The Lodge
Episode 7 of Black Summer Season 2 starts with our trio of survivors making it to the ski lodge. There’s some serious Shining vibes going on here but Rose, Anna and Boone are certainly thankful for the amenities. There are hot showers, propane-powered lights and plenty of food. But are they alone? Rose lets her guard down and gets into the vibe, showering and allowing herself to enjoy these small wins. Anna however, is wound up tighter than a spring and has been through quite the ordeal. She’s not ready to enjoy life just yet, and continues to exhibit concerns over their new lodge. As day turns to night, our wound-up spring shows no signs of uncoiling now. She heads down with her gun toward the ominous sound of banging. It’s a door swinging back and forth, as it turns out. Anna quickly shuts the door and locks it, screaming silently into the window. This, as it turns out, is simply a prelude for what’s to come. Rose awakens in the morning to find Anna gone. She calls out for her from downstairs, sending Rose scrambling down to the main lobby. There, they find Spears standing, holding his stomach. As the group sit and reconvene over dinner, Boone is adamant that there’s no one else inside this lodge. Anna however, is not so sure. Spears doesn’t care though, and he’s just happy to have a roof over his head. He’s also decided against going for the airstrip too. Rose is adamant they should continue on and get a plane out of there. Spears challenges this idea, as Anna chimes back that they should go “somewhere else”. But where else is there? Spears is almost out of time, and his infected wound isn’t getting any better. With Anna unwilling to listen, she heads away from the dinner table and toward one of the rooms where zombies can be heard growling from the other side. There’s obviously some unresolved tensions between the group, especially given Rose abandoned Spears and took off in the past. With Spears dumped in a ditch, he recalls the moments where he was “nearly dead.” and how he’s carrying on now. anna kills Spears in cold-blood off-screen, telling Rose that they’re leaving as the trio head out to the airstrip. As we cut back and see, it was actually Spears who asked her to kill him as an act of mercy.
The Episode Review
Black Summer slows down for a pretty tense and moody chapter, one that leans into the eeriness of this abandoned ski lodge nicely. It also reminds us that no one is safe in this world, and that constant threat that anyone could die at any moment is partly why Black Summer works as well as it does. Sure, the show still has its contrivances and a few annoying characters acting illogically, but to be honest, humanity is pretty stupid in general. There’s a reason Hed Kandi CDs have warning labels advising not to eat them. This slower chapter allows us to turn the attention across to Anna for a change, and lean into the mentally arduous ordeal she’s been forced to deal with all this time. Now though it seems like everyone is heading for the airstrip, where our final episode looks set to explode into action.
