Reviews
[TV Review] “The Returned” Episode 1.07: ‘Rowan’
This week on The Returned, we actually got a cliffhanger ending! In all seriousness, though, “Rowan” was another solid, if unremarkable episode of the series that still hasn’t done much to help itself stand apart from its source material. Yes, different things are starting to happen, but it just can’t seem to step out of Les Revenants’ shadow. Does that make it a bad episode, though? Not necessarily.
Simon
All of a sudden, Tommy installing security camera’s in Rowan’s house seems infinitely less creepy, since it was revealed that Rowan tried to kill herself a year ago. Winstead continues to get the best material in The Returned, as she has to go through a wide range of emotions throughout each episode she’s in. This one was no exception. After seeing Rowan lose all hope in the first scene, we see her anger gradually build as she realizes all of the wasted years she spent mourning Simon, a man who bailed on her and her unborn daughter on their wedding day.
Speaking of Simon, he still thinks that he has a shot at a life with Rowan and Chloe. After attempting to plot with Chloe (probably not the best idea), he just shows up at Rowan’s house, with the cops waiting. It is at this point we get the series’ most cathartic moment yet: Rowan confronts Simon about his suicide. Sadly, Simon doesn’t remember killing himself (or at least he claims he doesn’t). After trying to console her, Tommy shoots him. It’s a shocking way to end the episode, to be sure, but it’s highly doubtful that Simon is dead (again).
Camille
Camille’s story seems to be mirroring her Les Revenants counterpart exactly. After Ben exhumes her grave and discovers nothing but water in her coffin, he is brought to the police station and interrogated by Tommy. This of course leads him to Camille, Claire, Peter and Jack (who still don’t seem to care about where Lena is). In an effort to beat Tommy to the punch, they hold a meeting with the parents of the other dead bus crash children and reveal Camille.
It’s good to see revelations being made on the Camille front, considering she is the character we have spent the most time with this season. It doesn’t do much good to have her cooped up in a house and pretending to be fake cousin Alice. There is arguably something sick and twisted about Camille lying to the other parents about her communications with their dead children, thought anyone who watched Les Revenants undoubtedly knows that already.
Adam
In the biggest departure from Les Revenants, Lena finds Lucy’s necklace in Adam’s shed and (finally) puts two and two together. After trying to escape, it’s Tony of all people who freaks out and brings her back into the house and ties her up. This is an interesting move for The Returned, as it seems to suggest that Tony might be unhinged enough to murder someone else in order to repair his relationship with his brother. On top of this, when Adam returns and finds Lena tied up, he lets her go after telling Adam that he has been healed since coming back.
This switch is compelling, to say the least. What if Adam was cured of his mental illness after being brought back from the dead? Tony (rightly) brings up that he stabbed Lucy, but Adam dismisses that argument by stating he was out of it since he had just returned. I’m very intrigued to see where this goes in the final three episodes of the season.
Victor
Victor actually spoke tonight! It appears as if he is content to speak to other children (in this case Rowan’s daughter Chloe). He didn’t have much to do tonight, other than watch Nikki and Julie rekindle their romance and make out a lot (and I mean a lot), but he did get that brief moment of dialogue, which was kind of worth it.
Random Notes
- “Six years? Holy shit!” -Rowan, on realizing how long she’s been in therapy.
- After Adam lets Lena go, she runs into the street and pulls over an 18-wheeler to hitch a ride. Surely nothing bad can happen from that, can it?
- Oh, Helen. Dear, sweet Helen. You’re going to blow up the dam, aren’t you?
- The promo for next week’s episode, titled “Claire:”
Reviews
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Review: Michael Sarnoski’s Ultra-Violent, Dark Subversion of Legend
Myth gets brutally dispatched in The Death of Robin Hood, A Quiet Place: Day One filmmaker Michael Sarnoski‘s dark, loose adaptation of the 17th-century ballad Robin Hood’s Death. The 13th-century outlaw gets a gritty makeover in a subversion of his legendary heroics, forcing a reckoning as Robin Hood seeks peace and death in his final days. Sarnoski’s deconstruction of popularized myth comes forged in shocking violence and poignant introspection, yielding another deeply affecting story of meeting death on your own terms.
The Death of Robin Hood bypasses rehashing the origins of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, instead introducing a grizzled brute who opens the film with a ruthless culling of a young girl seeking vengeance against the outlaw. It’s a downright gentle introduction to Hugh Jackson’s Robin, who only escalates the jaw-dropping carnage when reunited with righthand Little John (Bill Skarsgård) as they seek to reclaim Little John’s home and family from vengeance seekers. These early sequences set up a stark contrast to the Disney-fied legends; Robin Hood’s heroics have been grossly exaggerated compared to the blood debts his violent exploits have racked up over the decades, which in turn have made him a hunted man spanning generations.
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
Grave injuries from battle lands Robin on a remote island priory under the care of Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer, 28 Years Later), where the strange, idyllic community, an enigmatic leper (Murray Bartlett), and a traumatized young girl, Margaret (Faith Delaney), force him to confront his legacy.
Sarnoski, who writes and directs, makes the hero the villain in his adaptation, ensuring a deeply rewarding character arc. At every point in the film, Robin is openly, often actively, seeking death. The stroke of poetic beauty here is that his view of a worthy death seismically shifts from beginning to end. What’s a hero’s death? That answer deepens and evolves along with its “hero” in his waning years. All the impressive survival instincts and battle savagery can’t outmatch or outrun endless cycles of death and loss, after all, despite Robin’s attempts to shrug off his own myth over the years.
Those cycles of violence loom large as a constant threat as the aged outlaw finds himself surrounded by those directly impacted by his past. It breeds conflict, external and internal, reflected in tense encounters and tenuous alliances that let Robin’s humanity slowly slip through his hardened survivor’s shell. It’s the type of role with just enough similarities that’ll draw inevitable comparisons to Hugh Jackman’s stellar work on Logan, but the tenured actor quickly sets the emotionally and morally complex Robin apart, whose primal ruthlessness belies a surprising capacity for aching empathy.
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
While it’s Robin’s relationship with Sister Brigid that drives his final story to its soulful conclusion, it’s the unexpected friendship between the outlaw and the cautious Leper that has the greatest impact. A quiet conversation between the pair comes barbed with soul-shattering revelations, one that irrevocably alters Robin’s outlook while serving as one of the bolder myth revisions. Still, it’s Comer’s quiet heartbreak that yields the film’s biggest devastation.
Sarnoski depicts medieval life for all its cruelty and filth. Death is not remotely gentle in the 13th century; it’s downright nasty and vicious. Cinematographer Pat Scola captures it with startlingly dark realism and grit, but so, too, the breathtaking Northern Ireland landscape that provides this intimate tale with the scale of a sprawling epic.
The Death of Robin Hood removes the simple binary of heroes and villains, combining both into a complicated interrogation of myth itself. But the biggest magic feat is its demonstration of how myth-making and storytelling can heal even the most grievous wounds, and even provide peace if earned.
The Death of Robin Hood releases in theaters on June 19, 2026.
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