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Joel and Will get sent documentation that gives them every answer they want. Station Thirteen. The Scratching Mass. The railway. The church. All of it.

But why?

There’s a moment almost exactly at the halfway point of this episode where this exchange happens:

‘So it becomes hard to think straight.’
‘No it becomes far too easy to think straight.’

That’s the genius of the episode, and the show, in a perfectly turned piece of dialogue. Joel and Will, and we, get every answer we want and get it in my favourite way: an extended conversation with a polite, sinister man who clearly knows It All. I’ve loved this beat since Donald Sutherland’s barnstorming 15 minute monologue in JFK and I’d wager Joel and Will are fond of the same scene. The fact it takes place in the middle of a field, at night, in freezing temperatures gives it the same slightly curdled rural edge the entire show has had. The fact the character is, if I’m reading the cast right, carefully not named curdles things even further. A fictional character in a fictional show, presenting information about what seems to be real places and refusing to be held down to petty certainties like whether or not he’s real. The fact that the voice distortion makes him sound uncannily like Jeremy Clarkson just helps break the veil even further.

This is normally the point where I, and odds are you, would get screamingly frustrated. Because this is normally the point where a conspiracy story collapses into ‘OR DID THEY?!’ and ‘You’re SO close, Mr Mulder. But not close enough’ as we all realise that the most fun thing about these stories is never the destination, but the journey.

That idea is central to both this episode and Joel and Will’s arc. Because as the episode closes, the show turns over two last cards. The first is the human cost of doing this work, as both become acutely aware that they’re screenwriters, in a field, being told enormous terrifying truths by a man who may or may not be a dangerous lunatic. The frames he gives them for the information are brilliantly thought out, endlessly compelling, plausible and impossible to prove. All we know is all we ever know in paranormal research and paranormal fiction. Something impossible brushed past it, and we felt it move and felt a terrible sense of relief when it moved on., They were right. Something was very very odd and still is. But that’s all the catharsis they, and we, can stand.

The second is a piece of aural close up magic that winks at us as the show ends and gives us, if anything, even more answers.

Verdict: It’s witty, playful, dark and fiercely clever and is a perfect sign-off to a season of neat, precise, delightfully unsettling storytelling. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart