Everyone is headed on up to Sunny Day Excursions on this week's new episode of Big Sky, as the sheriff's department starts to put the pieces together around the glamping destination's missing campers.
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When the episode — titled "Duck Hunting" — opens, we're back in the woods with Luke and Paige. Luke is trying to talk his ex-partner out of doing something she'd regret, but she rightly reminds him that he left her in the woods after trying to kill her. He clues her in that someone is onto them and tells her, "They found us. He knows where we are, and he wants the money back." She asks about her journal, which he can't find, and balks at trying to leave the woods with him. That's about when Walter steps in from the shadows as well, telling Luke, "She ain't going nowhere with you." Luke then does a very shoddy diversion and sprints off into the woods, with Walter telling Paige he'll go after him in a second, because giving him a head start "is more sporting."
Jenny and Beau finally realize things aren't as they seem at Sunny Day Excursions
Down at Sunny Day base camp, Jenny, Beau and Poppernak have arrived to check on poor old Mary's body, which is just lying out, all gray-faced, in what appears to be the breakfast area. (Won't someone cover up that poor girl's face? Even if it's not good for TV?) We learn that after Buck brought Mary back to camp, he and Avery went up to the woods to take a look around and that Emily is fairly level-headed when it comes to telling her cop dad (Beau) she found a dead body. Jenny and Beau also realize that Tonya and Donno are in camp, pretending to be a married couple, giving them probably their first big indication that something might actually be amiss inside the camp. (I loved the pair's riff, with Tonya saying she "just wanted to shut off for a couple of days, and now this? A murder? How awful. I'll be writing a review." Donno's "0.0 stars." is the perfect retort.)
Sunny corners Buck — again, in a pretty tight space where cops are everywhere and there are no secrets — to ask him what the hell he was doing bringing Mary's body back to camp. He tells her that it's for the best, since his DNA was probably still on the body and Mary's was on him, and she seems to understand. But she laments Mary's death in the first place, saying, "She did nothing wrong, Buck." The pair decide to pin things on Luke, though at least one of them will pivot later in the episode.
When all the campers are later questioned around the campfire, Buck says he had a "bad feeling about Luke from day one," claiming he was "filled to the gills" with toxic masculinity. Donno says he liked Mary and that she taught him some yoga poses for his back, and Avery spills that he knew that Luke and Paige had $15 million in cryptocurrency. Why he didn't just keep this to himself is anyone's guess, but who knows? He's not exactly a criminal mastermind. Jenny and Beau understandably seize on that point, going to search the tent the cops have already "torn apart." They slide their hand under the mattress, find Paige's phone and decide it's all just been too easy. It's odd, they agree, that Luke would run away and leave evidence behind, saying "something's not making sense about this."
Cormac kind of trusts Cassie, and the campers get questioned
Down in town, Cormac and Cassie enjoy a beer date, with Cassie telling her new paramour that she doesn't think his dad's being all that honest about his burned-up truck. (It's always a good idea to tell potential new boyfriends that you think their parents are murderers.) Cormac knows in his heart that she's right and heads off to investigate on his own. We see him later, digging through boxes in his parents' attic, where he finds a baby blanket in a box, plus a hidden trove of baby items he's sure aren't his. 1983 birthdates don't lie, we suppose, because Cormac looks about 30. He'll tell Cassie about at least some of the stuff later, though he keeps the whole baby thing to himself for now.
After the camp fire, the cops start to search the woods for Luke, which we have to hope actually happened the second everyone realized he was missing but only just pays off now. They find his body down by Chimney Rock, struck down by an arrow they later learn matches the ones in the camp's equipment shed.
Everyone seemingly suspicious in camp gets questioned about their archery skills, with Tonya telling the cops that she and Donno lied because "you get freebies if you say it's your anniversary." "If we committed a crime," she continues, "it's that we lied about being in love." (Donno, of course, is actually in love with Tonya, but I'm sure that'll pay off in some episode down the road.) Tonya points the finger at Avery, saying he's an excellent archer and that she saw him and Luke talking a lot.
Here's where I'll say that while I understand why everyone's still in camp now because it's an active crime scene and everything, I question why anyone was still there when at least one camper just up and disappeared. If that was me and I was just trying to get some glamping in, I'd be out of there in a second. No thanks! And if my minor child was up there, you can be sure I'd yank them out faster than you can say "Sunny."
Lots of dramatic confrontations
Speaking of minor children: Emily stops Luke as he's going to sneak into the stack of unattended evidence to look for Paige's notebook. He asks her if she went through the bag when she found Mary, citing the missing crypto. Later, Poppernak gives Beau and Jenny some research he did on Avery, which reveals he and his company are the subject of an SEC investigation. The pair grab Avery and Carla for some separate chats, and Jenny learns a whole bunch of Beau's backstory that she knew nothing about. Beau, on the other hand, is told by Avery that it was a total coincidence that Luke told him about the crypto because "it was a secret he needed to share." Beau rightly suggests to Avery that $15 million in crypto would be pretty tempting to someone in financial trouble, and we learn that Carla had no idea that Avery was even being investigated. She'll later call him on it, telling him that she and Emily will stay in a hotel when they get back into town.
Cormac comes back to camp, where he confronts his parents about their bogus medicine story. It doesn't look great that they didn't call him when Mary was found dead; and when he tells them he found the title to the unsold truck, the two elders get even more dodgy. They try to blame Cassie, who they say has Cormac "all worked up," but he pulls out a photo of his mom and a baby that's definitely not him. (Side note: Is that really Reba in that photo? You don't see her whole face, so it's hard to tell — but if it is, who's that kid? Her own son wasn't born until 1990.) Sunny quickly explains it away, telling Cormac that it's his cousin Brian in the photo — you know, the one who lives down in Florida now? The one who taught him to throw a football? — but the younger Barnes is clearly not buying it. He skulks out of the tent, and Sunny and Buck have another loud tent discussion, with Buck telling her he's not above fingering Walter.
Next thing we know, Sunny is going head-to-head with Tonya and Donno in camp, telling them that she doesn't like liars and that "lying's just a stone's throw away from all sorts of sins." Tonya tries to shrug it off, saying Sunny has bigger worries than just a couple of liars; but when Sunny leaves, she and Donno question what the heck that was about. Donno says whatever she's doing is called "cowboy mouth," which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because that typically means someone with a loud and raucous voice — but he also says she could just be a witch, so that's fun.
After it comes out that Buck was unaccounted for during both Mary and Luke's murders, the cops question him. He says that, yes, he's a skilled archer, but so are a lot of other people in camp. He explains that he brought Mary's body back because he "couldn't leave the poor girl out there for the bears"; and when shown a picture of Cassie's mountain man sketch, he says he has seen him out in the woods from time to time but doesn't know him.
Darius Rucker is back
Darius Rucker's Possum is back, rolling up into the woods with his bad boss. They're cranking Juice Newton's "Angel Of Morning" when they come across a ranger blocking access to the camp. They run some mind games on him before straight-up shooting him and throwing him in the back of the truck. Later, we'll see them skulking around the outskirts of camp waiting for the right moment to sneak in and either off or capture Avery, whom Tonya and Donno think knows too much.
Near the end of the episode, Cassie, Jenny and Beau start to put the mysterious pieces together, coming to the conclusion that the mountain man could be the Bleeding Heart Killer. (Why? No reason, really. He's an outcast no one knows and drove a truck that burned.) Cormac directs them to any area of the woods that's not on any of the trail maps, telling them his mom wouldn't let it be included because it's "best to keep the campers away from outsiders," and the whole sheriff's department rolls out on a manhunt. With everyone gone and the evidence still just randomly lying out in a tent, Tonya and Donno seize on the opportunity to page through Paige's journal, which they somehow have. They realize two pages are missing, and we realize that, of course, Avery has those pages.
Walter is finally discovered...but is it too easy?
Back in the woods, Sunny has appeared at Walter's cabin ahead of the cops, banging on the windows and telling him to run. He doesn't answer, and when she hears dogs she goes to hide. Inside, Paige is freaking out a bit, telling Walter that if she gets found, she'll be dead by the end of the night. In an effort to either work him or express genuine emotion — I suspect the former — Paige tells Walter that "no matter what happens, I need you to know that you'll always be my Prince." He directs her to an underground tunnel he has heading out of his cabin, telling her that it goes to the edge of the woods and from there she'll have to run. He'll stall the cops, he says, telling Paige he loves her. Later, we see her exiting the tunnel and hobbling off, which will no doubt turn out great for her, because it's Big Sky, baby!
When the cops surround Walter's cabin, he comes out peacefully, hands up. "Hello, friends," he says, telling Cassie, "It's nice to see you again." They cuff him and take him off, though I would again argue that they don't actually have enough to charge him with literally anything, and the core trio agrees that the whole thing just felt too easy. While there's some argument that they should "take the W's where we can get them," they still seem to think something's not right. That's about when we get our final shot of the episode, which is Reba McEntire's Sunny, peering around a tree at the cabin, looking tearful and sad. I'll be sorely sad when her arc ends, because I am really loving the energy she's bringing to this show. The next episode, "Where There's Smoke There's Fire," will air in a couple of weeks, so we'll have to see where this whole thing goes.
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