But this is not the tranquil jog of the show’s opener.
It’s a frantic sprint, like she’s running for her life.
Below that pinwheel is young Sarah Linden herself, buried and lifeless.
Credit: Netflix
Behind Linden, a gun comes into frame.
Is death the only way she can return to her former, better self?
Once the trigger is pulled, it blasts Linden into the waking world to find out.
In another echo of the pilot, a line of men scours the forest.
Kyle Stansbury’s bloody handprint tells them they’re not far behind.
At the obstetrician’s office, Holder is battling so many demons that he’s barely present.
Caroline immediately understands the other woman is Linden and presumably thinks the betrayal is physical.
She dismisses Holder’s self-loathing, putting on her lawyer face and insisting nothing matters now except their baby.
Once Holder hears the heartbeat of his daughter(!
), the clouds sweep away from his face, and it seems he believes Caroline.
Magic bullet status update: Still no bullet.
A bloody hand slaps her window.
It is absolutely pouring outside as Kyle identifies Fielding, Knopf, and Colonel Rayne as murderers.
I don’t want to remember.
I don’t want to remember!"
Then, pitifully: “I want go home.”
Linden deposits Kyle at her house so she can do some work.
He looks out the window, musing that this must be “what Eden was like.”
She riffs on their first conversation, saying that a tree outside is the Tree of Life.
She assures him he’ll be safe, that no one will find him.
NEXT: Blood, Rayne
Rayne returns to her office and is startled by Fielding and Knopf.
He suggests killing Rayne right therebut this old broad’s seen a lot more life than these scared cadets.
Fearing they’ll be in her thrall forever, Knopf and Fielding start to leave the room together.
They hear two decisive blasts and find that Rayne has shot the boys.
“Don’t tell him, c’mon,” Rayne begs.
“He’ll think that I didn’t want him.
He’ll never understand.
I’m just not built that way.”
Rayne insists through tears that she be arrested for these crimes she ardently believes she set in motion.
For the first time, she and Linden see eye to eye.
Or perhaps those glances were conspiratorial?
She draws her gun on Holder, at which point it’s obvious she has lost the plot.
But this isn’t about Kyle.
It’s about Skinner, and the shell casing, and Linden’s deep issues with abandonment.
The sheer force of hurling out all these accusations doubles Linden over, knocking the wind out of her.
As she recovers, Holder walks away silently, disgusted.
NEXT: Kyle explains it all
So how does a mentally unstable detective really push herself over the edge?
She goes back to the scene of a quadruple homicide.
“This is homethe place that you’re supposed to be safe, loved,” he says.
Instead, he only ever felt hatred, both directed at him and emanating from within himself.
Have we lost her?
Linden is angling for Kyle’s confession, which he gives freely.
He was behind everything.
(Called it:Primal Fear.)
He told his “Baby Bird” to close her eyes.
It was me."
Linden is ready to waive her rights and sign anything when who rolls in but Mayor Darren Richmond.
He tells a very different story about Skinner’s death, which the coroner ruled a suicide.
Linden is righteously indignant.
Perhaps it’s enough for Holder, who saw Linden clear his name.
He decides to pay back the good karma by waiting for Danette to visit Kallie’s grave.
“I just don’t want to f it up,” he tells Danette.
She replies succinctly, “Then don’t.”
In her now-empty home, Linden finds her own bulletthe shell casing that had rolled onto an air vent.
She picks it up, steps out into an uncharacteristically sunny day and drives into the horizon.
NEXT: Present perfect?
He greets her with a signature, “Ohhhhh snap!
1-900-LINDEN, dial and you shall receive!”
She realizes only now that “there is no bad guy.
I don’t know… Says Holder, “We tried at least.”
Holder wonders, then, why she’s really here.
She apologizes for not trusting him or realizing he would never betray her.
This is when the sexual tension surging through this scene became most apparent.
I’d been feeling it, second-guessing myself, then feeling it some more.
But the mood shifts with Holder’s clean-and-sober plea.
Now they stand on even (and much more stable) ground.
Linden resists the urge to stay and take a stab at recapture what they had.
She calls Seattle a “city of the dead.”
It ain’t ghosts, Linden.
It ain’t the dead.”
Never much of a dreamer, still slightly unwilling to trust, Linden succumbs to the urge to flee.
But Holder grabs her so their eyes meet one more time.
Hers are wide open, unwilling to close.
Holder relents, gives her a long, tight hug, and lets her go.
But he walks behind the car to watch Linden drive away.
Class-A move, Holder.
Swaggin' ‘til the end.
Linden has a localized Claire Fisher moment toThe Jezabels’ “Peace of Mind.
And, for once, she seems at ease.
A bit later, Holder leaves his meetings for the night.
He pauses in disbelief as he sees Linden has returned.
But do I want to seethatshow?
Oh hell, I suppose Seattle has to be sunny sometimes, too.
Take it away,Jane Siberry.
