The Terror: Infamy Review: Taizo (Season 2 Episode 6)
The Terror: Infamy Season 2 Episode 6, “Taizo,” digs into the backstory of the spirit and explores its motivations.
A vital part of a story like this — where so much of the drama and suspense comes from the antagonist force — is digging into the reasons for why this malevolent entity is doing what it’s doing. For instance, in Season 1, we came to understand that the bear was simply protecting against what it viewed as a threatening outside invasion.
A tale can rise or fall depending on how strong these factors are. The big thing is that the audience has to understand, and even empathize to a certain degree, with the motivations of the antagonist. With The Terror: Infamy, the reasoning is one that’s understandable and relatable to most — and the extent to how badly this has gone wrong makes a good deal of sense.
One of the smartest things that “Taizo” does is present the point-of-view to be, in a way, supernatural throughout this episode. It’s demonstrated well as we see how Yuko the spirit, who jumped to her death, exists in this afterlife reality for people of her ancestry and how completely normal she is.
There’s a kind of desperation there, but she seems very much human. It’s not until it’s juxtaposed against scenes in the concentration camp that we understand the kind of duality she lives in now. To even be in the natural world the way she is makes her a more monstrous thing.
Her sheer continued existence makes her into this evil thing that needs to be feared. She becomes, as Chester puts it at one point, the demon of this story. In her afterlife, she’s fine; in the mortal world, she’s a manic and violent spirit who’s half-mad and practically homicidal.
This shows the cost of passing between worlds. It’s not a clean process, as shown from the first time she bursts from the ground. She’s a monster in every sense of the word in that instance, but that’s not all she is. By the end, you have a kind of understanding about why she’s doing what she’s doing.
Yuko died missing her baby, who we learn grew up to be Chester, and that’s why she is what she is now. She’s someone who missed her baby; and now, any baby will do. She’s become twisted and dangerous in her single-minded pursuit of that, but you also have empathy for her.
The way this episode ends, however, really makes you wonder how the rest of this season will go. We understand now that all Yuko really wants is to take a baby with her to her afterlife, but that it needs to be a baby who is related to her. Now that Chester’s children have died, what is the way forward for her and the rest of this season?
What did you think of this episode of The Terror: Infamy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Terror: Infamy airs Mondays at 9/8c on AMC.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.