The Alienist Review: Castle in the Sky (Season 1 Episode 10)

On The Alienist Season 1 Episode 10 “Castle in the Sky,” the team finally finds their killer as it closes out the season (and possibly the series).

The Alienist was always sold and advertised as a limited series, meaning it would just have these ten episodes, and then never return with a second season.

It’s not clear if TNT will ultimately decide to undo that decision, given the steady ratings and mild acclaim that it has received over this season, and bring it back for an encore. That is something that could certainly happen. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Assuming it doesn’t, however, and this is the last that we see of this world and these characters, “Castle in the Sky” makes for a fine, open-ended conclusion to this story.

A not at all surprising, but perhaps bittersweet move by the episode is the inclusion of Dr. Kreizler back into the fold. For a while now, Dr. Kreizler has felt like the secondary character in his story, but the reason to bring him back in is obvious and a bit necessary.

Dr. Kreizler is like a shot of adrenaline: it may not feel great but it gets things moving. The Alienist has always wanted us to believe that this is Kreizler’s show, even when Sara or even John Moore felt like more of a lead, and now, at the end, it needs to fulfill that impulse.

To Kreizler’s credit, the emotional crux of the finale rests almost entirely with him. The first, and the one that feels the most profound is the way in which the killer John Beecham denies Kreizler of any sort of explanation into why he killed the children.

That’s the real key. Kreizler, yes, wanted to catch Beecham before he could kill anyone else, but understanding the why was almost more important than even that. He wanted to know the hows and whys of what makes a killer become one. Is Beecham merely a sick man with an unwell mind or is evil to his core?

Beecham’s death prevents any of that knowledge passing to Kreizler and that’s the thing that will haunt that character more than anything else because that is what truly drives him in his studies: why do people do the things they do? If he knows that, then he can never become something like that.

One section of the series that is left unresolved that remains irksome is John’s time in the child brothel, which has more than once been implied as him getting roofied and then sexually assaulted by one of the boys.

It wants to leave that as mere window dressing, but it’s still disgusting, even if the show has seemed to forgotten about it completely.

Other than that, where The Alienist leaves the characters is in a surprisingly good place, considering the overall tone of the show. Kreizler is still haunted, more or less, but it seems a bit better for him now that he has confronted his father and what happened between the two of them.

Sara and John are in a healthy platonic relationship that borders on the romantic and this experience has given them both the push to do anything they deem fit now; Commissioner Roosevelt has finally learned how to be a politician, earning him the begrudging respect of certain spectators; and the Isaacsons are, well, still the Isaacsons. No better, no worse.

“Castle in the Sky” makes for a good ending to this series, if indeed it intends to never return.

What did you think of this episode of The Alienist? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Alienist airs Mondays at 9/8c on TNT.

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