‘Cross’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap – Nobody Gets Happily Married

Cross has sometimes given the impression in Season 2 that it thinks its twists are a bit more interesting than they actually are. Not that most of what is revealed in Episode 6 necessarily constitutes a twist, which is kind of the problem. We’ve known for weeks what Rebecca is up to, and why, and I’m not sure almost a full hour of mythological explanation about her tattoo was entirely necessary. Still, “Gather” has an ulterior motive for dispensing this information, since it allows Alex to form a clearer picture of Rebecca’s hit list and, more importantly, figure out who she’s going to go after next. Not that it makes much difference to her victim.

I don’t think this is a bad episode by any means, but it’s functional more than anything else. It does, though, build to a really sweet climax set-piece with great production design and orchestration, and it builds appropriate suspense that Rebecca remains a step ahead. However, now that Cross is on to her strategy, she’s going to have a harder time taking out the final targets — unless, of course, she decides to change things up, which remains to be seen.

La Niña de las Flores

What I do like about “Gather” is how it focuses on the process rather than having Cross haphazardly stumble into leads in a way that doesn’t strictly feel organic. His progression through the evidence here is pretty logical. He gets an idea of the scope of the operation from Senator Ashford, whom Rebecca visited in the previous episode. He’s still reeling from the revelation that his beloved mother was on the take and rolled on multiple Crestbrook Industries cases, protecting the inner circle of billionaire child traffickers. But everyone named in Rebecca’s mother’s lawsuit provides a handy target list, especially since 50% of them are already dead.

From here, Cross uses the story of la Niña de las Flores, which is explained to him by an expert, the art of an obscure set of Loteria cards — explained to him by the same expert — and his memory of Rebecca’s tattoo to figure out that she’s killing her victims in accordance with the legend, which decribes travelling up through ten layers of a volcano and having to defeat the themed demons on each floor. Each demon correlates rather neatly with one of her victims — “The Dog”, “The Healer”, “The Sinner”, etc. — and allows Cross to deduce who’s next.

Her target is “The Architect”, aka Jelani, one of Lance’s rich friends who is due to get married. Earlier, we had seen Rebecca disguised as one of the girls they hired — it’s fortunate she’s good-looking enough to keep blending into these places, isn’t it? — keeping a close eye on the pair, but we assumed she was getting closer to Lance.

Nobody Gets Happily Married

All this detective legwork helps to set up the big finale of Cross Season 2, Episode 6, which takes place at Jelani’s swanky wedding, where Lance is his verbose best man, and Rebecca is hidden among the dancers. Donnie is nearby with a rifle, his injury and the fact that he was identified by Cross forcing him to keep his distance. But he only needs one good hand to pull the trigger.

Cross and Kayla, meanwhile, can’t even get in, since it has been made expressly clear from high that they’re to keep their distance from Durand (earlier, Kayla’s boss, Roy, had also tried to take Alex off the case, rather petulantly in my view). By the time they’ve finished explaining that it’s the groom who’s the real target, Rebecca has sliced Jelani’s throat during the first dance. A rifle shot from Donnie creates enough of a distraction that she’s able to remove three of Jelani’s fingers and make her getaway.

Cross and Kayla finally get into the shindig, but Donnie opens fire a few more times to keep them in cover for long enough that Rebecca can get away. So close, and yet so far.

Kayla Crosses A Line

While Cross is investigating the main case, Kayla and Bobby track down Felicia, the woman whose face Kayla’s was deep-faked over. She was obviously a bit more morally accepting of what was going on in Operation: Bad Religion than Kayla claims to have been, and shows very little remorse about her involvement. She also won’t give away the location of the footage without some incentivising.

Bobby is appalled by these developments on account of his own traumatic military background, and the thought of exploiting servicemen in this way is really abhorrent to him. Still, he believes Kayla was duped. I’m not so sure, though. I’ve discussed this already, but — spoiler alert again, just in case — in the books, Kyle Craig, who Kayla is a genderbent version of, is the Mastermind. If the show is going to follow suit, is this Kayla covering her own tracks?

I only ask since she seems a lot more inclined to torture someone than a run-of-the-mill FBI agent would ordinarily be. Just saying. Either way, she gets the location of the footage out of Felicia.

And Another Thing…

A couple of other notes and observations from Cross Season 2, Episode 6:

• Still no sign of Mateo. Wouldn’t someone be asking questions about this?
• Cross finally gets another scene with Elle, and she tells him that she thinks it’s best that she doesn’t spend so much time around the house, since it’s confusing for her and the kids. This is fair, I think.
• Sampson chases up another name in his mother’s murder case, but the subplot remains a super slow burn. I’m starting to think she’s pretending not to recognise any of the names just so she can spend more time with Sampson.