Prelude
Episode 2 of Black Summer Season 2 begins with ominous sirens wailing in the distance. A bag is hastily packed, supplies grabbed, and preparations made to try and survive. Zombies begin to swarm nearby, forcing Officer Ray into his bedroom. He shuts the door and grabs hidden supplies from a compartment. With a bright red coat and emphasis on him dropping his wedding ring on the dresser, he prepares to fight. Elsewhere, Anna manages to find respite in a department store with two men who let her in. She wastes absolutely no time heading straight for the back door, letting Rose, Spears and Sun in to turn the tables. They grab what supplies they need and continue on. The quartet manage to find a car with a zombie attached to the front but they don’t bother killing it. Instead, they head out and notice a plane fly overhead. This is soon accompanied by a military convoy, which drives straight for our group and splits them up. After a really tense encounter inside an abandoned house, the group manage to evade their captors. Only, Spears winds up hurt, leading Sun to give herself up and save Spears, pushing him down a hill. That militia leader? It happens to be Officer Ray from the start of this episode. Speaking of which, remember the guy being chased by a zombie and shot dead by Rose last episode? Well, we see him up in the blizzard, hiding out inside an upturned ambulance. It doesn’t take long before he’s on the move though, although Spears too is up and mobile. He’s made it a good distance too but a figure on the horizon forces him to keep moving. Blood staining his coat from the earlier skirmish, Spears stumbles through the snow while this man stalks him from afar. The cold is the real killer here, and it doesn’t take long for Spears to grab a pair of gloves from freezing zombies on the ground before soldiering on. Meanwhile, Anna and Rose find the secluded house and make their way there. Of course, they’re quick to draw the attention of a stray zombie with a sniper shot… that completely misses. They’re lucky actually that this zombie is so stupid, completely failing to see Anna and Rose running to the house. Luckily they’re let in by a whole host of survivors – including Freddie.
The Episode Review
The second episode of Black Summer takes us back to the moments leading up to the ambush out in the frozen tundra. Seeing how our characters – both new and old – have managed to reach this point is a good inclusion and the show does a pretty good job with that. The timeline is still distorted and jumps around a lot, but that is one of the unique hallmarks with Black Summer. The absolute ridiculousness of Anna and Rose outside though is probably the biggest frustration here. The rogue sniper shot and subsequent running is pure idiotic behaviour and to be honest, Rose could have probably got another shot away before getting up and running. Even better still, the duo could have at least taken up a better position rather than one that left them so exposed. Then again, if they’re hungry and tied then that could be a valid reason why. Despite that though, Black Summer continues to deliver compelling drama and some of the sequences here are definitely tense – including the pitch black flurry of scenes in the snow and evading the soldiers in the house. With all the pieces starting to slot into place, it seems like the next episodes are going to keep us in this past timeline, leading up to the events that shook the first episode. Quite who will survive and die however, remains a mystery.
