Keep posted here and on our Facebook page as we’ll keep you updated on all the happening surrounding this. And don’t forget, as of right now “The River” has not been officially canceled by ABC…

The episode started off with a bang… literally. Within the first 10 minutes someone had tried to kill Emmet, but instead shot Lincoln in the neck killing him almost instantly. Don’t worry though, Jahel talked to some static on the radio and learned how to bring Lincoln’s spirit back from the dead and back into his body… or so she thought. Tess is all about doing whatever it takes to bring Lincoln back, but Emmet is skeptical as he knows the power the Boiuna holds and how evil it can be. Going against Emmet, Jahel and Tess retreat to the bottom of the ship to perform the ritual to bring Lincoln back… and it works, sort of.

Water rushes into the room where Lincoln’s body is being kept and when Tess goes to open the door he’s standing there, alive. It’s pretty apparent right away that there is something “off” about Lincoln, that he’s not himself, and Emmet picks up on it pretty quickly, but not before Lincoln can do some damage of his own. He immediately tells the group that he knows who shot him and points the finger at everyone’s favorite mercenary, Kurt. Kurt denies it, but they lock him in a room anyways. Lincoln then goes to make a delicious sandwich, because we all know that coming back from the dead will make a man hungry. Finding it difficult to cut the hard salami due to his hands still being numb, Jonas offers to help him at which point Lincoln reveals that it was Jonas that actually shot him. Jonas was trying to shoot Emmet, but Lincoln stepped in the way and took the bullet in the neck. Lincoln slowly moves towards Jonas telling him that he’s not going to tell anyone and that he called out Kurt because he has unfinished business with him, and then he ripped out Jonas’ throat, spewing blood everywhere and probably ruining his sandwich. Then he goes to pay a visit to Kurt.

Evil-Lincoln has some connection with Kurt or Kurt’s ancestors as they have a brief conversation in Latin, I believe, so you know there is much more to Kurt’s backstory than we found out in the first season. Lincoln roughs him up a bit, but doesn’t kill him and then heads back up to the deck of the Magus.

Emmet knows that this is not his Lincoln and informs Lena, they devise a plot to use some sort of “potion” to drug the evil-Lincoln and tie him up so he can’t escape… and that was basically the rest of the episode. The whole group gathers as Lincoln twists and contorts in his restraints like he was in “The Exorcist”. The spirit of the Boiuna is inside of him and won’t let Lincoln’s spirit come through. Eventually someone has the bright idea to bring Kurt up and see what he knows and he tells Emmet that he needs to talk to his son and not the “black snake” aka “Boiuna” spirit in order to get the spirit to leave. Emmet takes this opportunity to apologize for everything that he missed in Lincoln’s life and promise that he won’t miss anything else. This was apparently enough to drive the evil spirit out and let Lincoln shine through.

With Lincoln back, Jonas dead and Kurt hiding some unknown secrets, the group started making their way back towards home. When they make it to the entrance of the Boiuna the GPS starts to go on the fritz and the fork in the river they are supposed to see is not there… They send a camera on a helicopter up in the sky, which I didn’t know they had this whole time, and it reveals that the river is constantly changing and there’s no way they can escape…. the end.

I thought it was a pretty solid finale last night. There are definitely still some questions that need to be answered, but if this is really the final episode that we get to see then I’m ok with it. The whole point of the show was the quest to find Emmet Cole… and they did. Sure Kurt’s backstory is now a bigger mystery and one I’d like to see solved, and Lena’s birthmark has to have some greater meaning, but at least we have some closure on the overall goal of the show. Nothing is set in stone yet in terms of whether or not the show will return for a second season, but we’ll keep you updated on this site if we hear anything.

So what did you guys think of this episode and “The River” as a whole? Did you like the found-footage style of it? Are you upset at the possibility of no second season? Let’s spark up some discussion either in the comments here or over at The River Forum.

If you’re not watching the show Live, DO NOT join the live blog… there are huge spoilers.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

In the first-season finale, the violent death of a crew member plunges the Magus into chaos and forces the others to live in fear, while Jahel ignores her father to desperately call for spiritual help.

Alright, with that being said let’s talk about this week’s episode, “The Experiment”. Last week left us on the outskirts of some sort of outpost where Emmet Cole was brought after being found in the woods by a tribe of natives. The rescue group finds the outpost desolate and destroyed. Determined to find Emmet, they trek inside to try and piece together what happened to the people that were there not six months earlier. Shortly after entering, Kurt the security guard, takes off on his own as the group is distracted by a freezer full of dead bodies. He makes his way through the compound trying to find his fiance, of whom he’s told nobody about. Of course our camera man follows him and catches him looking through her things as he finds her room which leads to a brief confrontation and ends with a creepy shot of the bathroom door… It turns out “Rabbit”, the girl that deserted Emmet in the jungle last week, was hiding out in the bathroom trying to avoid being killed by the cannibalistic monsters that all of the people had become.

Meanwhile back in the kitchen, Lincoln goes into the walk-in freezer full of bodies to see if Emmet is amongst them… he’s not. It’s at this point that Tess thinks she sees a signal mirror coming from the infirmary which Rabbit has no informed us is the last place she saw Emmet. As they make their way towards the infirmary the zombie-cannibal creatures start to chase them through the hallways, leaving them trapped in an office… an office which conveniently has a computer with digital video of what happened to the people there. It turns out that Kurt’s fiance is responsible for allowing the cancer-curing virus to escape in a lethal form and infect everyone. Kurt has a hard time believing it until the creatures fall asleep and they sneak out towards the signal mirror… and Kurt runs into his fiance sleeping on the ground, covered in puss-ridden sores. The rest of the group continues on as gunshots are seen and heard from Kurt’s location, making us assume that he put his fiance down… then it’s time to head to the infirmary to find Emmet.

Upon reaching the infirmary it’s discovered that the signal mirror that Tess thought she saw was actually just a wind chime, which leads her to the realization that Emmet is probably dead… and that’s when the dragonfly appears. Lincoln takes it as a sign and follows it up to the roof of the building where they find Emmet in a cocoon of some sort. They cut him out and he’s still barely alive… but he’s alive. They run back to the Magus as they are being chased by the cannibal creatures and finally make it back to safety, or so they thought. As Rabbit is sitting out on the front of the boat, Tess comes out and tells her that at the next village she’ll have to find her own way home. They all saw Rabbit abandon Emmet on the tapes so there’s no way they are about to help her out now. But that’s ok because in the next scene Rabbit meets her demise as Kurt’s not-so-dead finance storms the boat and kills her. Kurt makes his way topside and after an emotional scene, shoots her in the head… but there’s more. Down below one of the creatures managed to break down the door to the kitchen where Tess was hiding out, but just when the creature was about to attack it was shot in the head… by Emmet Cole. “How was my funeral” fade-to-black.

I liked the episode overall and I think it was a nice setup for the finale. I’m actually glad we found Emmet Cole this week and it wasn’t the very last thing that happened because now maybe we’ll get some answers out of him and maybe they’ll all find “The Source” together. There were a few things I didn’t like though. How did they get the security footage of Lena fainting in the sporting goods store? If this is supposed to be footage that they shot and edited while on their rescue mission, where did that footage come from? And how did the 5 or so people that were exposed to the virus end up killing everyone in the compound? Clearly there had to be more security than just Kurt’s fiance… so how did they all die and end up in the freezer? They never really explained if they were zombie-like in that if they bit people they would become infected also. And lastly, as soon as the group reached the Magus they started moving… so how did the creature-people end up on the boat?

I liked the overall idea of the episode and most of it was perfectly fine for me, but there were definitely some questions left unanswered. I hope next week wraps everything up nicely, I hope we find out why Kurt is so adamant about killing Emmet, I hope we figure out what the mark on Lena’s next means in terms of her and I hope we find the source. If those things happen I’ll be happy with the way the series played out. At this point I don’t really think we’re going to get a second season, which sucks, but at least if we get answers to those questions I won’t be left hanging like I was with shows like “Flash Forward” and “The Event”.

The Experiment

The crew is terrorized by a cannibalistic entity while exploring an abandoned research facility for clues that Emmet Cole may still be alive. Meanwhile, Kurt’s role as security chief for the Magus puts his personal safety at great risk.

The whole episode basically revolved around Emmet and the chick from Paranormal Activity running around in the jungle looking for “The Source” of the magic in the jungle… all the while being stalked by a demon that loves riddles. Even though that part was kind of weird I thought the episode as a whole was good. Towards the end there I really thought he was going to kill his dog… I kept thinking if I was in his situation and starving I would eat the only food source I had… but then the more I thought about it there is no way I could murder my dog and eat him. Thankfully the tribe of natives Emmet was searching for saved him and brought him to some sort of refugee camp which gives the rescue missing a bit of hope… for a while. Once they see that Emmet was brought somewhere where he could have been saved, they immediately set out into the jungle to find the camp. However, upon reaching the camp they find it destroyed and abandoned… but don’t worry, the dog is still alive and well.

The previews for the next upcoming episode looked pretty cool, looks like we may get a taste of some sort of zombies. With only 2 more episodes left, in what could be the first and last season of the show, things are looking up for me and I’ve really enjoyed the journey so far. Of course I wish that more people enjoyed it and it would continue, but you gotta be thankful for what you’re given.

After finding Emmet’s camera bag during a trek to the Sahte Falls, the Magus crew examines the tapes and finds footage of Emmet spiraling out of control, while Lena reveals a dark secret, unaware of the consequences.

 

The Magus crew are run aground by another vessel, and soon learn that the seemingly welcoming crew members of a ship claiming to have come to their rescue have in fact a very different agenda, causing a dire, life-and-death situation. The crew also make a shocking discovery that will leave one of them in tears.

As the group is scour the river on their way to the next “location of interest”, Jahel begins to have premonitions and bad thoughts again. She clearly has some sort of power or ability that we haven’t been made fully aware of yet, but sure enough, “the hanging man” is found, and it’s Jonas. Jonas is found hanging from the same vines that we see throughout the episode, as well as the same vines we saw Lincoln clearing out of the boats propeller in the first episode. The whole crew thinks he hung himself and is dead, but then suddenly he gasps for air and the crew scrambles to get him down.

Once he’s on the boat Lincoln determines that he has malaria and they need to get him back to a hospital for treatment, but Tess isn’t having any of it and wants to continue on their search for Emmet. She doesn’t want to lose time by back tracking to get him to safety. Lincoln makes a good point though, Jonas is the best chance they have of finding Emmet and he’s of no use to them if he’s dead. Tess decides he’s right and tells them to turn the boat around, but as soon as she does it’s brought to her attention that there is a massive storm coming right at them and they are never going to outrun it. The River is generating this storm as a way to keep them from letting Jonas leave.

We later found out, from old tapes, that Jonas didn’t listen to Emmet and filmed the natives during a funeral and essentially captured the dying man’s soul with his camera phone. It’s because of this that the jungle will not let him leave and he must pay for what he did. The jungle will kill anyone or anything in it’s way in order to make sure that Jonas pays for what he did. At one point a noose appears from one of the vines, indicating that the jungle wants Jonas to hang himself again in order to make things right. This leads to a pretty heated argument between the group as Lincoln is very against killing one of the only people that may be able help them find Emmet, where Tess just wants to save the boat and the crew in order to continue the search. Eventually Jonas just gives himself up to save the rest of the crew, which turns out to be a good move because the vine only wanted to hold onto him for a couple more seconds I guess. Or it could have been because Tess charged up Jonas’ dead cell phone, which held the video of the spirit escaping the man from earlier, which then allowed the soul to leave the phone… I guess.

I thought the episode was pretty good, better than last week’s, but still not as good as the first two. There was a lot going on this week that I liked, it kept the pacing up and left less slow parts. I still don’t get how Jahel knows everything about everything when it comes to this magical place, but hopefully we’ll find out eventually. I’m going to continue with the show through the first season, but honestly the ratings aren’t looking good, so I’m not sure if we’ll get a 2nd season or not. I don’t dislike the show and will continue to watch, but I don’t know if the rest of the world feels the same way…

What do you guys think so far? Do you like the show? Will you be upset if there’s no 2nd season at this point?