Diksha Sundriyal
The true extent of Max Cady’s nefarious plans starts to come to light in the seventh episode of Apple TV+’s ‘Cape Fear.’ The previous episode ended with the Bowdens discovering that Naveah had been hiding in their walls all this time. While they try to hold her down, Zack walks across the street to Max’s house. As they sit in front of one another, Zack talks to Max about going fishing together, and Max is happy to oblige. It turns out the youngest Bowden believes Max is his father, and he even calls him “dad” when his real father, Tom, shows up to take him away. The former prosecutor’s effort to take his son back home turns violent when Max tells him Zack is not his son anymore. When Tom beats Max to a pulp, Zack stabs him in the back because he wants to save his father. By the end of the episode, he is not the only Bowden child to believe they are Max’s. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Tom and Anna Lose Zack to Max
As the cops arrive on the scene, Naveah is taken away, and she and Max smile at each other, signaling that their plan has worked. The next morning, Ray and Noa are at the Bowden house. He reveals that he has found Val, while she apologizes for not having trusted Anna before and for letting Max get too deeply involved in her organization. While the Bowdens are eager to take action against Max, Noa tells them they need to do everything right to make sure it doesn’t come back on them. It is decided that Ray will look into the mysterious masked lady. Meanwhile, Nat is sent to Paul’s place, where she voices her doubts about Tom being her real father. When Paul doesn’t assure her that he himself is her father, she is infuriated and leaves the house, turning off her location.
Tom and Anna try to meet Zack, who is now in a psych ward. The doctor tells them that he has been heavily dosed with a drug that basically brainwashes people. Since they have no idea how much of it has been given to Zack, they don’t know if he can be treated and brought back to normal. In a worst-case scenario, he could have permanent psychosis. Tom and Anna are horrified at this revelation. At the car, he tells her about the dream about his parents telling him his brother is going to die in a car crash, but they couldn’t do anything about it, only for his brother to turn out to be his son. Anna feels his helplessness, but she is distracted when Nat calls her. She is drunk, looking at old pictures of her mom and trying to get to the bottom of the truth about her parentage.
When she doesn’t get a straight answer from her mother, she goes to the other person who had offered it to her in the first place. Max comes to her door with Peanut Butter, saying how the cat keeps wandering into his home. He is almost off the porch when Nat opens the door. When the part about Naveah comes up, he shows her their texts, convincing her that he had nothing to do with the girl’s actions and had even tried to dissuade her from targeting the Bowdens. This prompts Nat to ask him a question, but he says he is in a hurry and leaves, knowing she will follow him. She puts a gun in her bag before leaving, while he injects a sedative into the peach that he will later innocently offer to her. As she gets in the car, she tells him she has shared her location with a friend, just in case. He doesn’t seem too bothered by it, and off they go.
Max Comes Home
As the conversation turns to Anna, Max reveals that he and Nat’s mother had been close while his wife was still missing. At the time, they both thought she had left him. But then, her body was found, he was arrested, and something shifted between him and Anna. When Nat notices they are leaving town, she wonders if Max is kidnapping her, but he points out that she is the one who got into his car. He offers to drop her off at a bus station, but she refuses. He reveals that he is going to visit his parents at the place where he grew up. His childhood wasn’t very happy, as his father would put him in a dog cage if he didn’t speak English. Before Nat can fully sympathize with him about it, he has a splitting headache, and Nat hastily takes the wheel so they don’t crash.
She manages to park the car and gives him the meds that help him. He reveals this is the result of the attack he suffered in prison, and because Tom beat him up last night, things have gotten bad. He hands her the wheel because he needs to rest. As they enter the town of Cape Fear, he tells her how he was baptized in the river. He was afraid of the water because he couldn’t swim, but when he came out of it, he felt like a new man. They finally reach his parents’ house, and he tells her to stay back. She is distracted by the sounds of dogs in cages and is happily petting one when a strange boy shows up and tells her to back away. Before she leaves, he asks her if he can kiss her. She is weirded out and leaves to find Max.
Meanwhile, Max meets his father, who is resting on the porch. When he looks at Max’s face, he is happy that someone showed him his place. Max is visibly scared, though he tries not to show it. Clearly, his father still has a hold on him. When he asks about Crystal, the old man refuses to give him anything. Then Nat comes looking for him, and Max’s stepmother steps out as well. She mistakes Nat for Anna and starts saying she always had her eyes on Max. While her husband tries to shut her up, she tells Max to stay away from Crystal, who is doing so much better now and is living by the river. Unbeknownst to her, she has given Max exactly what he wanted. As he leaves, his father promptly calls Crystal to warn her.
Nat Comes to a Shocking Conclusion
Meanwhile, Ray tracks down Val, who turns out to be the owner of the car that followed Anna and Max to Macon, but not the driver. The woman reveals that she sold the car to Crystal Cady, who is Max’s sister. She has been in and out of clinics and has had a very turbulent life. She points him in the direction of her current address, and Ray heads there, without knowing that Max Cady is coming there as well. Inside the boat, there is no sign of Crystal, though it’s clear she had been around not too long ago. He finds pictures of Max all over her table and takes one. He also calls Anna to tell her about finding Max’s half-sister, but the signal is weak, so he leaves the rest of his findings for later.
Before they set out, Max gives the peach, and as expected, she goes to sleep for the rest of the journey. He also notices the gun in her bag, though he doesn’t react to it at the time. When he arrives at the place, he finds Ray coming out of the boat. Both are surprised to see each other there, but Ray tries to wind things down and tells Max to learn the art of letting go. As he heads towards his car, he notices Nat unconscious in the car, but before he can say or do anything, Max quickly puts a few bullets in him. Nat wakes up only when he slams the trunk, though it is still unclear what he really did with the body. Nat is surprised by her surroundings and takes a minute to get her bearings, then reveals what she has concluded from today’s events.
When she looks at the timeline of Anna and Max’s relationship, she notes that she was born nine months after he went to prison. This means Max is her real father, and he doesn’t dispute it. (However, knowing him, it is fair to say that this could be just another part of his plan to mess with the Bowdens, and he isn’t really her father.) He says he didn’t contact her from prison because he didn’t want her to see him as a murderer. The revelation hits her hard, and she goes into the river, at the same point where Max was likely baptized all those years ago. He puts her in the water, but when she comes out, she says she doesn’t feel any different. And he says, it’s because she is exactly who she was always meant to be.
Anna and Tom Make Their Move
It gets dark by the time they are back home. Nat scoffs at the fact that her mother never took the paternity test. Max pulls a hair from his beard and gives it to Nat so she can get the test done herself. When she gets out of the car, he hands her the bag, faking shock and a little disappointment at finding that she was carrying a gun all along. At the house, Anna and Tom have no idea their daughter is out with Max. They are angry about what happened with Zack and are ready to do whatever it takes to send him back to prison. Tom talks about planting the vials they found in Naveah’s bag in Max’s house.
They could call on the anonymous tipline, and once the cops found the drugs, they would connect Naveah to Max, since the girl hasn’t said anything to implicate her father so far. While Anna thinks they need to do this, she tells Tom that they should get someone else to do the job. She calls her father, who is surprised and happy that his daughter is finally ready to talk to him. However, he is a bit perturbed when he finds out what she wants him to do. He has barely gotten his life back together and is not keen to throw it away, but he also wants to be back in his daughter’s good graces, so he agrees.
The condition is that he gets to have dinner with her once a month and see his grandchildren. Anna is not ready to let him near her children, but has to agree to the terms to get the job done. Later in the evening, when Nat enters the house, they are surprised to see her. She says she didn’t want to be at Paul’s, so she took an Uber home, and they don’t question it any further. With absolutely no idea of what has transpired with their daughter and Ray, they place the anonymous tip and wait for the cops to arrive.
Read More: Does Javier Bardem Have Tattoos in Real Life? Did He Wear a Lens in Cape Fear?
You must be logged in to post a comment.