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It took us one episode shy of two complete seasons, but we finally got to Christmasland this week, or at least Wayne, Vic and Maggie did. And Charlie Manx is beginning to discover the happy, little family he created isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But Wayne and Millie are this week’s main focal points.
The episode opens with Wayne finally being introduced to his new friends in Christmasland … although they seem more interested in feasting on him than playing games. Charlie shows him around a bit and tells him that he needs a new outfit, so he takes Wayne into a sort of costume shop and tells him he can be whoever he wants. Wayne chooses an astronaut, Charlie gives him a gift — large scissors (for the drifter) — and has him sign his name in a registration book. But Wayne is having a hard time writing his last name, so Charlie helps him write Manx. The same last name as all the children in Christmasland.
Back at Sleigh House, Lou fixes Vic’s bike so she can get Wayne but she won’t let Lou come, asking him to stay with her father’s body and call Tabitha. Before she leaves she says ‘I love you’ and I’m pretty sure in any other circumstance, and considering Lou compared them to Han and Leia once before, he would have said ‘I know’ but he didn’t. Before she can leave, Maggie insists on going with Vic because she hunted the Wraith before Vic did so the two of them deserve to take down Charlie Manx. Maggie hops on and the Shorter Way takes them to Christmasland.
But Charlie has other problems brewing with Millie, who doesn’t need any more friends, she just wants to leave. And she wants to show him the house he seems to have forgotten about just as her mother said. He seems perplexed when Millie takes him inside, seeing things from the long forgotten past. Upstairs they pass the closet that holds Mr. Tim, still asking to be let out and offering good sledding at the grove behind his house. Then Cassie appears, and she grabs Charlie and starts dancing. Charlie pulls away and demands that Millie leave with him but she won’t leave without her mother … and her mother can’t leave. And then Cassie lets him have it with a verbal list of all of his failures, telling him Christmasland is a place he created to escape from himself, warning him that it will all turn to static. Charlie tells her that won’t happen because no one can enter without his approval, but she drops a bombs on him that Victoria McQueen can and she’s already there. Cassie tells Millie that if her father really loves her, he will take her away before Vic unleashes the Great White Static that will take them all. Millie pleads with her father to leave so she can live in the real world.
Tabitha has somehow managed to get from Haverhill to Colorado as if she was just around the corner and she and Lou have some cute small talk while they wait for Vic, Maggie and Wayne to return; Tabitha making it clear that no matter how much what Maggie does freaks her out, and no matter how many times she’s tried to walk away from it all, she’s there for Maggie. Lou says he’d stand next to Vic in Hell if it meant he’d get to spend more time with her.
Vic and Maggie find Wayne but it’s not him, it’s another kid in an astronaut outfit looking at a Christmas tree decorated with the heads of their victims, and after the kid sounds the alarm and runs off, Maggie sees the head of her friend that had disappeared in Season 1. They find themselves surrounded by armed children but they disperse when Charlie calls out Vic’s name. She goes to him while Maggie takes shelter under a large Christmas tree where she sets a bomb. Vic sees Charlie has Wayne and Millie with him. She calls out ‘Wayne McQueen’ but Charlie relishes in the boy telling his mother that’s not his name and wants to know why she wants to ruin his fun. Vic tells Charlie that it was Millie who helped her get there, and tells Wayne that none of the children belong there, that Charlie took everything away from them. Charlie says the children are free to do whatever they want, but that’s obviously not true. He also knows that Maggie is there as well and calls out ‘Scissors for the Drifter’ which sets the mob of children out after Vic and Maggie as they frantically try to not get caught while setting up the bombs. But a girl catches Maggie setting a bomb and snatches her tile bag, playing catch with it with a boy and then luring her into an Ice Maze.
Vic manages a narrow escape from a group of kids and then the bomb under the tree explodes, knocking the kids down. But instead of running, Vic stands there and gawks until the kids crawl out from under the branches. The explosion has had a damaging effect on Charlie, who suddenly begins to cough up blood. He tells Millie that Vic has destroyed the Great Tree he and she had created, but he blames Vic for poisoning Millie’s mind. Millie begs her father to stay and let Vic and Wayne leave, but he says that wouldn’t be fair to the boy. Millie then realizes that she was never enough for her father. She’s begged him to leave and she’s begged him to stay, but he won’t do either. She tells him she’s leaving one way or another, and as she can see his anger she pointedly asks that he wouldn’t raise his hand to a child, would he? And if he wants to hang Vic’s head on a tree, he can do it himself, ‘Merry Christmas, Father.’ She leaves him but he spots his silver hammer. Another building explodes and he coughs up more blood.
Vic finds Wayne alone this time, but he also runs into the maze — and all of a sudden this becomes very The Shining. Maggie catches the girl with her bag and tries the old ‘Red Light’ trick that stopped a girl earlier from attacking them when they first arrived. It doesn’t work this time. More children come up behind Maggie, but she snatches the bag away as they begin to attack. Luckily Vic gets to her before they can do too much damage. With all the bombs set, more children enter the maze followed by Charlie, who sees blood in the snow. Vic and Maggie can’t find their way out, but Wayne finds them, wanting to play another game. But Vic grabs him and tells him that every day can’t be Christmas. If it is then there’s no Fourth of July, no friends, no sunshine, no hot dogs and most of all, no fireworks, their most favorite thing in the world. She tries to jog his memories of going to the lake house and watching the colors in the sky, she keeps calling him Bats, and he keeps insisting there are no bats there. She tells him that’s the nickname she gave him because she loves him so much (I guess they aren’t allowed to say the word ‘Batman’ and who Wayne is named after). Wayne says she left him even though he was always good. She says she’s here now and always will be. As she hugs him, he stabs her with the scissors, running off, saying he won Scissors for the Drifter.
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Maggie manages to get Vic to the maze exit, but they turn as they hear laughter behind them, then a cracking sound behind them as the exit has been covered by a new ice wall. Charlie is now there telling them that the beauty of an Inscape is that everything there is a product of his imagination, and the Eternal Maze is one of his favorite exhibits because children always find their way out but adults never do. Then he sarcastically implies that this is where Vic will die just like the other McQueens, in a dead end. He hits Maggie hard with his hammer, and Vic says he can have her if he lets Maggie go. He says he’s had them both from the moment they arrived. All the bombs suddenly explode, felling and quickly aging Charlie. Vic grabs the hammer and hits him in the head, hard! It was so sudden it made me gasp. She hits him a few more times but Maggie brings her down and tells her it won’t do anything and that Charlie is just an old bitch. Now they need to find Wayne.
The whithered Charlie is freaking the children out as he yells at them to see if they know where Millie is. She’s standing at the static wall pondering if she should make a break for it. She hears her father calling for her but she decides to make the jump to the other side. She’s amazed for a moment but then begins to turn to static. She spots the ornament she hung on the tree before entering Christmasland and once it’s in her hands, she becomes whole again … although still not quite human. She hears a sound, a car door, and hides just as Tabitha enters the grove, telling Lou there’s no one there.
Vic finds Wayne again and does that thing a mother does when she wants to get her kid’s attention — she forcefully calls out his full name, ‘Bruce Wayne McQueen’. She grabs him and says they’re leaving, but he struggles and calls out for Mr. Manx, telling his mother if she makes him leave he’ll hate her forever. She says she doesn’t care. ‘I’m your mother and we’re leaving.’ Then … all the lights go out and Wayne says ‘Christmas is over, isn’t it?’ Vic replies, ‘Yeah Bats, it’s over.’
One more episode to go that will bring this saga to an end … or will it?
NOS4A2 airs Sundays at 10:00 PM on AMC.
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