Something huge happens on The Innocents’ seventh episode: Chris and Doug finally (FINALLY) trace Harry’s phone. The last time Harry ran off, Chris seemed to be playing it a little too cool for a detective who just a few years prior had watched her husband go from normal, loving human to a shell of a man. Well, this time she’s really worried. The change in urgency is probably thanks to the file Harry leaves for his mom with the YouTube video of June from the club with a note that says “believe your eyes” … or you know, maybe she’s just tired of his bullshit. Parenting is complicated!
She finally gets Doug on her side after showing him the pictures of Elena in Lewis’ reflection and going through the Lil and Nurse Deborah incidents. There’s no way those new cases aren’t linked to the Pennines Five shenanigans — and now Harry’s mixed up in it. Chris and Doug trace Harry to the Bergen airport in Norway. They’re on their way.
They better move fast because Harry and John are making great time on their adventure to Sanctum. How awkward must it be to have to sit on a plane next to the guy you almost knocked out in a bar who also happens to be the father of the girl you attempted to run away with? An in-flight movie is not going to fix that, you know? Harry and John pass the time by bonding over their mutual love for shape-shifters and their inability to help said shape-shifters. Both have made mistakes in their pursuit to protect the tiny blonde women they love. I guess this is male bonding!
Thanks to maps and friendly Norwegian citizens, the guys make their way to the familiar fjord. They don’t have a boat, so they have to do some hiking in which John injures his leg. It makes their grand entrance to the Sanctum much less graceful — but still, they arrive at just the right time. Some real shit is going down on the Shape-shifting Farm.
June seems okay spending time with Ben as they make their way from London to Sanctum. It’s surprising because Ben is back on his shady game. He takes away her cell phone, he gets weird when she mentions spending time with a shape-shifter named Kam, he forbids her from telling the other women about Kam, HE OBVIOUSLY KNOWS KAM IS FREYA, and shadiest of all, he demonstrates how he “helps” the suffering when they come across a dying deer in the road and he legit snaps its neck to put it out of its misery. I know he has excellent taste in eyewear and his beard is on point but, come on June, be a little wary!
Once at Sanctum, June’s anxious to see her mother right away. She needs to know why she left. But Ben, Runa, and Sigrid try to explain that Elena just isn’t ready to see June yet. Since Elena’s trigger is love, June’s presence is really setting her off. At family dinner, without Elena, June susses out some of the stranger rules at the farm, including “no touching,” and she demonstrates her loyalty to Ben by not mentioning Kam when Runa pushes her on who was helping her in London. Instead, June tells them about Harry. After a moment of confusion in which Runa, whose dementia is getting worse by the day, mistakes June for Freya, June gets out of there and goes looking for Elena. Still, she does not seem at all regretful of her decision to come to this place. Oh, June.
June finds Elena’s house and mother and daughter have a tearful reunion through Elena’s window. The girls don’t want to get caught by Ben or the other ladies, since meeting this soon is surely frowned upon, and so they set out for a place where they can be alone. In, honestly, the greatest mystery of this show, they opt for A BOAT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LAKE. There wasn’t a tree stump by the edge of the woods or some corner of the garden where they could go? Literally everyone just needs to LOOK AT THE LAKE AND THEY WILL SEE YOU THERE.
Obviously, things escalate as Elena refuses to explain why she left. When June tells her mother that she’s in love with a boy named Harry Polk, Elena knows exactly whose son he is and things get bad. The two women argue: June will be with Harry, Elena thinks love is dangerous and June will kill him. All of this is made more precarious by the fact that they are IN A TINY ROWBOAT. The screaming and talk of not being with Harry frightens June and she begins to shift, the women fall into the water, and when Elena tries to help her daughter, June shifts into Elena — but Elena remains conscious. As in, no vibrating eyes. No coma. There are two Elenas.
Well, this is new.
Ben, Runa, and Sigrid watch the whole thing go down (don’t make me say it again) in confusion and amazement. They’ve never seen what happens when a shifter shifts into another shifter. Quickly they realize that something’s not quite right with June. They get her into the padded interrogation room. The shifter-on-shifter action paired with June’s abilities to go into people’s memories has caused June to get lost in Elena. This is very, very bad — especially for Elena who realizes that June can now see her memories, including what caused her to leave three years ago. Elena begs June to stop, but June goes deeper into Elena’s mind. What she finds there is, well, it’s not great, Bob.
As you might have guessed, Elena and Lewis were having an affair. He was her art teacher and they fell madly in love. For Elena, falling in love is life-threatening. Which, like, same girl, same. She tries to break it off, but Lewis is all in, he doesn’t care what she’s hiding. He takes her as she is: “Will you take me too?” he asks, lovingly. That line should sound familiar — it’s one of the few sentences Shell Lewis still repeats. Elena’s love for Lewis is so strong that she starts shifting — right into Lewis. She runs off frightened, leaving Lewis and his vibrating eyes behind.
Then things get really weird: Without shifting back into herself, Elena shifts right from Lewis into another man on the street, and then a bartender who grabs her, a runner she brushes by, and finally a woman who tries to help her: Because she shifted from one directly into the other, they’re all trapped in their own minds, save for the final woman. They’re the Pennines Five — and the reason Elena had to get out of town.
June knows everything now, but she’s still falling deeper and deeper into Elena. In one of the scarier moments of the series, we see June get replaced in her own memories with Elena — June and Harry in the car when she paints her nails blue now becomes Elena and Harry in the car and so on. It’s legit disturbing and I’d like very much for it to stop. Thankfully, Sigrid and Runa have just come across our two Sanctum trespassers and Runa realizes one is Harry — he can help.
And so Harry does his Harry-and-June thing. He goes into the room and talks June back into herself. They are the only two people that matter. Elena leaving behind a trail of Human Shells isn’t June’s fault. And June returns angrier and more resilient than ever before. She’s not Elena, and gosh darnit, she will have love!
So here’s the thing. When Harry explains that it was Kam who called him and tells June that Ben is dangerous and they need to leave, why does she write him off so quickly? Okay, she wants to be with her mother and she wants to learn how to control her shifting but she completely dismisses the kid who just moments ago she was pledging her love? June’s very confusing. Has Harry ever seemed so defeated as he does the moment June asks him to leave her be for the night? He even drops the f-bomb! We’re all confused and angry, too, buddy.
Over in the next cabin, Ben’s not looking defeated at all. He seems energized. He’s watching over Runa as she sleeps until she wakes up a little confused, missing Freya and scared about forgetting everything. Ben calms her down by telling her that nothing’s impossible and he feels a new start for them coming on. Unfortunately, that “new start” is somehow tied to June, which means he can’t have her pesky boyfriend around questioning everything. Ben pays Sad Harry a visit, basically pretending he’s on Reddit — “I’m In Love with a Shape-shifter, Too: Ask Me Anything.” He takes Harry on a little tour of the facilities in the spirit of helping him understand what they do at Sanctum.
Apparently what they do at Sanctum is lock boyfriends who ask too many questions in padded interrogation rooms and turn off the lights. Harry is left screaming for help.
Perhaps help is on the way: We watch a burly bearded man speaking Norwegian buy some supplies that include a knife. The man is Steinar. And he’s on his way home to the fjord.
Knit Happens
• School sweaters! In this flashback to Harry and June’s first schoolyard meeting — it is as adorable as you’d expect — we get a glimpse of their uniforms under their jackets, which of course include gray sweaters. June opts for a classic cardi, while Harry goes for a v-neck. Long may Harry and June live and love in sweatered bliss.
