“It only makes sense from an astrophysics standpoint.”

A jolly opening at a September music festival in Indian Wells drops away as the screen falls blank and the audio falls silent. Did Sam do the Bad Thing this time, or was a higher power responsible? We finally learn more in this pivotal episode.

Sam gets the girl, Daisy, but his idyllic, hedonistic weekend soon turns into a nightmare. The accused and incarcerated Sam (unfortunately for our other suspect ‘The Universe’) is an astrophysicist and he has the brains to start fitting together the disparate pieces of the Calls puzzle, much as a hexagon tessellates with other hexagons in a honeycomb.

Conversations between Sam and his father Frank (conveniently a lawyer) and then Frank and Sam’s other friends Lou and Ramona provide the backstory to that fateful festival and we come to understand Daisy’s motivation… She too has seemingly had a call from a time traveller but this time instead of redemption the dialogue set off a chain of events that would ultimately prove disastrous. Did the call fulfil its own prophecy the minute Daisy made her decision, or was the Universe simply making a pre-destined course-correction? It’s all getting quite existential.

For the first time, we get a direct reference to a case from a previous episode as the details of the trauma Sam witnesses (or perpetrates if you’re Lou or Ramona) have some key similarities, so the ideas we could only guess at earlier in the series are coalescing into a solid theory. A bonkers, supernatural one, yes, but you are reading this on Sci-Fi Bulletin so I’m guessing you’re not here for your ‘science-fact’ fix. Stick with Calls, it’s getting interesting… stay through the credits again or you’ll miss another clue.

Verdict: The jigsaw pieces are starting to click together, but will we ever know who or what is behind the unnatural phenomena stalking the States? 9/10

Claire Smith

Calls is streaming now on Apple TV+