Luke Owen reviews the penultimate episode of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series….
We’ve reached the ninth step of this ten-episode run and… well… it just got odd. Not ‘odd’ in a good way, but ‘odd’ in that perplexing kind of way where you find yourself asking, “just how did we get here?”.
Richie Gecko is now a vampire-snake creature and Santanico finally reveals what she needed him for and how he can set her free. After he is reunited with his brother Seth, we discover that The Titty Twister is a prison for Santanico and the only way to free her is if the Gecko Brothers complete a series of tasks in a mind labyrinth which bases its challenges from the memories of those who walk through it. Still with me? Meanwhile, Jacob, Kate and Professor Tanner (aka Sex Machine) are looking for Scott when they run into Frederico. Determined to track Scott down, the four carry on through the maze below, only for one of them to show their true colours.
Let’s ignore the fearless-foursome section of this episode (even if it does have one of the better twists of the series) and focus on the bizarre mind labyrinth portion of Boxman.
It’s such an odd journey for us to be going down at this point of the series. Santanico reveals that her blood is at the centre of the labyrinth and if the Geckos can find it, she’ll be set free. As the tasks are based on their memories, we are presented with a heist mission (the one that landed Seth in jail) only this time there are new elements added and every now and again, they’ll be thrown into a new area of their sub conscience – Seth being tormented by his father (Dexter‘s James Remar in a great cameo) for example. It’s like Inception meets that part of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey where our excellent friends first reach Hell and are being chased by their childhood nightmares.
But is a drastic change of pace a bad thing for From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series? Let’s face it, while it has been fun for a bit, the show hasn’t quite been the same since they arrived at The Titty Twister. Like the original movie, the first half of this series was incredibly interesting and it created a lot of tense character moments. Once it all kicked off with the vampire-snake creatures, the show devolved into a sub-par Temple of Doom and all the good character development the show had thrived on was pushed aside for wacky Mayan nonsense. Furthermore, one of the biggest complaints about the show was that we’re seeing things we’ve already been shown back in 1996 and a more interesting show would have been watching the Geckos do what they do best.
So with the Geckos back in business and pulling another job, does the episode pick up and bring us back on track?
Yes and no. The problem is that, while it is an Oceans Eleven style pick-up, it’s surrounded by the From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series madness which can be quite distracting. Zane Holtz and D.J. Controna are both great in their roles and certainly look the part, but it would have been more fun to watch if we didn’t have Ritchie “feeding his hunger” or shape-shifting into other people. It’s like they gave us something new while constantly dropping the old stuff around it to remind us it’s not that new. A prequel series (like Bates Motel) would have been a better suit to the From Dusk Till Dawn mythos?
So what now for the last episode? With the series showing no signs of wrapping up, it looks like From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series may give us a cliff-hanger ending to tease its return for the second season. Or, maybe they’ll surprise us and it will all wrap up nicely with a bow on top. We do know this though, they have an awful lot to get through in a 45-minute time frame.
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published May 14, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
