‘Memory of a Killer’ Episode 8 Recap – The Ferryman Finally Unmasked

So, Memory of a Killer has finally revealed its season-long mystery, and more importantly, supplied a pretty relatable motivation for why the Ferryman has had such a bee in their bonnet about Angelo. My working theory was that it was Dutch, but that would have probably been too obvious and boring, so kudos where they’re due – Episode 8 takes the more interesting option, and also delivers, almost as an afterthought, some of the best character drama we’ve seen thus far. On balance, “Tailored by Fabroni” has to be considered the stand-out outing of the season.

But there are still two episodes left. With nothing more to reveal, things are now going to come down to the pieces all slotting neatly together. There’s a sense of the board being cleared, or at least tidied up, with the big revelation, and a natural endpoint for Dave and Maria’s tender romance and Dave’s investigation into Henry Bloch’s killer leading him directly to Angelo’s doorstep. Now, it’s just a simple matter of whether Angelo can keep himself and his family safe from the Ferryman before his mind fails him.

While Angelo is busying himself with these big overarching subplots, poor Joe is left to handle the week’s obligatory assassination, this one to off a Ponzi schemer by infiltrating a high-stakes penthouse poker game and charming the target’s wife. I’ve enjoyed Joe’s characterisation thus far, and this subplot is very much a natural mile marker for it, since it’s the point that Joe is given the responsibility he was looking for… but can’t quite cross the moral line of committing murder for money. He has to call Angelo to finish the job instead.

I like this. It’s good development. Joe’s arc has logically led him to this point, but he realises that he’s not the main character; he’s tech support, and he’s fine with that. Perhaps not being like Angelo is a good thing. It certainly creates fewer enemies, which brings us neatly to the Ferryman.

“Tailored by Fabroni” unveils the Ferryman’s identity gradually, through a series of clues. To be fair, I think it becomes obvious who it is a bit too early, killing some of the drama in the “official” reveal, but we’ll get to that. In the meantime, Joe puts his actual skill-set to use in finding an address with direct links to the Ferryman, and Angelo follows it to the home of Dr. Parks, whose assassination Angelo was trying to figure out in the previous episode. His widow is running a bereavement support group, and Angelo poses as a mourner to infiltrate, though not without irony, given the loss of his own wife.

This is clue number one, though it isn’t immediately obvious how it fits with everything else. That comes later, when Agent Grant is spending some time with her granddaughter. She takes her to the grave of her father, who turns out to be, of course, Dr. Parks. At this point, things are fairly obvious. Grant was Parks’s mother and is trying to hunt down his killer for revenge’s sake. A later flashback to Parks’ wake – in the same house where his wife is now running the bereavement group in a nice spot of mirroring – shows Grant comforting her granddaughter as she plays with her late father’s favourite dolls, all depicting cutesy versions of figures from Greek mythology. His favourite was Charon, the Ferryman. It’s unsubtle, but it plays well in the moment.

Elsewhere in Memory of a Killer Episode 8, Dave is struggling on two fronts. One is romantically. All the time he is spending with Maria has made him contemplative, and he decides that now is the time to confess that he has always loved her and was simply waiting for her to realise she loved him too and come home to him. She did that, in a roundabout sense, but she also brought Jeff with her, which makes the situation quite a lot more complicated.

Maria feels the same, or at least similarly. And when Jeff realises she hasn’t been going to yoga classes as she claimed, she’s forced to very directly confront the idea of choosing between the two. There’s a bit of a fake-out here where it seems like Maria has chosen Dave, since she confesses to feeling the same way and even gives him a quick smooch, but it’s really the opposite. This is goodbye. Abandoning her life with Jeff to be with him wouldn’t be fair to anyone.

Dave takes this as well as could be expected, but to be fair, there are other things on his mind. Namely, all the clues revolving around the Fabroni jacket have made it expressly clear that his old pal Angelo murdered Henry Bloch. So, Dave has a decision of his own to make. Does he bring Angelo, Maria’s father, in, or does he look the other way? He chooses the latter. He makes it pretty clear that he knows Angelo is guilty, but also surmises that he thinks Bloch’s killer was a good man who did the wrong thing for the right reasons. If only he knew about the other murders!

Dave also tips Angelo off about Grant being dogged, and Angelo, thinking back to their previous encounters – with a surprisingly adroit memory, given the circumstances, but let’s not nitpick – seems to put the pieces together and realise she’s the Ferryman. A confrontation is inevitable. But for now, it remains refreshingly unclear how it might all shake out.