Summary
In a quiet, slow, and tragic penultimate episode, the characters all find shelter and even greater tragedy.
This recap of To the Lake season 1, episode 7 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Check out our spoiler-free season review.
Anna is alive and well. This is good news — or at least it should be, but of course, it makes things rather awkward between Sergey and Ira. Pavel, modest about his work, reckons everyone should continue to take precautions. Upstairs, Boris is in a bad way. He seems to have had a heart attack. Pavel — thank goodness they ran into this guy — is about to open his chest and massage the offending organ, but Boris wakes up of his own accord, spots Anna, and claims, “He heard me,” one assumes talking about God. Yeah, if you like. Boris lays back down and dies, which isn’t immediately clear until we see him being loaded into the van, shrouded in plastic.
The group prepares to move on. Pavel, though, wants to get to the nearest lab so that his blood can be used to create a “remedy”, as he calls it. Ira is fully in support, but it causes an argument between her and Sergey, so Pavel agrees to stick with them and tend to Anna’s health while they teach him to drive. Then, when they’re settled, he can set out on his own.
Ira and Pavel continue to get close on the journey through some flirtatious stethoscope action, but they’re forced to stop when the run into Lyonya’s truck, which is wrecked and covered in blood. Misha is determined to follow their footprints and look for them, but Anna tries to talk him out of it. Nobody takes his side so he marches off. Sergey tries to restrain him and Sergey has a seizure, wetting himself in the process. According to Anna, he was prone as a child but she thought he had grown out of it.
We cut to Lyonya dragging Marina on a sheet as she cradles her stomach and blood pours out of her — a chilling image. Lyonya, presumably exhausted and borderline delirious, spies something in the distance. Polina, equally out of it, imagines him as the soldier she killed, the scissors still jutting out of his neck. These three are not in a good way in To the Lake episode 7, to put things mildly. They reach the structure Lyonya saw from way off, and find a woman inside.
The rest of the group, meanwhile, make it to the lake. Their next task is to walk back and forth across the ice with their supplies. Misha, still sulking, stays in the van. The door of the ship, though, has been broken open. Sergey and Pavel head inside to investigate. It’s surprisingly well-appointed — Boris has done a good job. The place seems to be deserted, but Anna finds evidence of previous occupation — a cleaver, a bloodstained worksurface, and chunks of meat. The coals in the fire are still warm. Out back, they find some hacked-up bodies. It’s not an ideal welcome present.
Lyonya, Polina, and Marina also adjust to their new surroundings, which they’ve robbed from the woman (she’s in the basement, a captive in her own home).
Before long, the ship’s previous occupant returns to it, armed with a hatchet. Sergey takes him by surprise and holds him at gunpoint, forcing him to drop the ax. The young man wants to stay the night, but Sergey isn’t having it. He won’t even let him take his knife, which is probably a good thing since he instantly gets creepy when he sees the women. Sergey leads the young man outside and across the ice, and he explains how he was a normal guy framed for a crime, imprisoned, and driven to cannibalism when the prisoners were left to starve. Eventually, presumably tired of his misfortune, he just sits on the ice and refuses to move, insisting that Sergey either lets him go or kills him. Slyly, he draws a blade from his boot, reeling off the names and ages of his kids, ranting about the man he killed, sawed up, and ate. He’s getting closer all the while. When he reaches for the gun and tries to shank Sergey, the gun goes off. He begs Sergey to put him out of his misery, but he expires too quickly for him to need to.
Meanwhile, Marina has totally lost it. She has sequestered herself in the house’s attic and is singing lullabies, bathed in the green that the show always seems to deploy when some violent weirdness is afoot. Polina, looking terrified, sings with her, looking appropriately sheepish when Marina starts doing elaborate nutcase cat impressions and sobbing. Everything is fine!
The main group buries Boris just off the lake. When they start filling in the grave, the camera looks out from inside, within the plastic, as the dirt gradually obscures the light — an eerie shot. Pavel has his first driving lesson with Ira, which goes pretty well for him, just as long as he wasn’t hoping to learn how to drive. Sergey gives them a funny look when he sees them together afterward, distracting him from fishing, which Anton is pretty excited about. Inside the ship, Misha is becoming increasingly unstable and has a giant rant at Anna.
Back at Lyonya’s commandeered house, Marina wakes up in the night looking for her child and is lured by the woman in the cellar, who says she’s down there with her and needs her momma. It’s a creepy, Evil Dead-style idea, but to be honest, I wasn’t totally sure if Marina had had the baby and lost it, or hadn’t yet given birth, and I’m still not. There’s some deliberate obfuscation here, but unless I missed something it could have stood to be clearer.
Sergey wakes up, meanwhile, to be told by Ira and Pavel that the car has been stolen. They’ll be using a buddy system going forwards, even for the bathroom. When Sergey heads back inside, he realizes Misha is missing. This is intercut with scenes of the woman in the house holding Polina at gunpoint and leading her into the cellar, where Marina is sobbing about her missing “kitty”. Lyonya is down there too. He confesses that he “did what he had to” with the baby, since she was his as well, which as we know she wasn’t. Marina isn’t shy about breaking this news to him, telling him she picked him as a sugar daddy. Misha falls through the ice into the waters of the lake, and the camera sinks down with him. A tragic end for To the Lake episode 7.
Thanks for reading our recap of To the Lake season 1, episode 7.
