Summary
The case opens up in Untamed Episode 2, with Jane Doe’s identity being discovered, and more personal details being filled in.
By the end of Untamed Episode 2, Vasquez has figured out who the mysterious Jane Doe is, which is good news. But things in Yosemite don’t seem especially improved by the progress. In fact, this hour builds on various elements of the premiere as if to make a point about how little we currently know about who’s who and what’s what. Everything seems to be connected, and nobody, I don’t think, can be trusted.
This gives us more to look at and speculate about, if nothing else. But, and maybe it’s just me, I don’t feel like the specificity of the wilderness setting is really adding a great deal here. Occasional scenes of Turner creeping through the woods and finding strands of hair on branches are nice, but the real breakthroughs are coming from old-fashioned investigatory legwork, like in any other show. Maybe that’ll change as we go. Maybe not.
X Marks the Spot
Remember how Jane Doe had a tattoo of an X rendered in ink flecked with real gold? Well, that symbol becomes a key theme in Episode 2 of Untamed. It opens with a brief flashback of Jane Doe rambling out in the woods, slipping, and spilling several bottles of pills. She stashes a rucksack in a cooler hidden beneath some wood, and then gets shot in the leg by her as-yet unidentified attacker. In the present day, Turner finds one of those pill bottles and notices it has a gold X on the lid, just like the tattoo.
Luckily, Turner has a contact who can look into such matters. He’s a low-level dealer named Teddy who’s easy enough to strong-arm with threats of planting evidence. He agrees to ask around, and he lives up to his word. He visits a drug-supplying tattooist named Linson and asks him about the gold tattoos, but he’s incredibly cagey about the idea, claiming they’re impossible. When Teddy leaves, Linson sends him a message warning him off this particular line of inquiry. Nothing good awaits at the end of it.
This proves prophetic, since Teddy is promptly jumped by a masked attacker, strangled to death, and dumped in a river. His killer has a dodgy hand, though I couldn’t say for certain whether the oddity is a tattoo, a birthmark, a scar, or some kind of body modification. It’s a little unclear.
The Investigation Continues
Turner and Vasquez continue to pursue other lines of inquiry in Episode 2 of Untamed. The key angle is Jane Doe’s bracelet and how it connects to the now-defunct Wildwood Nature Adventures, but Souter deals a blow when he reveals there’s a box containing hundreds of them in the office. Anyone could have theoretically picked one up; they were given out like candy. Jane Doe’s connection to the summer camp is far from guaranteed.
In the meantime, Turner takes Vasquez to a squatter camp in the middle of the wilderness, which is one of the only developments that feels specific to Yosemite. The squatters, led by a woman named Glory, are hostile to authority and just want to be left alone, but their resident shaman, Abuelo, is missing, having left on a “spiritual walk” and not returned. I think the term “shaman” is being used interchangeably with “drug dealer” here, for what it’s worth.
Apparently, someone else had visited the camp the night before, and Turner immediately intuits who – Shane Maguire, a Wildlife Control agent whom he tracks down hunting a hilariously fake-looking deer. He’s also looking for Abuelo, for reasons he’s deliberately vague about. There’s clearly no love lost between Turner and Maguire, and the former fancies the latter for Jane Doe’s shooter, because he fires a round from his rifle to check the ballistics. But there’s a more personal element to this dynamic still to be explained.
Untamed. Wilson Bethel as Shane Maguire in episode 102 of Untamed. Cr. Ricardo Hubbs/Netflix © 2025
Caleb’s Death Is Connected to the Missing Sean Sanderson
“Jane Doe” gives us some clarity about what happened to Turner’s son, Caleb, and some suggestions about how all this might relate to the disappearance of Sean Sanderson. The investigator working on behalf of his family to pursue a wrongful death case, Avalos, ambushes Turner with a bunch of questions that give us some background. He headed the investigation into Sanderson’s disappearance for weeks, even though his job is to investigate crimes, and there was apparently no evidence of one having taken place. Avalos implies he might not have been in the right headspace to conduct that investigation, and flashbacks to Turner discovering Caleb dead in a lake suggest she’s probably right.
But this is our first major clue that Caleb’s death is connected to Sean Sanderson’s disappearance. We get a little more later. At Souter and his wife’s 40-year anniversary party, Milch tells Vasquez that Caleb was snatched by someone, and the perpetrator was never found. The implication is clear. Sean was likely Caleb’s killer, and Turner probably murdered him and then used his position to ensure nobody ever found out.
He isn’t over it either way, and neither, apparently, is Jill. She’s doing a better job of pretending, but when she’s asked if she has kids, she still says two girls and a little boy, as if Caleb is still alive. During the Souter party, she’s unable to turn her gaze away from Turner, especially when he briefly interacts with Vasquez’s son, Gael.
Lucy Cook
Despite believing that the Wildwood lead is a waste of time, Vasquez continues to pursue it and eventually uncovers something interesting. The archives turn up the name Lucy Cook, a young girl who went missing years ago and has remained so ever since. She could quite easily have grown up to become Jane Doe, and facial recognition suggests she did.
At the same time, Turner, who has just found a lock of Lucy’s hair on a branch, receives a call about Teddy’s body having been found. It’s two major developments at once, clearly both connected since Teddy was looking into Jane Doe’s death at Turner’s behest – great, something else for him to feel guilty about – when he was killed. The case is opening up.
RELATED:
