The Exorcist season 2 episode 9 review: Ritual & Repetition

This week on The Exorcist, Rose escapes a watery death, Andy goes Jack Torrance, and Tomas spends the entire episode locked in a closet.

It’s not our exorcists’ finest hour in “Ritual & Repetition,” but the further the situation spirals out of their control, the more intense this season of The Exorcist gets. Though it was honestly pretty hilarious to watch Marcus stuff Tomas’s unconscious body into a closet at the beginning of the episode, presumably hoping it would all work itself out while he was gone.

And hey, with the help of a competent woman arriving in the nick of time, it kind of does!

There were a lot of great moments in this episode, but one of the most heart-stopping was by far putting Rose on top of the well. This episode did well in its callbacks to the idyllic times earlier this season: most notably, the children’s game where they stand on the rotting boards on top of the well for 10 seconds to initiate each other into Andy’s foster family.

Now, with Andy possessed and dangling Rose over the well as the boards snap one by one, what makes it so horrible is that it’s still a game to him. The demon toys with her fear and suffering, and then lets her plunge into the depths of the well.

Despite a stretch in the middle of the episode when it seems plausible that Rose might actually have died, when Verity makes a break for the woods and Andy chases after her, the rest of the kids soon discover Rose alive and, uh, well. With a bit of family team work they manage to pull her out, and the demon’s twisted mockery of initiating Rose into the family rings true as the kids all embrace her.

After introducing Rose as an unwelcome outsider, it was a great payoff to see her accepted at the end of this episode. If Andy doesn’t make it through the exorcism, at least the kids will have a strong ally in her. And as of the end of this episode, things are not looking great for Andy’s survival.

Despite being fairly on top of things throughout the past two episodes, Marcus and Tomas are scarcely able to take care of themselves now that the demon is exercising its full power. In a parallel to Andy being trapped in his own head for all of “Help Me,” Tomas is stuck inside the demon’s fantasy for the entirety of this episode.

The beginning of the season established Tomas’s visions as an edge in an exorcism, so it’s only natural that the end of the season should capitalize on how they’re also a huge vulnerability. The demon digs into the pride and ambition we’ve glimpsed throughout the course of the show, offering Tomas a look at what his life might have been like if he had never joined Marcus as an exorcist.

The demon takes the form of Casey Rance, a great callback to the first season. It would have been interesting if the demon had taken Angela’s form instead — in many ways she represented Tomas’s greatest triumph, his first successful exorcism against the odds that convinced him this was the life he was meant for. But Casey was the one that started it all, and she almost succeeds in trapping him in the fantasy where he can have his family, his parish, and his ambition.

Even when Tomas tries to break free, he “wakes” into a vision where he fights one-on-one, a picture of the valiant hero standing alone. But it’s only with Mouse’s help that he can fight his way back to reality, and he’s bound to need both her and Marcus to finally complete the exorcism.

As for the rest of our cast, Marcus and Verity spend much of the episode stumbling through the dark and cobweb-filled forest, as Andy hunts them down with a kitchen knife. Marcus and Verity both come close to being suffocated, until Marcus manages to bash Andy over the head with a log. Though the two of them live to fight another day, the demon is going to do its best to make that day their last.

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The season two finale of The Exorcist will air on Friday, Dec. 15 at 9 p.m. on FOX.