Teleportation
Episode 5 of The Stranded begins with May and Kraam awakening on their thin slice of the island together, despite her still being in a relationship with Anan. This will inevitably cause drama ahead but for now, she tells him to give her some time to make her choice. When May returns to the cabin, she finds Jack dead and Jan holding his lifeless body. The students weep for their lost, especially Krit, while Professor Lin watches on mysteriously from afar. In the past, we see May’s upbringing and pleasing her Instagram followers with an expensive dress. As another montage kicks in, Kraam finds himself torn over what to do with May in the present as a storm appears to be fast approaching the island. When Anan heads back to his room, he finds Professor Lin sitting in the dark smoking. She startles him and goes on to implore him to call off the plan to set sail or something bad will happen. On the beach the next day, Anan ignores her pleas and instead begins going through names of people able to board the boat. In private, Lin approaches Krit and tells him she knows about what he did. Promising to open an investigation if they make it back to the mainland, she hints at him to sabotage the plan. As we cut back to the shore, Arisa’s name is the final one to be read out, leading the group to be split over whether she should be allowed to go or not. After a close encounter with Nahm and Ying, Professor Lin heads into the jungle where she’s followed closely before she suddenly teleports behind the two students. Losing the two girls and clutching a suitcase, Lin hurries on before approaching the burning lagoon and throwing the audio player into the water. In the middle of the night, Krit is caught trying to burn the boat by Kraam. It’s here he admits to killing Jack and how Professor Lin convinced him to burn their one route off the island. Thankfully he decides not to follow through, sinking to his knees in anguish, before heading back and admitting the truth to Jan about what happened. Heading out to find Arisa, two of the students find the orange crosses on the trees and begin following her while another soundwave forces Kraam back into the dream-world again after falling off the mast of the boat. As he begins to explore further into this world, he’s woken up by the other students who all begin discussing the sound. However, Jan arrives and tells everyone that Krit killed Jack. Despite Jack asking for the pills in an assisted suicide, Jan makes Krit out to be a murderer and ultimately this turns all the students against him, demanding he be punished for his actions. While the group grab Krit and prepare to hurt him, Kraam finds clues linking back to his own childhood. As an angry mob descend on Krit, the two boys wake up to find themselves hovering over the ravine Arisa finds herself trapped in. With another cliffhanger ending and yet more questions coming to the foreground, The Stranded adds some late drama to the fold with the situation involving Krit. While I understand why Jan was angry, I’m not entirely sure I buy every student suddenly taking up pitchforks and lusting for blood, especially after how long they’ve been on the island and kept a level-head for. This brings us round nicely to the question of teleportation and the jungle itself. What is the power of the jungle? What exactly is Professor Lin? With two more episodes to go, it seems obvious now that The Stranded will leave things on a cliffhanger at the end but whether it’ll answer any of its raised questions remains to be seen.
