Diksha Sundriyal
With only two more episodes left in Apple TV+’s ‘Cape Fear,’ things get very bad very fast for the Bowdens, despite their best efforts to get back at Max Cady. The previous episode ended with them planting drugs in his house to send him back to prison. This episode opens with Max getting arrested the next day, but as he is driven away in the back of the police car, he has a smile on his face. And soon, the Bowdens discover the reason behind it. Meanwhile, Zack is in therapy, and it seems he is finally starting to regain some sense of self. However, it will be a long time before he can get back to his normal self. In the meantime, his parents have other pressing matters to deal with. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Bowdens Find Ray Rawlins
Watching Max get arrested puts Tom and Anna at ease, and they start to reminisce about when she was pregnant with Zack and they moved into their current house. Meanwhile, Nat decides to chill by the pool, but when she goes into the water, she finds a box on the floor, inside which is Ray’s cut-up body. A quick look at the CCTV reveals that someone oddly familiar with the family’s security system took down the cameras before breaking into their house and leaving the box in the pool. The detectives ask Tom if he has a 9-millimeter gun in the house and if they can take a look at it just to rule some things out. He complies, but is shocked to discover that a gun has been used. He hides it, knowing how it will look, and hands another gun to the cops.
As soon as the detectives are gone, Tom asks Anna if she opened the safe, because he thinks his gun may have been used to kill Ray. At the same time, Max returns home. It turns out the charges against him didn’t stick because it’s been proven that someone broke into his house and planted the drugs. He teases the Bowdens if someone broke into their house and planted something, too, which led Anna to break down and basically attack him. Tom stops her, but Max continues to poke at them. He leaves after telling Tom that he put Max away for what she did, and now it’s his turn. Tom doesn’t understand what Max means, but his and Anna’s next step is to talk to Nat, who realizes she has made a grave error and decides to keep the trip to North Carolina to herself.
Tom decides to get rid of the gun and tells Anna to talk to her dad. She promptly visits the old man, only to discover that he is tending to the wound inflicted by Max’s dog. Anna tells him it’s time for him to pack up and leave, and when he asks her $100,000 for his troubles, she happily obliges, calling it a bargain if it will permanently get him out of her life. Meanwhile, Max is busy with his new restaurant when he gets a call from Nat, who has a strong suspicion that he used Tom’s gun to kill Ray when they went to North Carolina. He feigns ignorance at the gun part, wonders if it has been proven that Ray was killed in North Carolina, and points out that she would have heard the gunshot if it had happened. That is some compelling argument, but then Max does something that convinces her otherwise.
The Tide Turns Against Tom
When Nat wonders who could have killed Ray, Max points out that her parents will do anything to send him back to prison. Had it been anything else, she likely would have believed him. But this is too extreme, despite her parents’ many flaws. She knows she will never get answers from him, so she goes to the next best option. She visits Naveah in prison and tries to persuade her to reveal what Max is planning next. The only thing that perturbs Naveah is that Max took Nat, who she knows is also Max’s daughter, to North Carolina. Nat tries to push her to answer, first pulling at the thread about how Max doesn’t care about her, and then lashing out and calling her jealous. But it just makes Naveah angrier, who promises to kill Nat.
Anna meets Noa, and after reminiscing about Ray, they turn towards his laptop. Anna remembers that he was trying to tell her something during their last call, prompting her to look into his iCloud, which contains the pictures he took on his trip to NC. Notably, his work phone is still missing. The pictures show that Crystal had been stalking Max, and one of them shows him talking to Naveah, even though he claims he had nothing to do with her. Anna and Tom take these pictures to the cops, but the detective starts questioning them instead. He points out that Tom beat up Ollie, the man who’d previously trespassed in his house. He also points out that Tom hid the fact that he has another 9-millimeter, which he didn’t surrender to the cops.
Tom claims the gun went bad years ago, and he threw it away, but the detective is not convinced. Even as Tom and Anna are out the door, he asks Tom whether he killed Ray, which incenses Tom. This, however, also confirms that Max is actively trying to frame him, which leads the Bowdens to wonder what else the cops may have that they can use as evidence. Later, while going through Crystal’s photos, Tom notices a picture of Max and Anna kissing. When he confronts her, she tries to dismiss it as Max’s attempt to assault her, which she stopped then and there. He asks her what the history between them really is and why Max said he was put away for what Anna did. While Anna tries to evade the question, Nat comes home and, this time, tells them about the trip, especially after her parents mention that Ray had been to North Carolina on his last day.
Anna Admits the Truth About Her Relationship With Max
Right as Nat starts talking about the gun and her trip with Max, the cops show up at the Bowdens’ door. They arrested Tom, claiming that he had tried to frame Max, and when Ray found out about it, he killed the guy. It turns out the cops reached this conclusion because Anna’s father came forward and twisted the narrative in Max’s favor. Later, Anna visits Tom in prison to talk about future strategy. Instead, he asks her point-blank if Nat is Max’s daughter. When Anna says she doesn’t know, Tom becomes furious, accusing her of making him complicit in her wrongdoings by manipulating her, and tells her to get out of his sight. She points out that this is what Max wants, but Tom doesn’t seem to care.
Anna returns home with a bottle of alcohol and breaks her 17-year-long sobriety. When Nat finds her drinking, she steps in and gives her mom a coffee instead. The duo finally has a heart-to-heart about Anna’s past. She reveals that she met Max when he came to her for help regarding his missing wife. At the time, Anna was engaged to Paul, but she was also in a very bad place. She used to have blackouts that lasted for hours and even weekends. So, when she met the charming Max, she was easily seduced by him. One night, they went out for a drink, which turned into many drinks. They spent the night together, but Anna has no idea what happened.
Anna felt ashamed of it because this wasn’t the first time she’d slept with someone like that. So, when Max was arrested, and she discovered she was pregnant, she felt a debilitating sense of shame. Eventually, she pulled herself together, got sober, married Tom, and buried that shame deep inside, along with burying Max. Nat wonders what her mom means by “burying Max,” but Anna deflects again. When her daughter assures her everything will be alright, she says that it won’t end until Max has killed them or they have killed him. After putting Anna to bed, Nat slips into Max’s house. Right before her arrival, he has a splitting headache, which leads him to hallucinate his dead wife and unborn son. But his mind clears up when he sees Nat walking into the room.
Nat Makes a Grave Mistake
Nat pulls a gun on Max, confronting him to tell the truth. At first, he tries to calm her down, knowing she cannot shoot him. But then, he points her run at his stomach and tells her to shoot it and finish the whole thing and save her parents. His coaxing works, and she does end up pulling the trigger. By the time Anna wakes up, the cops are already at Max’s house, putting Nat in handcuffs and taking her to prison. Anna is horrified to see her daughter taken away and even tries to take the blame on herself. Later, she visits Max in the hospital and proposes that they’ll tell the cops she shot him, not Nat. But Max doesn’t care for it. This is what he always wanted, for Anna to feel his pain, which prompts her to point out that she is not the one who killed his wife; he did.
Before leaving, she threatens to destroy him, though Max can do nothing but laugh at her. She returns to an empty home, but one look at her family picture leads her to review Crystal’s pictures again. She finds the boat where Max’s stepsister had been staying and decides to visit her and find out what Max was trying to hide by killing Ray. Meanwhile, Tom does pushups in prison, preparing himself for the fight ahead; Zack hallucinates Adam and promptly takes his meds; and Nat realizes she is in the same prison as Naveah, who might come through on her promise after all.
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