SurrealEstate Review: The House Always Wins (Season 1 Episode 10)

We are back at the Donovan house on SurrealEstate Season 1 Episode 10, “The House Always Wins.” The season finale is a solid effort to tie up all the questions we’ve had about the Donovan house from the very beginning.

The opening narration by August is a strong recap of the story so far but in the end, all it does is set up the next hour of reveals. It’s a good tactic for building tension, but the tension is tepid at best as the episode progresses.

As Phil, Zoey, and Susan attempt to save August, Luke recovers in Meghan’s house. It isn’t until all four of them are in the house, and Meghan has decided to step back from her relationship with Luke that the answers about the house come into play. 

 

There’s something poetic in giving each of these characters a final goodbye with a complicated character in their lives. This can sometimes be a little maudlin and predictable, but since we’ve been building most of these threads through the entire season it’s a fitting end to the season. 

The most intriguing is Father Phil’s. 

His conversation with the priest that raised him and how he’s received for being gay is a heartbreaking exchange. It speaks deeply to religious trauma and something relatable for a large set of the LGBT+ community.

The Phil we’ve met over the last ten episodes is caring and loving. He deserves to be happy, and he recognized that he was in a structure that didn’t suit that happiness. Listening to this ghost reaffirm his greatest fear is a punch in the gut and it isn’t fully resolved. 

This is exactly how it should be.  The trauma Phil is working through is complex. It’s not going to be solved in one conversation, especially when that person can’t accept who Phil is.

This all surrounds the main action of the story, Luke coming face-to-face with the house, and the ghost of his twin sister. Something about this interaction feels very derivative and contrived. 

Personifying the house into a character is a narrative tactic I am excited about, but this house doesn’t seem to do anything menacing as he’s talking to Luke. Instead, he just facilitates the meeting between Luke and his sister who has an ax to grind over the fact that she didn’t get to live.

This is a lukewarm twist. We never really got a chance to connect with this character. As soon as there was any meaningful interaction Luke pulled away. If we had been more invested in their dynamic then the reveal would have played differently and would have been more effective.

Instead, it rewrites everything we thought we knew about Luke’s mother and ties Luke’s ability to her. It feels like an escape route to bring us to a more dramatic ending, but it doesn’t work.

The consequences of this meeting are transformative and not in a good way either. We never really understood how Luke’s ability works until this episode and now it’s gone. As much as horror tends to deal with concepts of identity, this feels like a big move that happens too soon.

After his sister tries to strangle him, it seems like an ideal opportunity to go in for another twist and have Luke not be Luke. That would have allowed for the story to grow. 

As it stands now, the character with the most growth is Susan who has finally learned to use and accept her telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers. Using it to open up the gateway that would let the spirits leave is a great use of her power.

Her heart-to-heart with Luke at the end where he passes the business to her seems like a fitting end, but an unsatisfying one. We have spent a season with these people and we want them to succeed, but we were also here for the mystery that is Luke Roman. 

That’s all gone now, and it feels like there’s nowhere to go for a second season, and if there is one it will change too much from the first season. 

“The House Always Wins” ends on an interesting frame. Watching Luke return to the bowling alley looking for his dad is heartbreaking. While we haven’t really gotten into the dynamics of how Luke’s ability works or what he does, we did see a connection between Luke and his dad. 

Seeing that taken away is unnerving, and if SurrealEstate is to continue its story, it leaves open the possibility for a story that’s more about identity and what defines us. 

Despite an incohesive season with some threads not carrying through as well as others, the series presents some interesting questions.  IF the series is granted a second outing, it could benefit from a more cohesive and focused storyline. 

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

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