“SCREAM: THE TV SERIES,” EPISODE 2.10 – THE VANISHING
[WARNING: ALL MAJOR EPISODE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW]
INTRO: We pick up where last week ended… with Hayley’s dead body being discovered as well as Piper’s dead body. Maggie is beginning the autopsy on Piper’s body, with Sheriff Acosta telling her she doesn’t have to do this since Piper is actually her daughter. She goes forth anyway. She notes that injuries to the body are inconsistent with the time of death and there’s even stitches in the body. Sheriff Acosta asks if Piper survived the lake incident after all, but Maggie thinks that someone actually look Piper out of her watery grave and kept her preserved in a freezer until they needed to whip her out. Maggie cuts open the stitches to look inside and finds a pigs heart sown into Piper’s lower abdomen. Someone really went to town here.
AMA: Now that it’s very obvious that Ghostface is after Emma and Audrey, the girls decide to meet up in Audrey’s room to hatch out their differences so they can work together in peace. Emma wants to know the real reason why Audrey brought Piper to Lakewood and why she didn’t say anything when Emma suspected the killer could be her long lost half sibling. Audrey reveals that she was with Piper the night Rachel died, so she didn’t think it could have been her, especially since she and Piper had become close enough to be considered friends. She also brought Piper to Lakewood because she was looking to do a Brandon James documentary and who better to interview than his own long lost daughter, Emma was only collateral damage.
Other Alliances: At the police station, Sheriff Acosta is still investigating Hayley’s death when Maggie hands over her final notes on Piper’s autopsy. They go in his office and Acosta is pretty stressed that he still can’t find Gustavo. He’s also stressed because he thinks the current murders have something to do with him and Maggie, noting that the pig’s heart is a direct connection to something they did in the past. We get a flashback of young Gustavo in his bedroom one night when Maggie comes to his window and knocks on it. He looks outside to see Brandon James huddled next to a tree and that’s where the flashback ends. Acosta becomes suspicious that Brandon told Piper “what they did” and Piper told someone else.
Dumbass: Noah calls Zoe’s cell phone when he sees that she never showed up for class. She immediately texts him back saying she took the day off and to cut class and meet her at the lake. He goes and she’s no where to be found, but she starts sending him text messages leading him into the adjacent woods in a scavenger hunt. When he’s almost found her, Ghostface calls and says that now that Noah and Zoe had sex, they’ve broken one of the big rules and now they’re on the chopping block. Noah tries to get away, but Ghostface sneaks up behind him and stabs him in the stomach before knocking him unconscious. Sometime later, Noah wakes up inside a coffin with a camera recording him and he realizes he’s been buried alive with his death being live streamed to whoever Ghostface sends it to. He can hear screaming in a coffin next to him and realizes that Zoe has been captured, too.
Thelma and Louise: Emma and Audrey realize that Noah skipped class and almost if on cue Ghostface sends them text messages containing links to the live stream of Noah in the coffin. He even goes as far as to call them his Final Girls. He tells them that Noah has about five hours of air left and if they follow the clues, maybe they can send him in time. And no cops are to be called or he’ll kill Noah instantly. On their way to Noah’s house to get the first clue, Emma wants to call the cops, but Audrey tells her they can’t because they have to play the game. She tried to go to the cops about Jake, but Ghostface killed Eddy to prove that he was serious. The first clue is hidden behind Noah’s murder board, a flower, which Audrey realizes is from the first place she and Emma met. They head out in search of clue #2 but not before Emma finds one of Audrey’s letters proving that she lied once again because the letter is basically a page of her insulting Emma.
Good, Go Alone: Sheriff Acosta goes to the Brandon James farm house. We get a flashback of young Acosta and young Maggie driving Brandon out to the same farm house, and he’s still in bad shape. They drop him off inside, hide the bloody knife he was carrying, and decide to never speak of this again. End flashback. Acosta goes inside the farm house, gun drawn, and starts looking for clues. He finds a trap door leading to a secret bedroom that someone’s been squatting in, and there’s pictures of Emma there, too. As he’s investigating, someone is watching him from outside. Later, he shows Maggie the evidence that someone knows what they did and someones been watching Emma. Ghostface even calls him to confirm his suspicions.
Suffocation, No Breathing: Noah is still buried alive inside the coffin and he’s starting to go crazy despite his best efforts to remain calm so he can conserve oxygen. He starts talking to himself until he sees a hallucination of Zoe, a hallucination that comforts him enough to the point where he can calm down while the girls continue the hunt for his location. The hallucination ends, however, and he starts to freak out again when he can hear Zoe’s screaming from the next coffin over. With him depleting his oxygen, he’s starting to die. On the way to the horse stables, the place they first met, Audrey thinks that Ghostface is trying to ruin places that were meaningful to their friendship. When they get there, Audrey admits that she brought Piper there one time to talk to her about Emma, because Piper pretended to be genuinely interested in her half sister and wanted to know all about her. She didn’t realize she was being used. Emma brings up the letter she found in Noah’s bedroom and Audrey brushes it off saying Ghostface just put that there to drive them apart further.
So Close: Emma and Audrey get to the horse stable and find the door held shut by a scythe. They pull it open and find a dead pig inside with flies swarming it. When they discover the pig, Ghostface sends them a clip of him slicing Jake open with the scythe and the girls realize this is where Jake was murdered. At that moment, Ghostface cuts the feed to Noah’s camera. He’s still inside the coffin with another hallucination of Zoe urging him to stay awake or he’ll die from lack of oxygen. While rushing to look for clues, the girls get heated and start to argue about the letter again. Audrey finally admits that she wanted to hurt Emma emotionally for getting new friends and kicking her to the curb because… she was secretly in love with her the whole time. Before Emma can respond, they hear singing from close by and realize that Noah is going crazy and is buried underneath the pig. They hurry and dig up the coffin with shovels from the stable and pull him out just in time. He says that Zoe has to be buried underneath him and they try to find her, but only find a box with a cell phone containing a live stream to Zoe’s own burial. They need to find her. Noah says they were supposed to meet at the lake and if Ghostface is trying to destroy meaningful spots to them, that’s where she’d be and off they go.
Safe and Sound: On the way to the lake, Emma wants to have the cops go look for Zoe at the lake while they take Noah to the hospital because he has a pretty bad head wound and a bad stab wound to the stomach. Noah says he refuses to go until they find Zoe. They make it to the lake and spot Zoe’s coffin attached to a rope hanging off the pier. It’s floating and they open it… to discover that Zoe’s been dead for a while. She’s still even wearing the dress from the pageant a few days ago. She was dead the entire time Noah was locked in his coffin and while they were searching for him. Noah is, obviously, devastated. The cops come to investigate and they find the pig at the horse stables now has human body parts sown into it in a disgusting display of gore. As they police investigate, Emma and Audrey hold hands, signalling that their friendship may not be over after all. Ghostface calls them to gloat, but the girls tell him they’ll never let him win.
END: Maggie shows up and takes the girls homes. She puts Emma to bed and Emma is feeling guilty that another person she knew was murdered… because of her. Maggie says that she can feel the blame for someone else’s choices. We get another flashback to young Maggie getting a note from Brandon James, stuffed inside a tree trunk and reading “Don’t Forget Me.” The flashback ends and Maggie goes to the same tree now and puts a note inside that says, “Stay Away From Me.” As she gets in her car and leaves, Eli comes out of the bushes.
