According to Jepp in Episode 7 of Sweet Tooth Season 3, you slow down when you know the end is coming. But this show follows his advice. “The Road Ends Here” finds a little something extra as it approaches the finish line, raising the stakes and excitement and the emotional resonance all at once.
The opening finds Jepp sitting in the locker room before his final football game, ready to go out and prove an army of doubters wrong. Little has changed in the present day when he bursts into the church where Gus and Birdie have just said their farewells to Manuq (it was him knocking on the door at the end of Episode 6.)
Jepp has summoned every last reserve of his strength to ensure Gus completes his mission. The episode matches his energy.
Putting A Face to the Name
It’s nice to see Birdie meet Jepp after listening to Gus talk about him so much. I didn’t mention it before, since it was kind of secondary to the important plot information being dispensed, but one of the nicest aspects of the previous installment was Birdie smilingly overhearing Gus telling Manuq about his upbringing in Yellowstone with Pubba. Her getting to meet Jepp brings her that little bit closer to Gus’s life, filling in the blanks of the years she spent apart from him.
Jepp, Gus, and Birdie are heading for the cave, though Birdie is doing so with a satchel full of dynamite, having taken Manuq’s point about humanity being the disease to heart. Meanwhile, Zhang’s group are preparing to do the same with the aid of “The Beast”, which they’re still using the outpost’s remaining power to charge.
Armed Uprising
As Siana explains to her newly radicalized compatriots, their mission isn’t just about stopping Zhang from reaching the cave. If she drains all of the facility’s power to charge up The Beast, they’ll freeze during the winter.
A big chunk of “The Road Ends Here” is devoted to the planning and execution of the outpost’s retaliation against Zhang’s forces. It’s good, cathartic fun seeing the good guys lay waste to the villains with various tools. There’s a nail gun involved. And it really gives Bear the chance to shine, showing what being the former leader of the Animal Army entails.
But despite everyone fighting bravely, they don’t quite get the upper hand. Zhang’s people are able to get The Beast going before the power is shut down, and Jordan, of all people, makes off in the driver’s seat of the giant contraption. A valiant effort seems to have amounted to very little.
Cave Diving
Elsewhere, things get a little Indiana Jones in the cave, as Gus, Jepp, and Birdie navigate its various perils.
The first is a frozen body of water that they have to creep across using rocks as platforms. Naturally, the ice gives away just as they reach the other side.
Further in, Jepp lights a flare to show the way, revealing a tight path full of frozen purple flowers. This is ground zero for the Sick, but the fact the flowers are in stasis gives them a chance to get through. But it doesn’t help that Jepp is claustrophobic, or that the heat from the flares is melting the ice around them.
Nevertheless, the gang are able to make it through to the central chamber, which houses a giant tree with branches like antlers and an axe embedded in its trunk. Thacker had used it to mine the red sap, the Blood of the Earth, from within the tree.
A Moral Dilemma
The tree has been dying slowly for years, leaking its sap into the ice. Gus thinks if he removes the axe the tree can heal and the Sick will end. Birdie worries that doing so might eradicate the hybrids along with it.
Birdie, like Manuq, wants to allow nature to run its course. Jepp sees the logic in this too. He has also seen the worst of humanity, and he’s prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice if it means saving Gus.
But the gang is interrupted by Zhang and her men, including Singh, who is still raving about fate. He still believes that the only possible solution is to sacrifice Gus, which will bring about an end to the Sick and the hybrids both.
Singh makes his move, but as he thrusts the knife forward, Jepp breaks free from his captors and jumps in the way. However, Birdie already beat him to it. The knife plunges into her belly, much to Singh’s horror.
As Birdie dies on the floor in Gus’s arms, she tells him she has no regrets.
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