Abhiroop Das
Created by Julie Gearey, Netflix’s ‘Unchosen‘ steps into the Fellowship of the Divine, a mysterious cult where technology is largely forbidden, and all members of the community are forced into a rigid, regressive lifestyle. Rosie, the wife of an up-and-coming member of the cult, is frustrated with life, but finds her share of thrills after the arrival of Sam. Though Sam appears to be as gentle as he is charming, Rosie later learns that he is a fugitive with a particularly dark past that he doesn’t wish to open up about. However, that isn’t enough to stop Sam from not fearing the worst, and when he learns that the police are closing in on him, he takes several drastic measures in self-interest, endangering the lives of many, and nearly repeating the horrors of his past. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Sam Went to Prison at Sixteen After Killing His Girlfriend
In the penultimate episode of ‘Unchosen,’ we learn that Sam was in jail for murdering his girlfriend, Aisling Quinn, in a fit of rage. Sam met her in school at the age of fourteen, and soon fell in love. However, things went wrong in their final year of school, when all the students decided to go on an adventure trip, except for Sam, whose parents didn’t have enough money. When everyone returned, Sam began hearing rumors about Aisling being with someone else, and snapped. Though he claims to Rosie that he invited Aisling to the barn only to talk, his actions from there on do not line up. After Aisling confirmed that the rumors were true and expressed her desire to end the relationship, Sam choked her to death.
After the murder, Sam was arrested and sentenced to several years in prison, where he began self-harming. In his conversation with Rosie, he recalls heating up a broken pen to injure himself on his birthdays, to punish himself for his crime. By the time we catch up with the present, Sam is only a few days from being a free man and is allowed to work at a fish factory as part of the day-release scheme. There, a fellow inmate turns out to be Aisling’s cousin. He recognizes Sam and lunges at him with a knife. In the fight that follows, Sam suffers a serious injury to his hand, but manages to deflect the knife back to the inmate, killing him. Though it is technically an act of self-defense, Sam fears that the police will lock him up once again, and in a state of panic, he flees.
Creator Julie Gearey Confirmed That Sam is More of a Sociopath Than a Psychopath
Though Sam insists that he was just a child who lost his way when he murdered Aisling, later events in the story put things under a new perspective. Desperate to stay out of prison, Sam finds comfort in the closed-off, self-sufficient community of the Fellowship of the Divine, and instead becomes paranoid about any foreign intrusion. To that end, he even kills Adam’s brother, Isaac, and nearly kills Rosie, all to ensure that the police don’t find him. While there is an apparent element of trauma that influences all of his aggressive actions, series creator Julie Gearey has confirmed that Sam has characteristics in line with a sociopath, and that he doesn’t shy away from manipulating others with a string of lies.
In a conversation with Tudum, Gearey asserted that Sam is not an outright psychopath, as that changes his trajectory as a character. “It’s not interesting writing a full psychopath,” she explained, adding that it’s because, “if you have full psychopathy, you cannot change, you cannot grow.” Instead, by adding a layer of emotional vulnerability to Sam, she was able to experiment more with the interpersonal dynamics of the show. Ultimately, Sam ends up becoming a complex character who can simultaneously confess his feelings to Rosie and commit extreme violence with little to no remorse.
In the final episode, the conflict between Rosie and Sam comes to a head when he nearly chokes and drowns her in almost the same fashion as he killed Aisling years ago. However, at the last moment, he stops, rejecting a repeat of his past actions. While actor Fra Free, who essays Sam, likened the scene to something akin to getting through a red mist, he left it up to our imagination as to exactly what causes this change. For Gearey, this moment marks a genuine redemption for the character, as saving Rosie is something he wouldn’t have done at the start of the show. Having had a powerful humanizing experience, Sam becomes a much grayer character, retaining elements of sociopathy even at the end, but still showing signs of growth.
Read More: Is Unchosen Based on a True Story? Is Fellowship of the Divine Based on a Real Cult?
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