NOS4A2 Episode 6 flashes back to Saugus, Massachusetts in 1954. Jolene is working as a car hop at a roadside diner. A young Charlie Manx pull up around the side of the building. He tells Jolene that he’s tired of driving customers and clients. He wants to get in the car and the two of them drive to Christmasland to be a family with all the children he’s “saved”. Charlie proposes to Jolene, but she rebuffs him. Charlie has been lying to her. He’s not been driving clients for months. She doesn’t know anything about his children nor about Christmasland, nor does she want to. The only thing that Charlie loves is his car, and the Wraith has changed him.
That evening, Manx returns after dark, when Jolene is locking up. He tries to run her down with the Wraith, but Jolene is a Strong Creative and her skates are her knife, as we’ve seen previously this season. She stays ahead of the Wraith, getting up enough speed to disappear before she can be ran down.
Therapy
In the hospital, Vic is being difficult. She refuses to talk about Manx to the doctors or give them much insight into her life. Vic does admit that her father gets drunk and beats her mother, which in turn results in her mother slapping Vic around. The doctors think that Manx is a figment of Vic’s imagination, something that she’s created to help her escape from the pain in her reality.
Healing
Vic is placed in the same room as the aged Jolene, who hasn’t spoken to anyone in a long time. The radio in the room crackles, playing Jolene’s favorite song. Jolene reaches out to Vic and says “Charlie Manx”. Vic recognizes Jolene as the Strong Creative that Maggie visited. Before Vic can get any information from Jolene about Manx or Christmasland, the night nurse comes with prescription medications for both Vic and Jolene. Jolene tries to warn Vic not to take them, then refuses to take her own. When the nurse leaves to get help in administering the drugs to Jolene, Vic tosses them out and tells the nurse that she was able to get Jolene to take them without a fight.
The next morning, Jolene has Vic get her wheelchair for her. It replaced her skates once Jolene was too old for them. Vic seats Jolene in the chair and pushes her through the halls, getting up enough speed for Jolene to make them disappear. The pair are transported to the Dark Tunnels, Jolene’s inscape. There, Jolene shows Vic the missing child posters of all the kids that she knows Manx has taken since the 1950s. If Vic doesn’t stop him, Manx will continue the cycle. Jolene knows that Vic is strong enough to stop Manx because she’s seen the fear in his eyes.
Vic, though, doesn’t know how to kill Manx. Jolene uses her ability to transport the two fo them as unseen presences to where Manx is sleeping in the Wraith. Jolene blows the engine on the Wraith, which causes Manx to regress to a weak old man. Jolene tells Vic to say whatever she has to in order to get out of the hospital. Kill the Wraith and you can kill Manx.
Vic tells the doctor that she made up everything about Manx, the Wraith, and the Shorter Way as a means of having some imaginary problem in her life that she has some measure of control over and can fix. The doctor releases Vic on the conditions that she continue taking the meds, which Vic dumps because Jolene told her that they’ll dull her mind and her knife, and that Vic stop living with her father. Before going to live with her mother, she visits Maggie in the hospital as she is being discharged. Vic wants the pair to go after Manx together, but Maggie is finished. At the bus stop, Maggie tosses her Scrabble bag into a trash bin, then gets on a bus back to Iowa.
Tell us what you thought of NOS4A2 Episode 6 in the comments below!
