We recap the Prime Video series Swarm Season 1 (Episodes 1-7), which contains spoilers as it details what happened.
Prime Video continues to cement itself as a player in the streaming TV space with Swarm, a seven-episode miniseries that follows Dre (Dominique Fishback), a young teenager obsessed with Ni’Jah, a superstar music artist, who starts to take a wild and murderous turn for the worst. As we peel back the layers of this world, we see things quickly unravel for Dre, but she comes out unscathed at each turn. Here’s a breakdown and recap of everything that happened in each episode of Swarm Season 1.
Recap – what happened in Swarm Season 1? (Episodes 1-7)
Episode 1 – “Stung”
We meet Dre and Marissa, a pair of sisters who are the biggest fans of this singing superstar Ni’Jah. It is about to be Marissa’s birthday, and Dre wants to surprise her with a massive birthday present of concert tickets to see their favorite artists. However, Marissa’s boyfriend has other things in mind and causes a rift between the sisters. One thing leads to another, and a fight results in Marissa telling Dre that she is moving in with her boyfriend, Khalid. Later that night, Dre goes to a club and goes home with a guy. The following morning she plugs her phone in and realizes she had missed calls and messages from Marissa. When she gets home, she finds Marissa dead on the bed. Because of this, Dre heads to Khalid’s house and beats him to death.
Episode 2 – “Honey”
The show moved to Fayetteville, TN, where Dre has become a stripper, but there is a reason behind it all. We see Dre’s obsession with Ni’Jah causes her to do crazy things, and what she is doing in Fayetteville is hunting down a man named Reggie, who tweeted out negative stuff about Marissa and Ni’Jah. Throughout this episode, we see Dre on the hunt to find Reggie, but no matter how hard she tries, she comes up empty-handed. Then, one day, after partying with her stripper friends, her car gets a flat, and Reggie sees them on the side of the road. A wild chain of events happens, leading to one of the strippers shooting and killing Reggie.
Episode 3 – “Taste”
We have Alice, a woman making news for herself as she calls out Ni’Jah for her anti-cop music, and this gets the attention of Dre, who begins to stalk her. Then, as she was on the verge of killing her, she saw George, who had credentials to help her access things. George was a DJ, who she used to get into this club one night that Ni’Jah was in—after locking up George in the freezer, the time had come for her to be in the same room as her hero. Finally, as she inches closer and closer to Ni’Jah, she ends up biting her, which freaks out the crowd, and Dre runs and doesn’t turn back.
Episode 4 – “Running Scared”
The internet is in a massive uproar about the biting of Ni’Jah, with people wanting to know who it was so that they can deal with it. Dre is on the go entering a new town where she is heading to Bonnaroo. While there, she meets Eva, a women empowerment group leader that takes her under their wing. Things begin to get weird for Dre as Eva gets in her head about everything from her childhood to figuring out she is a killer to wanting to erase Ni’Jah from her life. After suffering from the brainwashing of Eva, Dre snaps out of it and ends up killing Eva and some of her campmates. As she arrives at Bonnaroo, the security guard turns her away because the festival is over, causing Dre to break down and cry while watching video highlights from the night on her phone.
Episode 5 – “Girl, Bye”
Dre is on the verge of a mental breakdown after finding out that Harris Jackson (Marissa’s father) had turned off Marissa’s phone that she was using. Because of this, she heads to the Jackson household to get them to turn it back on. However, things don’t go as planned, and things get ugly. Harris is upset because he believes Dre is the reason Marissa is dead. Finally, Harris tells his wife to leave the room because he is about to shoot Dre. Right before it happens, Dre can get out and climb out the top of the window and run as Harris shoots at her.
READ: Is Swarm based on a true story?
Episode 6 – “Stung”
This episode was focused on Detective Greene, who believes that these murders happening across several states are somehow connected. No matter how hard she tried, she could never figure out a way to connect the murders until stumbling across Khalid’s brother, who told her about Marissa and Khalid. This leads to Detective Greene finding out about Dre. We learn much about Dre’s childhood and the stories that formed who she is today. At the end of the episode, Detective Greene gets a call confirming the identity of Dre from one of the strippers in Fayetteville.
Episode 7 – “Only God Makes Happy Endings”
Dre continues to be on the run until, one day, she runs into Rashida, a college student. Her run of bad luck seemed to end with her falling in love with Rashida. Everything seemed to be going well between the two, with Dre meeting Rashida’s parents and them being accepting of her. On the eve of their anniversary, Dre gives Rashida a present: front-row tickets to see Ni’Jah in concert. However, Rashida hates Ni’Jah and freaks out about how she is working two jobs to pay their bills to cover Dre’s portion of the rent, and she wasted all this money on tickets to something dumb. Of course, this makes Dre mad, leading to her choking her to death. After burning her body, she realizes the tickets to Ni’Jah were in Rashida’s pocket. At the venue, she finds a scalper, and while trying to sell her the tickets, Dre kills him. We see Dre enter the venue and finally get to see Ni’Jah live. The season comes to a close with Dre getting on the stage before the guards escort her away, Ni’Jah stops her, and we see the two get into a limo post-show, with Ni’Jah comforting Dre.
That is the full story recap of what happened in the Prime Video series Swarm Season 1 (Episodes 1-7). What are your thoughts on the story? Please comment below.
