the survivors have happy endings. Jessie, apparently having taken Garrett’s advice and turned her mother in for the DUI, is happily away at college. Drew and Blair are together and in Seattle, following Bowie — a plan that Blair once had with Cricket, as their flashback scenes revealed — and waiting for Jessie to visit them. A perfect ending.

Stray thoughts:

• Alex’s “We killed the demon! We saved you, Amy!” line is so laughably dumb. Oh, Alexei, you dim, handsome boy.
• The electronic music throughout is so perfectly ’80s horror. I love it so much. Particularly at the moment when Jessie kisses Sykes and is forced to leave him behind to escape Amy.
• While in the bathroom hiding from Amy, Jessie puts a lightweight empty plastic trash can in front of the push bathroom door. Why? In what realm would this be even a little bit useful barrier against a demon with an axe? Girl…
• While it wouldn’t quite make sense to see these characters again (at least in their current 1989 incarnations), I am hoping that Dead of Summer pulls an American Horror Story and reuses the same cast in different roles. That would be interesting. +1 vote for Elizabeth Lail as a retconned 1970 Deb.

What did you think of the Dead of Summer Season 1 finale? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Dead of Summer airs Tuesday at 9/8c on Freeform.

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