'Joe Pickett' Season 2, Episode 3 Recap and Predictions: One Clue Could Unlock the Entire Series

Joe Pickett Season 2, Episode 3 is a knockout follow-up to the show's magnificent two-episode premiere. Directed by Reservation Dogs helmer Blackhorse Lowe, with a script from Narcos: Mexico scribe Isaac Gómez, "Stop The Slaughter!" follows Michael Dorman and Julianna Guill's Joe and Marybeth Pickett on parallel missions with deep political import. The town of Saddlestring is plagued by a serial killer, a missing girls crisis and a violent anti-hunting league. But what does last week's mythological creature and ghoulish twins have to do with the latest power plays? Read on for a rundown of all the details you may have missed, plus a few wild theories that could explain this season's supernatural heart. Warning: Spoilers ahead for 'Joe Pickett' Episodes 1-3.

Videos by Wide Open Country

Joe Investigates Frank Urman's Murder

The episode opens with a hokey little hunting awards ceremony, where long-haired anti-hunting radical Klamath Moore (Dead Ringers' Aaron Dean Eisenberg) and his fellow activists rush the stage. They drop a bucket of blood on the year's Top Hunter award recipient, à la Carrie, and terrorize the rest of the attendees with squirt guns filled with blood. Back at the Saddlestring Sheriff's Department, Governor Budd (Riverdale star Lochlyn Munro) warns the game wardens that if Klamath Moore finds out about Frank Urman's grisly murder, he'll use it to shut down hunting season and put them all out of a job. It's up to Joe to solve the case before the Stop The Slaughter! activists can exploit it.

In the middle of the night, Marybeth (the excellent Julianna Guill) finds Joe searching state records for proof that the Grimm Brothers exist. In a devastating and sublimely-acted exchange, she warns him that if he gets himself killed on Bermuda Mountain, she'll tell the girls he meant to die: "I'm gonna tell them their daddy didn't die for his job, or his duty or his honor. I'm gonna tell them you committed suicide, 'cause that's what it'd be." As ever, a gut-wrenching moment in a boldly dark show.

The next day, Joe and his trainee Luke (Keean Johnson) question Frank's widow Blaire (Julianne Christie), but she assures them the man was a "saint," with no enemies to speak of. "Do you know who would never describe their husband as a saint?" a suspicious Joe tells Luke. "Anyone with a saintly husband." Preach it! We meet Frank's nephew Chris (The 100's Josh Collins), who was on that fateful hunting trip; he and Frank had split up the day of the murder. Chris reveals that Frank had been feeling "pretty low" due to the recent death of a friend. 

Marybeth Joins the Search for Marissa Left Hand

Never one to sit idly by, Marybeth joins Charlie Left Hand's (Cree actor Sean Wei Mah) search party for his missing daughter Marissa. The search is full of other parents whose daughters have disappeared from the Wind River reservation — a clear nod to Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan's magnificent and brutal 2017 drama Wind River. Since Marissa's car was found abandoned in Saddlestring, tribal authorities can't investigate it; and because Marissa lived on the reservation, the Saddlestring Sheriff's Department has no jurisdiction to investigate — let alone file a missing persons report. In other words, no one is looking for Marissa. 

In a secret meeting in the forest, Joe thanks Nate Romanowski (Mustafa Speaks) for saving his life in last week's episode. Nate warns him that dangerous people from his special-ops past are on his tail, and they could target Joe to draw out Nate. That night, Joe has a nightmare that the Grimm Brothers broke into his home, and that "Rosie" (the mysterious girl in the cabin who might be the missing Marissa Left Hand) choked up a poker chip and handed it to Joe. Is it a summons, or a warning?

Over in Stop The Slaughter! territory, Klamath Moore has received a photo of Frank's gutted body from an "anonymous source," and he plans to use the gruesome image to drum up public support for his anti-hunting campaign: "Once they see themselves as prey, they might start to rethink doing that to another species." Shaky logic, but alright. His associate, Shenandoah (Magnum P.I. actress Emily Alabi), warns that the stunt could backfire. 

A Serial Killer Is on the Loose

Marybeth leaves the girls at the bar with Missy (the wonderful Sharon Lawrence, who continues to chew up the scenery) and heads to the forest road where Marissa's car was abandoned. While scoping it out, she senses movement in the woods and books it out of there in her two-toned 1998 Suburban like the absolute icon she is. Later on, Charlie Left Hand tells Marybeth that Marissa was making "secretive" phone calls before she disappeared. Together, they ask Cricket (Aadila Dosani) to illegally pull Marissa's phone records, but she refuses...for now, at least. When Marybeth and Charlie leave, we see that Nate was hiding out in Cricket's apartment and overheard the conversation. He calls out her hypocrisy: She'll harbor her fugitive boyfriend, but she won't break the rules for Marissa's sake? 

Joe and Luke stumble onto something massive while rifling through hunting crime records. Two hunters were killed in Final Destination-esque freak accidents (one slit his own throat with the antlers of his trophy elk), and they were carrying the same poker chip found on Frank's body. Joe brings the news to Sheriff Barnum (Patrick Gallagher) in town: "Frank Urman wasn't a one-off," he urges. "This is the work of a serial killer."

Joe limps out of the Sheriff's Department and stumbles onto a Stop The Slaughter! rally in the town square, where Klamath Moore broadcasts the image of Frank's mangled body for all to see. "If you ask me, the person who killed this hunter should be celebrated," he cries. When Joe pulls the plug on the gory display, the activists attack him. Just then, Sheridan (Skywalker Hughes) wanders out of the bar nearby and sees Joe badly beaten on the ground.

Questions and Predictions

• Who gave Klamath Moore the photo of Frank's body? The masked sniper, who posted up near the scene of Frank's murder, is probably Moore's "anonymous source." Further still, the sniper may be working for Moore's Stop The Slaughter! bid. Check out the campaign logo, pictured above. Looks an awful lot like the sniper's scope...
• Who was Frank's dead friend? Probably one of the other two poker chip-carrying hunters who met mysterious ends.
• The poker chips aren't a serial killer's signature. They're membership cards for Bull Grove Foundation affiliates. In the season premiere, we learned that Frank contributed to the Bull Grove charity. Maybe the other two murdered hunters were Bull Grove affiliates as well, and their poker chips indicated that. Someone may be killing off Bull Grove folks one by one.
• Blaire Urman is in on it. She hired Marybeth to game out her estate right as Frank went hunting. Maybe Blaire is out to drain Bull Grove's coffers.
• "Rosie" from the cabin is actually Marissa Left Hand. Whether she joined some freak show willingly or was coerced into it, it's too early to tell.
• Cricket and Marybeth will enlist Nate in the search for Marissa. Given the location of her abandoned car, it's safe to assume Marissa is in the forest. And who knows those woods better than survivalist extraordinaire Nate Romanowski?
• Finally, one crazy theory: Saddlestring hunters are being poisoned. Hear me out. Marybeth was listening to a radio show geared toward hunters, and the DJ read an ad for "Buck's Deluxe Pillows," which provide "days and nights of angelic sleep." Days and nights? Sounds like death, not sleep. While the weird detail could just be a bit of thematic juice (Joe is prone to nightmares), it could also be a clue. What if hunters are being poisoned with these pillows? What if all the "drunk" hunters on Bermuda Mountain are actually being drugged? That would explain the Wendigo visions. Plus, messy cabin girl "Rosie" (has to be Marissa, right?) gave a wounded Joe a medicinal herb. Maybe she's concocting natural hallucinogenics (that don't show up in blood tests) to debilitate marked hunters.

New episodes of Joe Pickett premiere Sundays on Paramount+

READ MORE: 'Joe Pickett' Cast: Who's Coming Back to Wyoming in Season 2?