Summary
Untamed feels slightly light in Episode 5, mostly to allow the finale to handle all the big revelations, but it has some nice character depth.
“Terces” feels quite light for a penultimate episode, clearly saving up most of its big revelations and developments for the finale. But on the upside, Episode 5 features more of the character development that the previous instalment was lacking, which, all things considered, is probably Untamed in its most effective mode. Sure, the case is interesting and consistently becoming more so as it goes, but the heart of the story is character depth, and there’s a fair amount of that here, especially with Turner and Jill.
Aside from the progression of one key angle in the case, there isn’t a huge amount going on here. It’s a pretty straightforward penultimate chapter that doesn’t try to play around too much and get too cute for its own good. Instead, it commits to one specific narrative tract and leaves it on a pretty major cliffhanger, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Shutting Down the Mine
After the sting operation at the end of the previous episode, Yosemite’s surprisingly comprehensive underground drug operation is shut down, though it takes Turner and Vasquez raiding the place, shooting a bunch of perps, and arresting the others to put a nail in it. This should be cause for celebration, but not quite.
The operation’s leader, Simon, is keeping quiet, and so is the triggerman who killed Teddy (and probably Abuelo). However, they give enough away to suggest to Turner that they didn’t kill Lucy. Why would they have done? Lucy was an effective mule and seemingly presented no risk to the operation. There’s still more to uncover.
Turner and Vasquez instead work on retracing Lucy’s route in the hopes of uncovering more information about what happened to her. This keeps them busy for a while. Speaking of which…
Circle of Pain
I’ve mentioned it briefly in previous recaps, but the subplot involving Vasquez’s baby father and Gael finally coheres into something meaningful in Untamed Episode 5, leading to a tragic but organic turn.
As she did the previous day, Jill offers to babysit Gael once again, which means that she’s looking after him when his father arrives. He realises Jill is being dishonest, and when he spots Gael, he attempts to take him by force. Turner and Vasquez arrive in time to intervene and seemingly save the day, but it doesn’t quite work out like that.
That night, Turner gets a call directing him to the hospital. Jill has attempted suicide. This feels like an out-of-the-blue development, but it isn’t when you think about it. The clues were all there; Jill stated outright that she wasn’t over Caleb’s death, and it seems like spending all that time with Gael opened those old wounds dangerously deeply. It was Jill’s current husband, Scott, who called Turner, but he also cautions him that this circle of pain needs to close so that both Turner and Jill can heal.
Turner Goes Off the Rails
In his compromised emotional state, and still believing that Maguire is guilty of something, Turner tracks him down and smacks him in front of many witnesses. When Maguire taunts him about Jill – “You should have told her no,” which is a curious thing to say – Turner holds him at gunpoint, earning himself a suspension that Lawrence is all too happy to dole out.
This means that a couple of FBI agents are taking over Lucy’s case. Turner seems satisfied to let it go, except for one crucial piece of evidence he keeps to himself – Lucy’s phone. It’s locked with Face ID, so he heads to the morgue. There, he and the medical examiner use formaldehyde to warm Lucy’s tissue to trick the phone’s biometric scanner into believing she’s alive, something that, to Untamed’s credit, I’ve genuinely never seen before.
Lucy didn’t use the phone as a phone, but simply to record videos of herself. Terces features very briefly in one of them. And Terces is Shane Maguire.
The Hunt Is On
Adding further mystery to proceedings, Turner calls Jill to tell her that he’s going to have to arrest Maguire, and that as a result, he’ll probably reveal everything he knows – “About Sanderson, about everything” – to try and take Turner down in turn. Jill’s okay with this and thinks it perhaps might be for the best.
So, Turner heads out to Maguire’s camp, where he finds some of the drugs marked with an X, virtually confirming that Maguire wasn’t just involved with Lucy, but with the whole drug operation. Suddenly, though, Turner is shot in the gut from a distance. Maguire is, after all, a sniper.
Untamed Episode 5 ends with the ghost of Caleb whispering, “he’s coming”. Just in time for the finale.
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