Summary
The third episode of The Sister revealed what happened to Elise, and also why, as the situation gets direr and direr for Nathan.
This recap of The Sister Season 1 Episode 3 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Nathan even looks miserable on his own wedding day. Then again, there’s little surprise — his new bride makes a big deal about toasting her dead sister, who’s there in spirit and would approve of her husband, she thinks, despite the fact that Nathan and his creepy accomplice Bob buried her in the woods after a night of debauchery. Best not to mention that at the toast, like.
Nevertheless, this is something Nathan has had to live with. In the present day, he and Bob unlock the latter’s lock-up, where they’re intending to hide the car — which has Elise’s body in the back — and burn her clothes, much to Nathan’s obvious anguish. His suggestions for disposing of the evidence are unintentionally hilarious, including melting the stuff in hydrochloric acid, which he doesn’t have and would have no idea how to handle even if he did. Bob’s content to stick her in the freezer for now, which Nathan isn’t happy with either, but what choice does he have, really?
Not that Bob’s happy to hear his protestations, especially not when he’s blatantly suspicious when he speaks to Holly on the phone. As a side note, can you imagine Creepy Bob having a few beers and firing the Xbox up? Me neither. Regardless, his taunting finally drives Nathan to an outburst — the most aggression we’ve seen from him. Is it enough aggression to kill someone and bury her body? Questions!
At home, the suspicion continues. Honestly, this guy is terrible at putting on a brave face. He spins a tale about Bob wanting to borrow ten grand and insists that tonight was the last they’ll see of him, but it’s remarkably unconvincing, and no wife worth her salt would buy it — Holly obviously included.
Speaking of not buying it, Jacki is on the prowl, poring over Bob’s old interrogation footage.
Anyway, back in the past — The Sister episode 3 is less liberal with the time-hopping, to good effect — Nathan and Elise snort lines on that fateful night, and she wants to exchange a kiss for the next one. One thing leads to another — rather quickly, really, but then again they are on coke — and Elise eventually goes bonkers, aggressively bouncing around on Nathan’s lap until her head cracks against the window. Bob returns right on time to feign being appalled, gives an incredibly weak attempt at reviving her, and then has a cig while Nathan sprints deeper into the woods in panic. Before long he returns, theorizing about a potential epileptic fit brought on by the drugs, but Bob points out the obvious: It looks like he hit her. Bob’s worried about going to prison since he was the one who gave her the drugs, so he casually explains that they’ll have to bury her, or their lives will be as over as hers.
While Bob and Nathan are moving Elise’s body, Holly calls her, and her face on the little screen is the first Nathan sees of it. This hardly explains the show’s other big mystery, why he ultimately decided to marry her, but it’s nice to have some answers about what actually happened to Elise. Nathan isn’t such a bad guy after all.
But who knows what kind of extremes he’s going to have to go to in order to deal with Bob, who he realizes has a long-term plan that he’s keeping quiet about. The two arrange to meet at a pub near Bob’s home, but in the meantime, Nathan visits the lock-up and breaks into the freezer to discover Elise’s corpse missing. He clearly intends to head to Bob’s home to look there right about the same time that Jacki follows the breadcrumbs to the address herself.
Nathan gets there first. He can’t break into the obviously suspicious safe, but he does find a projector that plays footage of Bob trying to communicate with Elise from beyond the grave. He’s interrupted by Jacki, who peeps through the windows while he hides. After, he finds himself stuck inside, with Jacki parked outside, and an impatient Bob on his way home. Jackie catches a glimpse of Nathan through the window, but if that isn’t enough to arouse her suspicions, Nathan calling her and confessing that he told a lie to the police about Elise’s death will certainly do the trick.
Told you — this guy is just the worst at covering up a crime.
He’s hoping it’ll do as an incentive to get Jacki out of the way before Bob comes up, but no such luck — she collars him as he’s walking home and explains who she is. She wants a chat, but he can’t since he has company. Then she interrogates him about his car and what happened to his old one, making it abundantly obvious that she’s been snooping and knows he’s up to something. As Bob enters his house, Jacki drives away, giving Nathan the time he needs to escape through the window… except not quite. Bob catches him in the act with a casual, “Hello, mate.” He isn’t surprised to see him or to hear that he went to the lockup. He explains that Elise is there with them, watching, and he knows what to do. He explains about the roadside ghost, one of the most common forms of haunting, which usually takes the form of a young woman killed after sex and buried on unhallowed ground between a road and a river. Since Elise’s death, he has scoured for reportings of her specter showing up, but it never did. This only makes sense, since as he explains to Nathan he “nudged things along” in an ill-fated effort to “create a ghost” by ensuring Elise died in those specific circumstances. The plot thickens! It also ends right there, to be resolved in tomorrow night’s finale.
