Who's Gonna Get Possessed?

WARNING: Major Exorcist 1 and Season 2 spoilers below!!!!








A few days ago I mentioned that I might want to write a NOT-spoiler-free Exorcist post, but I didn't know if I'd soon be over the show.

Well, I'm not over the show yet.  In fact, yesterday I ended up watching a bunch of clips from it.

I'm still in love with the show.

I still want to talk about it.

When we started watching this season, Tim and I kept trying to guess who'd be the main demonic-possession victim this season.  I think this whole guessing thing is a feature of the show.

It started last season, because there was a bit of a twist. They lead you to believe it's Kat, the older daughter (Brianne Howey), because that's what her mother (Geena Davis) believes when she seeks priestly assistance.  Kat's been a bit moody.  Her younger sister Cassie (Hannah Kasulka) in contrast is a cheerful, friendly girl.

It ends up that it's Cassie who has gained a newfound talent in spider-walking.

Tim and I expected a similar surprise this season.

The impressive thing is, even with knowing there'd be a surprise, we were still surprised.

There are six kids in season two.  Each of them is endearing in some ways, and each had some worrisome moments/aspects.

Tim guessed that the youngest child Grace (Amelie Eve) would become the victim. Grace is sweet, shy, agoraphobic, and very needy.  It would be beautifully tragic for her to become a victim.  I argued against it, though...only for practical purposes. I thought it would be too much of a pain to put such a young child through all the grueling demonic make-up and special effects.

My main vote went to Verity (Brianna Hildebrand). Like all the kids, she has some moments where her behavior is somewhat frightening.  So I thought she might be becoming demonized.  But mostly I voted for her, because out of all the kids, her name was highest in the credits. I figured that meant she'd be extra important to the story.

At one point, I think Tim started to believe Harper (Beatrice Kitsos) would be the victim. I didn't want that to happen. I thought it would be overly far-fetched. Poor Harper was already a victim of a faked demonic possession, because her mother did a Munchausen-by-proxy demon-style. The poor kid goes from a faked demon situation in her original home to a real one in her foster home.  I might have to do another whole separate post about her...someday.  But no. Harper isn't the one who gets  possessed.

It ended up being NOT one of the kids.  It's Andy, the foster dad (John Cho). He's the one who gets demonized.

I'm not sure why we assumed it would be one of the kids and not him.

That was one of the big twists of the show, and it was heavily tied into the other twist. Sweet little Grace isn't the victim of the demon. She IS the demon.  In Sixth Sense style, we learn that she is invisible to everyone but Andy.

The pathetic thing is, Tim and I failed to grasp this piece of information. We had to be hit over the head with it.

Tim sort of has an excuse. I think he was busy reading on his phone when we watched the ending of "One For Sorrow".  So he was probably giving the show only his partial attention.

The show had my FULL attention, and I still missed the reveal.

What happens is Andy climbs up the stairs to the attic and visits Grace in her cute little girly bedroom.

Then Verity climbs the same stairs later, enters the same room, and sees a disgusting, rundown, abandoned art room with rotting food on the floor.  For some reason, I didn't realize it was the same room.

I'm actually sitting here confused about Tim, though. I think maybe he did say he knew it was the same room.  Did he know it was the same room but still didn't pick up on the reveal?  Was he reading something super interesting on his phone and was too distracted to realize something huge was being revealed. Or did he see the reveal, assumed I saw it, and just didn't want to say anything the next day,...out of politeness?

In the beginning of the next episode, "There But For the Grace of God, Go I", we see Andy's realization that Grace isn't a real foster child—that she's something only he can see.  I remarked to Tim that it was quite unique to have a twist like that in the beginning of the episode rather than the end. It wasn't until we finished watching the episode, and I looked on IMDb, that I saw I (we?) had missed something the night before. I had wanted to see reviewers talking about the twist, and no one did. Then I happened to look at reviews of the past episode, and I saw people talking about the attic room surprise there.

You know...when I was at the neurologist, he asked me if I've been confused. Maybe I should have mentioned that Exorcist episode. And now I'm also confused about Tim and his thoughts about the episode.




How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts