The Terror: Infamy Review: Into the Afterlife (Season 2 Episode 10)
The Terror: Infamy Season 2 Episode 10, “Into the Afterlife,” closes out the season and attempts to stay true to its historical context, even if most of it feels too little, too late.
The Terror: Infamy, at least on paper, seems like a story that is destined to end in tragedy — and to a certain degree, it does. The bulk of this season has often really struggled with marrying the disparate sides of itself into something that feels cohesive.
For the most part, that’s still true with “Into the Afterlife.” Everything that happens with Yuko and trying to save Chester and Luz’s baby is totally disconnected from the real world issues at play. Regardless of how good the story itself is, the fact that the Yurei has nothing to do with the concentration camps is a massive misstep.
They were both separately good ideas, but they were never truly able to come together and create a satisfying story that works well together.
The show forced you to accept both of these antagonistic forces as completely distinct and separate from one another, and that ultimately doesn’t serve the story very well. It gave the camps a sense of meaninglessness when we know it shouldn’t be that way, and it forced the audience to constantly reconcile reality with what’s being shown.
“Into the Afterlife” only somewhat tweaks this by making this a story where the only thing to do is take your trauma, live with it every day, and move on. By the end, Chester, Asako, and Luz have to take everything that happened with Yuko and put it into a mental box and simply carry on with that pain.
Additionally, all of the other Terminal Island residents have to come to grips with the fact that their homes are gone and a whole city from their home country is just vaporized now. That’s not even to mention the continued anguish from the camps that they will always feel as a result of what they’ve been through.
The Terror: Infamy wants us to think this is a story of mere perseverance, but this feels more like a retcon than anything. The show would like us to think that the concentration camps were a horrible place to be, and they were in reality — but the series never did a great job of demonstrating that.
One of the most notable aspects of this finale is the way that it is rather kind by the end. It hands this olive branch to Yuko that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from but feels lovely all the same.
Whereas all of the other characters are forced to carry on with what’s happened, Yuko is allowed the opposite. She gets to exist in this perfect moment. She’ll never move forward nor backward, and that’s the best thing she could hope for. This is her version of a peaceful afterlife.
Nothing bad can happen to her anymore and she can just live with something that can never be taken from her: hope. Her existence can be full of potential that will never be realized but also never be squashed. That’s serenity for her.
What did you think of The Terror: Infamy season finale? 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.