Death lingers in each scene of tonight’s episode as everyone grieves Jerome’s absence. Jerome, the true patriarch of the Saint family, has been like an uncle to all of us viewers, so the magnitude of this loss is impossible to ignore. With Jerome gone, the man who kept them all anchored in one way or another, the remaining Saints begin to sink. But the way each family member moves forward is uniquely different and represents their inner demons.
The episode is appropriately titled “Charnel House,” a building where human skeletons are stored and can be used as a metaphor to refer to any place filled with death. There are many charnel houses in this episode: Louie and Jerome’s empty home filled with reminders of their union, the projects that Wanda is desperately trying to leave, and I would describe the inside of Franklin’s head as a charnel house of its own. To stretch the metaphor even further, Jerome’s death is a literal skeleton in the closet for all involved, as each person feels, in some way, guilty for ending his life.
Louie’s guilt is the most obvious; if it weren’t for her blind ambition, she wouldn’t have been held hostage in the first place. Jerome’s love for her ultimately triggered the bullet that killed him. Battered and raw, she’s forced to say a premature good-bye to his body at the funeral home and then sinks into an abyss of grief and pure rage. Cissy, who is now the last of her immediate bloodline with the exception of her offspring, seems to almost disassociate after her brother’s death. She starts the season saying, “Fuck Teddy. Fuck the CIA. And fuck the government that supported them,” but as the episodes progress, her fervent desire for revenge burns down to righteous submission as she accepts having no control over her family’s fate. Even after pleading with both Jerome and Franklin, her brother was still sacrificed at the altar of greed. Her husband and brother are gone, and her son has transformed into a man she barely recognizes at times, leaving her with almost no one left to lose, while Louie has nothing left to lose.
Logan Kibens, the director of this episode, sets up this distinction visually as we watch the two women have a sit-down conversation at Louie’s house, the first time they’re speaking since Jerome’s death. They sit across from each other at a long table, and the camera catches both of their profiles as they discuss the situation they’ve found themselves in. They’re both on the same level, at the same table, in the same state of grief and disbelief. But their mental states differ, which is shown through what we see behind their heads: for Cissy, it’s an open window, but for Louie, it’s total blackness. Louie listens to Cissy and says, “You still got things you care about; I don’t.” Cissy still has a semblance of hope for peace, while Louie has descended into the dark. Unable to sleep without having nightmares of the night before, she manically drives to Skully’s for emotional guidance. She’s reckless, slamming into trash cans and pulling up to the apartment complex, completely bombarding Skully’s security. They threaten to shoot her, but Louie is beyond caring about being alive and basically wills them to pull the trigger until Skully intervenes. He gives her some words of wisdom as someone else who lost the love of their life and provides her some strength to keep going.
Like many other Black women do when they’ve been broken down to their most raw form, she seeks solace in the arms of another Black woman. She goes to a childhood friend, who tenderly wipes at Louie’s wounds as she soaks in the bath. They reminisce about their childhood in a conversation that sheds light on how Louie became who she is. She recalls letting a young man choke her for $20, so he could see how long it would take for someone to pass out. In that same conversation, she alludes to having been sexually assaulted multiple times by men in her community, sometimes in a group setting. In another great directing moment, the camera fluctuates between the two women conversing and shots of Louie alone in the frame, only joined by her reflection in the mirror next to her. We’re seeing two versions of Louie: the little girl who has been hurt and abused, and the woman who is still hurt and abused but can’t escape it no matter what she does. She cries to her friend, asking what keeps bringing her back to the same place.
Another cinematography moment that stands out is when Louie returns home after leaving Jerome’s body at the funeral home and looks into her mirror. The mirror is paneled, so Louie’s reflection is fragmented. This implies that not only is Louie really taking a look at herself, but what she’s seeing is warped. This could be the guilt she feels because of her involvement in Jerome’s death, or maybe it represents her warped sense of self-worth because of what she’s been through. Regardless, from this moment on, Louie will never be the same. But outwardly, she blames everything on Franklin. Later, Teddy asks Louie to give up Franklin’s location. She tells him to fuck off until she can bury her husband, but after that, she’ll do anything, even “slit Franklin from neck to nut.”
Franklin deals with his grief internally, like he does everything else. Aside from occasional outbursts (that have become more frequent as things get dire), Franklin’s coping skills involve deep thinking and avoidance. He’s never been one to show his cards, both in business and with his emotions, and Franklin’s silence in this episode is deafening. The quieter Franklin is, the more he’s dealing with internally. But no matter what we tell ourselves or how we cope, trauma refuses to go ignored. For Franklin, the trauma is making itself known in his dreams. He has a severe night terror, waking up unable to breathe until Veronique calms him down. However, despite the emotional turmoil he’s battling inside, as usual, business remains his top priority. He goes so far as telling Leon that Jerome was his blood and he loved him, but he never should’ve broken away in the first place. Neither Franklin nor Louie can admit any wrongdoing, even though it’s clear the guilt is eating them up inside.
Franklin still needs to hold up his end of the deal with Gustavo to get access to, and kill, Teddy. He asks Leon for half a million dollars to help give Gustavo the funds, but he hits another roadblock when Gustavo reveals what’s been going on with the KGB and DEA. Ruben visited Gustavo at home, delivering an ultimatum: Help him set up Teddy with the shipment coming in two days or risk being an enemy of the KGB. He offers assistance for Gustavo to flee after the deal is done, but this isn’t enough for Xiamara, who’s at the end of her rope dealing with all this, and tells him that it may be best if he doesn’t know where she and the boys end up. Backed into a corner, he lays out all the information for Franklin, and they both know the only way out is eliminating Teddy, but they have to be quick.
Jerome’s funeral concludes the episode, and we witness the neighborhood pay their respects (I even saw a Nicco Annan cameo; remember when he played Laurent de Laurent, one of the hosts at Claudia’s nightclub, in season two?). Franklin’s emotional blockage is obvious — still in the all-black he’s been wearing for the whole episode, looking like death personified, he wears a pair of completely opaque sunglasses, refusing to even look at what’s happening before him. Cissy and Louie share a silent stare that speaks volumes between the Saint women. After the service, Franklin and Louie finally come face-to-face, and Louie asks Franklin why he came back to save her while she was with Kane. He admits to being “a gentleman” but reveals that the main reason is that he needs her to keep the promise she made while she was staring death in the face. He needs her to help him. Naturally, Louie isn’t feeling this. She asks him if he knows that he’s the devil. Franklin replies, “Yeah, I know.” It feels like the final battle in this war is about to begin.
Final Forecast
• Julia’s interaction with Teddy, and the fact that she has a baby on the way, makes me wonder if she’ll really snitch to end it all. This would actually work out in the government’s favor as we saw that Teddy’s bosses are ready to have someone take the fall for this mission gone wrong. His obsession with patriotism and inability to quit while he’s ahead might be his downfall.
• I’m praying that Wanda is safe and clean by the end of the season. Just like we saw Leon’s reversion back to his old neighborhood and lifestyle through the transformation of his hair, we see Wanda acclimate back home and get a new hairstyle more reminiscent of Black America. She trades her braids for a bone-straight middle-part bob. She seemed to have accepted living back in the States, but I’m proud of her for getting up out of the projects. I hope that Leon follows her.
• I got some pushback about the severity of Louie’s torture. I agree that other moments, like Lenny’s rape and Manboy beating Wanda, were graphic too, but it’s very different given the context and history of sexual violence against Black women and the specific choices of torture they depicted. Combining the almost gang rape with the beatings, branding, and dialogue is way deeper than what we’ve seen before. And that was intentional, because Louie feared being back in that position. Snowfall’s biggest villain got the worst punishment.
This recap has been updated to correct an error.
