Things are starting to heat up on The Bastard Executioner. Lady Love is starting to show where her true loyalties lie and Wilkin is getting used to his role as the punisher while hallucinating his dead wife. So what will happen in this episode, “A Hunger/Newyn”?
The Bastard Executioner starts with two men trying to escape the city, but they’re followed and quickly attacked. Annora can see what’s happening from somewhere else, but she can’t help. It turns out the two men and Annora are all from the same religion and have the same tattoos. “Please,” Annora prays. “Protect them.”
The Bastard Executioner Recap: Which Side is Lady Love On? >>>
Wilkin’s New Life
So Wilkin’s still having his hallucinations. He asks Petra why she still loves him even though he didn’t protect her, but love “knows no condition.” Wilkin’s worried he won’t be able to find that love again, but she says he already has.
She starts kissing him but then turns into his new pretend wife. Needless to say, Wilkin’s not happy. But she wants to have a normal marriage. “I will learn to be close,” he says. But she asks if he hasn’t “loved me always.” She seems a little nuts.
Later, Wilkin bonds with his new pretend son while his new pretend wife eavesdrops on them. The boy tells Wilkin his “father” told him he’s stupid. Wilkin tells him that he’s not stupid and that the boy’s mother is just afraid. He knows the old punisher hurt him and his mother, but nobody deserves that. They make a deal that Wilkin will teach the boy how to read if he helps calm his mother down.
Later, Wilkin walks in on his wife branding her son. She tells Wilkin that he’s always done that “when we need correction.” She’s convinced he’s the old punisher and is clearly nuts.
The Sacrifices
There’s a new sacrifice, just like the previous episode of The Bastard Executioner. The limbs are chopped off and it’s pretty gruesome. And Milus doesn’t want anybody to know.
Somewhere else, a man who also has those tattoos from earlier is being tortured by some priests. It’s horrifying. The torturers, including Ed Sheeran, say they want to find more people and translate some sacred text.
They start torturing another guy. He doesn’t give anything away, so he gets “the fate of the others” and his arms are chopped off. So I guess we know where these sacrifices are coming from.
They’re not going to stop until they get the rest of the text. And it looks like they’re heading toward the shire.
Lady Love’s Visit
Lady Love goes to visit the King and immediately meets the King’s adviser. He tries to flirt with her, but she’s not having it. She’s here for business. Suddenly, he changes his tune and starts to diss her clothes.
So Lady Love goes to make herself “presentable” and says she only feels “dread” meeting the king. There’s so much riding on this mission. Her maid brings up that when they were kids, another guy tried to put her in her place for going out of her station and being friends with Lady Love. But Lady Love rescued her and fought that boy. If she can do that, she can handle this.
One of the torturers leaves and walks right up to Lady Love and the King’s adviser. It turns out they’re all in the same place and that he came to help with their discussions.
Lady Love waits two hours for the King to show up, which is ridiculous. She and her maid are getting hungry. Finally, they both lose it and just take food and leave.
Lady Love falls asleep, but the King’s adviser storms in and says the King is ready to see her and starts hitting on her. “I do not like the French,” she says. She finally goes to see the King, but he’s too busy playing around. He finally talks to her but doesn’t really seem to know what’s going on.
She demands “council on the future of my shire,” but he passes it on to that gross adviser. She has to plead her case to the adviser. The plan had been that the shire would go to her heir and she needs help deciding the fate of her shire, but he’s just gross. “The only agreements that matter are the ones you make now,” he says. So she decides to leave.
Lady Love gets ready to leave when the adviser shows up and tells her that they’re dividing her shire up, but she announces that she has an heir so none of it matters. She had been planning to tell the King, but he ignored her.
Annora’s Warning
Annora goes to tell the men that they have to leave and make camp somewhere else. “Please,” she says. “Trust my warning.” They immediately know something’s up. She says she senses trouble. She feels when something’s going to happen and she’s terrified. But Berber the Moor and the other men refuse to leave her.
One of the men decides to take Annora’s warning and leave. They aren’t any closer to avenging their families anyway. But Berber reminds him that they promised they wouldn’t leave her. They start to fight over whether they should stay or go, and Berber says he’s always scared but he prays for bravery. Then he tells the other guy to be safe.
So the other guy leaves and sees some soldiers ride by. He runs away but calls himself a coward. Meanwhile, the soldiers surround his friends and start to beat them up. He runs back to help, while Annora hears and feels what’s happening from her cave.
Milus’ New Plan
Milus starts to question where Wilkin and his friend have been going every day. It turns out he’s been sending spies to watch them. But then some guests show up. Apparently, the punisher had worked for these guys before (one of whom is another Baron) and had complained about not getting his fair wage from them, so Wilkin needs to get out of there before they notice he’s not the same guy.
The Baron and other visitors are pissed too. Lady Love had sent for them, but she’s traveling to see the King. Milus wanted them to come anyway so he didn’t tell them she wasn’t going to be there. They came and now they have to stay the night. And unfortunately for Wilkin, they want to see the punisher.
Wilkin tells Milus about his problem, but Milus is pretty confident that the visitors won’t recognize him. Even if they do, Milus promises he’ll take care of it.
Milus then talks to the Baron about his plan to make a port and wanting to team up with the Baron. The Baron hated Lady Love’s husband and doesn’t want to lend the shire any money, but Milus says that he wouldn’t lend it. “The shire would be yours,” he says.
He wants the Baron and Lady Love to get married, even though the Baron’s already married. But his wife is sick. Milus, of course, would be the Chamberlain and he’s confident that Lady Love would do anything to keep her land.
They have a whole festival with fights and jousting in honor of the Baron’s visit, and Milus once again reassures Wilkin that his secret won’t be revealed.
Wilkin joins the games, while Baron and Milus talk about how they’ll be invincible when they join together. Then Milus totally reveals that Wilkin is the punisher to one of the Baron’s men, while Wilkin almost loses it when he play-fights with one of the guys who attacked his village.
Of course, the other man accuses Wilkin of not being the punisher. Milus tells him to shut up and knocks him out. Then he tells Wilkin to kill him. “I’m not a man who does this,” Wilkin says. He storms out but opens the door to find that all his friends are there and had been arrested. “Everyone you love or care about is either dead or in my grasp,” Milus says.
So Wilkin has a choice to make. He turns to his Bible for guidance, while the guy wakes up and starts yelling at him. So Wilkin violently kills him. It’s horrifying.
The Baron leaves and promises Milus that he will “hear from me soon.” Meanwhile, Wilkin’s friends are beaten up and thrown into a cell while Wilkin watches.
The Bastard Executioner airs Tuesday nights at 10pm on FX.
(Image courtesy of FX)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
