The Returned (French supernatural drama on Channel 4)

wiki says 8 episodes this season & season 2 scheduled for next year

Do we know the name of the village, btw?

Was wondering if it's significant that nobody ever mentions the name of the town

Also a wee bit disappointed that the adverts werent' subtitled last night

So I watched the whole series on DVD when it came out in France a few months ago - best French series ever by far (not saying much I know). I don't wanna spoil it for everyone here so I'll refrain from commenting too much - but yeah a second season is definitely on the way.

The depth of the lake seems to be very important, but it's not clear why. What's down there?

Maybe I misinterpreted this, but I thought the idea was that the water was actually rising and nobody knows why - they checked the dam for cracks/leaks but everything's fine. Did I get that totally wrong?

i think its that the lake's going down & the water level in the power station's going up?

The level was falling, but then in last night's ep one chap said they "don't know where it's coming from" and another guy said it's ok lol "the power station won't get flooded", cut to shot of an apparently waterlogged power station. Very confusing. I suppose this would make sense if the falling level has corresponded with water level rises downstream from the dam, but this is far from clear, and you'd think someone else would have noticed.

xp

it's indeed the latter - water rising on one side, drying up on the other

I've heard something about having to wait two weeks for next episode?

Also - apparently lucy's clairvoyance happened during sex?

When Jerome & Lucy were together at the start of the first ep one of them said "it can't work every time", maybe that's what they were talking about.

Aha!

Then again, there's loads of things that can't work every time..

Aye, maybe he'd asked her to iron the trousers we saw him putting back on. Although if my iron didn't work every time I'd definitely buy a new one.

I'm sure I saw animals or something moving when they did the shot over the power station. Also the opening credits appear to show some kinds of beasts submerged in water.

Helping Hand dude was always going to be dodgy. Never trust a faithful best friend/confidant with no discernable plot function. Get the feeling the other balaclava dude might have been Serge.

I think I mean Jerome there.

the opening credits contain a lot of stuff actually

So the explanation for Julie's stabbing hallucination in the previous ep may be that Victor was projecting visions onto Mrs. Payet and Julie received them too? It hardly happened to everyone in the building (or you'd have more than one suicide) but maybe Julie is susceptible due to her bond with Victor or her past trauma.

Interesting how all the returned are ending up in the shelter. Are we going to have a Pierre episode soon?

so helping hand dude was one of the balaclava guys who shot victor?

Yeah that's right - me and my wife reckon the two balaclava guys are definitely Pierre as a teenager and a younger Mr Costa (we paused cos we're sly and he's got the same eyes).

Just rewatched episode 1 again and it has some crazy level of detail going on that we totally missed the first time round eg:
- one of the photos that Mr Costa burns is a class picture of a slightly younger him stood next to two red-haired twins
- the butterfly that escapes from the glass case has a label underneath it giving the scientific name of the species. The species is Victorina stelenes

Interesting re Mr. Costa - with the 35-year gap and him looking a lot older than Pierre in the burglary scene, he's pretty much the only character we've seen who's old enough.

He's also the only character whose response to the return of a dead loved one has been to tie them to a bed, set the house on fire and jump off a dam.

What we can't figure out is who has summoned up the return of Simon through thee olde sex magick with Lucy. The rest of the returned departed fit in with people that could have been willed back by men using her services (Camille/Jerome, Victor/Pierre, Serge/Toni, Mrs Costa/Mr Costa).

And Lucy herself - was she someone that was back from the dead?

We don't rrust Thomas at all btw, we know he's no good cos the guy playing him was a rotter in the last series of Spiral too.

People seemed to know Lucy in the first episode, so I assumed she was not a returnee. Would be a bit surprised if they all came back to town on the sex magick express (but who knows?), feel like there's a darker revenge/punishment idea going on though I'm not sure how it fits together (who's punishing who?).

Actually I've been thinking Thomas might turn out to be an ok (but controlling) guy - though that's mostly because what we've seen so far hasn't been that flattering.

Also: do we think that Jerome actually caused Lena's injury, or are they covering something up?

We were looking at Lucy's character profile to remind us who was who and it says "This angel-faced young girl got off a bus one year ago and found herself a job as a waitress at The Lake Pub". Can't remember whether this has been revealed yet or not, sorry if I've just unwittingly let the dead cat out of the bag.

I'm fancifully hoping that Lena is actually sprouting a pair of butterfly wings.

Think we were told at one point that Lucy had about a dozen men who visited her, so it's likely to not just be Jerome who has summoned up the return of someone in this way (if that's how the whole mechanism works).

Huh, hadn't thought about that angle at all. Could be, could be...

Does nosy lady with cats commit suicide or does victor go and kill her? Doctor woman goes out and reminds him to lock the door, he could slip out that way.

If it was him who caused the bus crash then he can't have been returned by lucy sex magic because the bush crash was before lucy came to town?

Lena going into the tunnel. No, don't go in the tunnel. But she sort of had to. But will he kill her or do the scars somehow mean he doesn't have to?

Yeah the way people keep going into the tunnel at night is the least believable part of the whole story imo.

My read on cat-lady is that Victor(?) somehow caused her to hallucinate being attacked and stab herself to death - we saw this happening to Julie but Victor "saved" her.

I think the idea of the tunnel is that the small town is built in such a way that there is no way to avoid it

for those who understand French, there is an official interactive website with a few clues and extra pieces of backstory: http://lesrevenants.canalplus.fr/#!/

If it was him who caused the bus crash then he can't have been returned by lucy sex magic because the bush crash was before lucy came to town?

Aw, and I really liked the Lucy theory till you reminded me of this.

I am also worried that this programme is setting up for a poor payoff. If it turns out to be satisfactory, I will be overjoyed.

One thing about the lights going out in the town (has anyone noticed a specific pattern to when this occurs btw?) - maybe the water escaping from the lake is not so much about what might be revealed by the dropping water level, but what will be covered up by the waters rising downstream e.g. the power station flooding, which will obviously plunge the town into darkness for a good long time.

> I think the idea of the tunnel is that the small town is built in such a way that there is no way to avoid it

like watford.

that said, if there'd been stabbing in it it would be a lot better lit and cctv'd up to the eyeballs by now.

but i guess this is the same town that puts a power station in an area at risk of flooding.

i thought the lights going out was a local phenomenon, caused by proximity to one of the returned (streetlights, the one in the bathroom where victor was hiding, a couple of other cases). the town-wide blackout was a power station thing and has only happened once iirc.

i don't believe the returns will be entirely because of lucy, not at all. it would be boring and also why would they play their hand so quickly?

agree with most of the credibility stuff, though for me the most insane bit was when adele was having a big public dream sequence with simon and assuming nobody else could see him, but nobody seemed to notice this which kept her theory safe until such time as the plot needed to debunk it.

there was a blackout when camille first walked into town and another one when simon made his escape from the police. possibly there had been a powercut when victor and his brother (?) were playing with torches and talking about demons under the bedspread before they got killed, but it feels like there's some sort of connection with the darkness theme there at least.

i don't believe the returns will be entirely because of lucy, not at all

don't think they're entirely because of her, cos yes, she wouldn't explain the appearance of victor in the past, but she definitely seems like some sort of node. can't understand why the police investigation into the murder isn't yet focussing on looking into her other clients, but maybe that'll happen all in good time

I get the sense that the returns have been happening for a very long time but have been covered up in some way.

Like, not constantly, but every few years there's a spate of them?

I wondered if some people return and go away again and then return. Not sure if this theory has already been discussed. Like maybe that's why Mr Costa knew what was happening.

There don't seem to be any old buildings in the town, everything's relatively new, which is very weird for a town in the middle of France.

Also all the returned seem to eat ravenously and never sleep.

yeah and you can see a church steeple in the water too when it showed it this week.

argh I'm dying to take part in the discussion here! Must refrain

Revenge would seem to be a fairly plausible motivation. Camille against Lena for breaking her promise and inadvertently causing the bus crash, Victor and Stabby McGee for their murders - and if Mr Costa tried to kill his wife a second time there's no reason to suspect he might not have done so in 1973. Simon died a violent death under oblique circumstances too. I like the idea that they have been brought back for revenge but don't necessarily know what they are supposed to be getting revenge for, at least initially.

Camille and Lena didn't really cause the bus crash, did they? It swerved to avoid Victor standing in the road.

bus driver's moral reflex was wrong. kill victor, save the kids.

keep driving

buy kids ice creams at next service station. all forgotten.

Camille totally distracted the driver, though. Might have been able to break earlier, etc.

I was on a bus in rural China once. The coach in front of us (probably had about 60 or 70 people in) span off the road, flipped over on its side and crashed into a mountain. The driver of the bus i was on honked his horn, shouted what i assume was abuse out of the window and drove on without even slowing down. That's the kind of attitude you need.