Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. This is the way the relationship between Kevin Garvey and Nora Durst ends: not with a whimper, but a bang.
A big one, apparently. Sirens-in-the-street big. No-cabs-available big. In the luxurious confines of their personal hell hotel, neither Kevin nor Nora nor we in the audience had any idea it even happened. They were too busy undergoing an emotional apocalypse of their own. As early as the opening credits, we had clues this was coming.
Not that things are going all that great beforehand. The first scene of the episode involves Nora using her government clearance to bypass the standard security line Kevin is forced to go through on his own. When she comes clean to Kevin about the cash and enlists his help in ripping the tape off in the restroom, it leads to the hottest sex scene these two have ever had. But both the smuggling and the sex are a smokescreen, obscuring how little these two tell each other about how they really feel and what they really want.
Nora keeps on describing the quest that brought her down under as a sting, rather than the sincere attempt to figure out if she can follow her Departed children into the great unknown.
She sets off for a hastily arranged rendezvous with the scientists behind the mysterious Departure device almost immediately upon arrival. The paths they take after Nora leaves are very different, yet they share a frightening dream logic not only with each other, but with the hotel-assassin purgatory Kevin found himself in last season. Specific similarities aside, the whole vibe is familiar. A desperate woman shows up out of nowhere and begs Nora to watch her baby so she can go to a job interview.
