Three Pines season 1 episodes 3 and 4 recap & review

In episodes 3 and 4, Inspector Gamache returns to Three Pines when another murder takes place and more mysteries are unfurled in the disappearance of Blue Two Rivers. The episodes are streaming on Prime Video.

Episode 3 recap: The Cruellest Month part 1

Some of the villagers from Three Pines head up to the now-abandoned residential school to burn it down but they find some teenagers in there and clear them out. While they’re there, Marc Fortier checks the basement and is attacked by someone.

Armand is headed there with Isabelle as his superior is on the phone telling him to drop the Blue Two Rivers case and investigate Marc’s disappearance. They search the house with Jean-Guy and agent Nichol and they find a secret room with a cell that has Marc’s body.

They also find traces of gasoline around the house. They start their investigation by questioning Hayden and his daughter Sophie. Hayden was Marc’s best friend and Marc was staying at their house after losing his wife to lymphoma.

Sophie has ocular albinism and Hayden is extremely protective of her. He’s hyper-focused since she’s headed to college soon. Jean-Guy finds empty bottles of alcohol in Sophie’s bedroom and she asks them why they went there.

Armand also finds a picture of the residential school and evidence that Marc’s father was the janitor there. Isabelle points out that the social media picture of Blue is altered and they dig into it further.

Armand and Jean-Guy question the other people who went to the house and some of them talk about old ghost stories attached to the house, especially one particular spirit called the caretaker. Armand doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Marc’s father was a janitor there.

He goes back to the Be Calm centre and he notices that Bea has a tattoo in Syllabics that they also found in the secret room. When he asks her about it, she says that it is personal and also denies being there that night.

Isabelle visits the Two Rivers house to talk to Arisawe to find out more about Tommy and Kevin. She goes to their house to search but doesn’t find anything concrete.

Agent Nichol tells Armand and Jean-Guy that they’ve been invited to Peter and Clara Morrow’s house for dinner. When they get there, they find several other villagers too and they all want to know more about Marc’s death.

Sophie continues to drink to hide something that is bothering her, Bea is later seen obsessing over an article about Marc and Peter deletes his conversations with Marc from his phone.

Jean-Guy confirms that Marc’s father was the janitor at St Anthony’s and that there were several allegations of abuse. He also finds out that Bea was at that school as well and the Syllabics were Bea’s original native name.

Armand asks her about Marc and St Anthony’s and she doesn’t reveal much apart from her hatred for the experience there.

Agent Nichol finds a key hidden in Marc’s stuff with a picture of a goose as the keychain and they ask Ruth about it. She says that she has a cabin in the woods that Marc rented for a few months.

When they go out there to check it out, they find someone else and chase after him. When they catch up to him, they see that it is Peter Morrow.

Episode 4 recap: The Cruellest Month part 2

A young Bea is caught by the caretaker while trying to run away as 3 other boys manage to escape. Armand and Jean-Guy question Peter about his conversations with Marc and assume that they’re having an affair.

Peter says that Marc was his therapist and he didn’t want anyone to find out what he talked about during his sessions. That’s why he went to the cabin to find Marc’s laptop. Armand asks Clara what she thought about their Marc and Peter’s friendship and she says that she was annoyed but not enough to kill.

Isabelle goes back to Kevin and Tommy’s house and this time, she finds evidence of blood being cleaned up and some loose hairs. She gets a forensics team to collect the samples.

When she returns home, she finds an inspector from the Department of Youth Protection at her doorstep. The inspector says that they received an anonymous tip that Isabelle was a neglectful mother.

Agent Nichol looks finds a video on one of the teenager’s phones that they found on the scene and on it there is proof that Sophie and Bea were at St Anthony’s the night Marc died even though Bea denied being there and Hayden said Sophie wasn’t there either.

Armand confronts Bea about lying to him but she says she has no regrets but she didn’t kill Marc. Jean-Guy does some more research and discovers that 3 boys tried to run away from St Anthony’s and supposedly drowned in a nearby river. One of them happened to be Bea’s brother.

They also see that Arisawe was also at the school at the same time. Isabelle tells Armand about the anonymous complaint against her and he tells her that things will be alright.

That night, Isabelle and Jean-Guy are guarding the crime scene and they find a secret passageway where Marc’s phone is hidden. Armand tells Peter that he got rid of his therapy sessions from Marc’s laptop and lets him know that his secrets are a huge burden on the soul.

Armand and Isabelle visit Arisawe to update them on Blue’s case and Blue’s sister admits to making the anonymous complaint and apologizes. They also ask her about St Anthony’s and she believes that the caretaker actually killed the boys and buried them in the basement.

Armand goes to the basement that night and starts digging, eventually finding some remains. They dig up the three bodies and Armand informs Bea that they finally found her brother. She later tells him that she saw Hayden, Sophie and Marc arguing heatedly the morning of Marc’s death.

Marc’s phone has voice notes between him and Sophie revealing that he was helping her get into NYU so she can move away from her controlling father but he didn’t want to keep it a secret from Hayden any longer.

They rush to Hayden’s house but they are not there. Hayden and Sophie are on the road and soon a police car follows them but Hayden refuses to stop until they’re forced to when a bear blocks the road.

The officers catch up and Armand orders Sophie and Hayden to slowly get out. They arrest Hayden and he admits that he killed Marc by accident because he felt that Marc was stealing his daughter away from him.

As they’re packing up their stuff, they hear that there is an incident at St Anthony’s and when they get there, they find that it is ablaze.

Review

• The influence of Indigenous culture is so beautifully done in this series and is an amazing showcase of what makes it so refined. The additions to the soundtrack as well as the visual references are so emotionally heavy.
• There are so many moments where a meaningful look between two characters tells a thousand words and that is a credit to Tracey Deer’s direction because the dramatic intensity is so heightened and engrossing.
• Having Armand Gamache’s tales split into two episodes each is a good decision as each of the cases get ample time to breathe without being too overwhelming.

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Also Read: Three Pines season 1 episodes 1 and 2 recap & review