Colter rolls into Oregon to help childhood friend Lizzy track down her missing, storm chasing daughter.

The season finale closes a lot of the disparate strings of the show together. We get a near complete return for Colter’s team, some welcome backstory on Colter, a little more Russell (sort of) and a solid main story.

Jennifer Morrison, an This is Us alum like Hartley, is excellent as the resolute and smart Lizzy. She’s not given a tremendous amount to do but that actually plays in her favour. Lizzy is as switched on as Colter is and is one of the few people we’ve seen him treat as an equal. The fact their parents were apparently having an affair changes the tone of Colter’s entire relationship with his family and the final scenes here blow up everything Colter thought he knew. We get a reveal of his mother’s affair, news that some of his dad’s research survived and near confirmation that both Colter’s mom and sister are lying to him. It’s a brilliant move, upending this stoic, determined defender of his family’s entire worldview. Right now it also looks dangerously close to ‘DON’T TRUST WOMEN EVER’ style nonsense but the show has earned enough trust in this first year for me to suspect we’re getting nothing of the sort.

Elsewhere, Fiona Rene has enormous fun with a confrontation with Michael Benyaer’s superbly calm main villain and some intriguing story beats of her own. We see what amounts to snippets of a Reenie-centric episode as she quits her job and Colter almost persuades her to come out and join him. It’s an intriguing set up and one that puts Reenie on the same page as Colter or at least travelling in the same direction.

The main mystery plot doesn’t disappoint either and continues to mine the smalltown noir tone the show’s been really good at all year. Burgess’ determined stormchaser/teen detective feels like another character we could stand to spend more time with as does Jason Diaz’s scene-stealing Deputy Kelman. This is the sort of character the show has excelled at all season: a local doing their best, living their own life and it briefly intersecting with Colter’s. It’s such a simple, strong move and it means these 13 standalone episodes have for the most part felt consequential and deeply plotted.

As we leave the season then, Colter is closer to Russell’s view of the family than ever before and looks set to be directly investigating his dad’s case. I’m fascinated by just what his dad was doing for the government and why, as we find out this episode, his sister has chosen not to tell him about the files. Are they about him? Is Colter some form of enhanced human? Is the show going to go full conspiracy? I have no idea but big events like that are all on the table and that’s a brilliant place to end a strong freshman year.

Verdict: Never stopping accelerating from that slow start, this has become the new standard bearer for procedural TV and a show I’m really looking forward to seeing return. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart