The Terror is a 2018 television series about the crew of a Royal Naval expedition searching for the Arctic’s treacherous Northwest Passage who discovers instead a monstrous predator.
After a brutal episode 9 in which we saw a couple fan favorites bite the dust, it was time for the season finale. After last week’s episode, I had high hopes of an action-packed finale in which all of our questions were answered and the show gave us closure, and I must say I was rather disappointed. We’re offered a relative amount of closure in the finale, but it really leaves you (as much of the show does) hoping for more.
The episode starts with a bloodied Crozier (Jared Harris) arriving to Hickey’s (Adam Nagaitis) camp; his mutineers barely able to look at him. Back at Crozier’s camp, Lt. Edward Little (Matthew McNulty) tries to rally the men to rescue their captain, but they vote against it and opt to continue their march, leaving those unable to walk behind. Returning to camp Hickey we find Goodsir (Paul Ready) tending to Crozier’s wounds. Goodsir gives Crozier some haunting advice to not eat him if he’s used for meat, but if he must, then go for the meat on the bottom of his feet. Later that night, Goodsir lathers his body in poison, drinks poison, and then slits his wrists.
The next day, Crozier awakens to see the men already dining on the corpse of Goodsir. Hickey forces Crozier to dine on him as well, to which he takes a sliver off the bottom of the foot. After their meal Hickey puts forth his next plan. He has some men chained to the boat they use for transferring gear dragging him along in it. Other men are armed with rifles and stand guard on the perimeter. When the men come to a stopping point, Hickey proceeds to finally tell them that he actually killed and replaced the real Cornelius Hickey years ago so he could join the voyage with the hope of winding up on an island somewhere.
After his confession, the creature arrives and starts massacring the men. Hickey, whose plan was to become the new shaman for the Tuunbaq, cuts out his tongue and offers it to the creature. His plan fails and the creature promptly rips his body in half. Not long after this, the Tuunbaq perishes from the poison it had ingested from the men it had eaten. Lady Silence (Nive Nielsen) then comes across the slain men and fallen Tuunbaq, and finds Crozier near death. She cuts his hand off to remove the chain from his wrist, and nurses him back to health at camp. Once he is able, they trek on foot to find where his men had made it to, only to find them all dead. After bringing Crozier to the camp of her fellow Eskimo, she disappears in the night because she must now spend her life alone after the Tuunbaq was killed.
Flash forward two years, and the men from the beginning of the first episode have made it to the camp where Crozier is at. He hides from them, advising the Eskimo to tell them that all the men are dead, and there is no passage. Having no one to return to in England, Crozier elects to live out his days with the Eskimo.
All-in-all, the show wrapped up anti-climactically. I was hoping for answers and action, and instead I got an episode that dragged. I could’ve used more background on the Tuunbaq, its relationship with the Eskimo, and some more history about its origins. Just having it pop in every couple of episodes and wreak havoc, while exciting, left me wanting more. The show started off strong, but it felt that once Ciaran Hinds was killed off, it muddled along in the middle episodes. Things picked up again near the end, but then the finale fell flat. I also felt that the flashbacks and cuts to life back in England throughout the show were unnecessary. Nothing noteworthy seemed to come from those parts. I don’t want to sell it short, because I thought the acting was top notch, and it was very interesting learning about the lengths these men would’ve gone to for survival. While I didn’t go into every new episode with the excitement I get from a show like Game of Thrones, by no means do I regret watching the show. For history and naval buffs out there, I imagine this would be right up your alley.