The Returned: 8 Unanswered Questions
We’ve been gripped by The Returned for the last few Sunday evenings — its extremely elusive, noir-esque, very French style has made it possibly our favourite thing that has been on TV this year so far.
But honestly — it’s mind-bending, isn’t it? We never, for one second, dared to think we might know what was going on.
Following last night’s finale, we are still wondering many, many things…
*SPOILERS*
Is Lena dead? If not why is she rotting away? She’s apparently the only ‘living’ character who is. Or, has she recovered? She didn’t seem too pained by the gigantic tear down her spine in yesterday’s finale. Has she taken on some kind of healing power, in the same way the Lucy apparently has? Is it something to do with them both having had sex with the dead? Note that Julie, too, made a ‘miraculous’ recovery after being attacked by Serge seven years previously. Is there something linking the three of them?
What’s with the Victor/Serge shape-shifting/apparent summoning in times of almost-murder? When Julie was attacked in the lobby of her flat, Serge was the one lurking in the shadows. And then he disappeared, suddenly Victor was there to apparently save his ‘angel’- and the next morning the busybody neighbour had killed herself. When Toni was shot whilst alone in the car with Victor, Serge appeared out of nowhere to pull the trigger — but was apparently unable to remember afterwards. And Serge and Victor were children at the same time, remember — when the dam burst in 1977. WHAT could this mean?
Why didn’t they insist on taking Adele and her in-utero zombie baby? Whilst we’re at it, why did they only seem to come for Camille, Victor and Mr Costas’s creepy wife? Why was Serge allowed to stay underground with Toni? Was it because their mother had chosen to stay with them?
Lucy — good or evil? She’s got creepier as the series has gone on, despite spending the vast majority of it in a coma. Where have her powers come from?
Pierre: as above. Seriously, it’s the eyes. And we already know he killed Victor…
Why were there burnt animals in the forest? This website translates some contextual info on the characters from the Les Revenants site, for those of us whose French just isn’t up to scratch. There is talk of people in the town ‘believing anything’ and non-Christian pilgrimages, which would fit in with ritual sacrifice and leads us on to…
Is the devil at work here? The above site includes a newspaper clipping from the first time the dam burst. From it, we learn that a group of residents who were close to the dam when the disaster happened went unaccounted for. Other locals were wary of them, saying they had warned of a ‘flood’ and speculating that they had prayed for it. Also, there were no survivors from a church service that was taking place when the dam burst. “The demon tongue came to carry them all away,” one resident was quoted as saying. “God has abandoned us.”
Did the returned return to warn the living residents that the dam was about to break? It seems miraculous that the entire village was holed up in the Helping Hand, on high ground, when the dam burst. Were the victims of the 1977 disaster ensuring that human catastrophe didn’t happen again?
We know none of these answers. A beautiful piece of television it was, but there is no doubt that The Returned has left us with far more questions than it answered.
Whatever, it’s set itself up for a second series perfectly, and until then we can only speculate.
More French zombie action/confusion will be heading our way in 2014.
Originally published at https://www.thenationalstudent.com.
