‘Big Sky’ Season 2 Episode 12 Recap: The End Of An Era

Whew! So many shootouts, big reveals, and bigger deaths on Big Sky! Let’s start with Scarlet and Ronald. Last week, these two fugitives followed some poor, unsuspecting doctor to his home and forced him at gunpoint to treat Ronald’s wounds. This week, the doctor’s wife, realizing that two dangerous fugitives are in her home, attempts to call the police to report them, and she gets tied up and beaten. Every time you think Scarlet’s the less crazy one in the relationship, right?!

The doctor suture’s Ronald’s wounds and then shows Scarlet something peculiar: he’s found the microchip under Ronald’s skin, the one that’s helping Wolf, Cassie and Lindor track Ronald’s whereabouts RIGHT NOW. But don’t worry Scarlet, those three might be hot on your trail, but they also need to make a quick pit stop at Antlers ‘N Coffee so you have time.

Lindor feels like Wolf is leading them on a wild goose chase, and just as he convinces Cassie to haul Wolf to the police station, Wolf gets a ping on Ronald and then head off to find him. As they chase the dot on Wolf’s map, it turns out their lead isn’t Ronald, but the doctor’s wife (I’m gonna go ahead and name her Mrs. Bechdel, so I don’t have to call her “the doctor’s wife” anymore), who explains that she was forced to swallow the microchip and drive around. But what then, right? Once she was found, does Scarlet really not think Mrs. Bechdel won’t give away their real location?

At this point in the episode, I am desperate to know what Alicia’s deal is. Veer Bhullar’s girlfriend is always a little too interested in the conversations between Verr and his kids, Ren and Jag, despite being told in no uncertain terms to stay out of their business. This week, Verr tells his children he wants to accelerate the plans to move their drug enterprise out of Canada and into Montana and Alicia goes on a tangent about leaving that filthy, hockey-loving country behind. Ren’s “WTF is this lady’s deal?” antenna pricks up, finally and she starts to wonder why Alicia is so interested in their affairs all of a sudden.

Over at an undisclosed parking garage somewhere, T-Lock has arranged to do a money drop and hand over the cash he took to Bob, Dietrich’s ruthless former lackey who’s now in business for himself, because Bob is holding T-Lock’s girlfriend Rachel and her daughter Max hostage. Jenny and her team, including Travis, wire up T-Lock so they can track the whole encounter. T-Lock receives a call from Bob, who tells him to take off the wire or Rachel will get killed, so T-Lock complies, and gives T-Lock instructions on where to go next.

Jenny realizes that T-Lock is compromised, so as T-Lock is led by Bob on a wild scavenger hunt of sorts, 60 miles out of town, and Jenny, Travis and Jenny’s partner with the funny name I can never remember track him. They find T-Lock’s abandoned car and are like, “Welp, no sign of him!” (can’t they look for footprints?) and discuss what they should do next, when the see a light flashing from the train yard where Bob had led them all. Max and Rachel, tied up inside Bob’s van, manage to turn on the van’s hazard lights, which apparently shine so bright Grauman’s Chinese Theater uses them on movie premiere night, and they follow the light toward the hostages. Meanwhile, T-Lock is still meandering through the train yard looking for Bob. He finally finds him and Bob demands the money, and T-Lock is like, “but where are Max and Rachel?” because I guess the lights from the hazards on the van can only be seen from a certain angle.

And now for the shootout! T-Lock pulls a gun on Bob and cries about the fact that, for the first time in his life he wants to do something right, and he threatens to shoot Bob if he doesn’t lead him to Rachel and Max. He shoots Bob, who falls, and T-Lock turns his back on the body, screaming for Rachel. Bob reanimates (he was wearing a bullet-proof vest!) and shoots T-Lock in the back. T-Lock, not wearing a vest, falls, and as Bob points the gun at him for the kill shot, he’s shot, again, from behind. It’s Jenny! Woo! But Bob manages to grab the bag of money and run. Jenny stays with T-Lock, who tells her to tell Rachel he’s sorry. “You can tell her yourself,” Jenny says, offering some very brief, very false hope because he dies one second later. Farewell, you smoothie king.

Bob fleeing on foot with Travis close behind him. He climbs a fence and Travis shoots at him, causing Bob to drop the bag of money and run off. And Travis, our triple agent whose loyalty lies all over the place, grabs the money (but where?! Where did he even put it?!) and tells Jenny that Bob escaped with it, but he can’t get far. And just when we think Travis is going to… come clean or something, he’s like “Hey Jenny – ” and Jenny’s phone rings with a message that Cassie and Lindor are about to apprehend Ronald.

Jenny scrambles off to back them up. And Travis does a fine bit of “Smell the fart acting,” befuddled at his moral compromise.

Cassie, Lindor, and Wolf, who is handcuffed to the car, drive up to the house where Ronald and Scarlet are (with their full headlights a-blazing, giving away their arrival) and Scarlet’s like, “Shit, we gotta go!” and as she readies Ronald to flee, the doctor comes up behind her and stabs her with a scalpel. She falls to the floor, and Ronald, who had shown no sign of strength or consciousness whatsoever for the entire episode, gets off of his makeshift surgery slab, and snaps the doctor’s neck with his bare hands. He hides in the doctor’s house (which is, conveniently, a under construction and covered in a maze of plastic film hanging in every room), and Lindor and Cassie search all over for him. As Cassie finds Phoebe, who has been in the house, Wolf, who was left behind in the car, breaks free of his handcuffs and you know that the man hell-bent on taming Ronald, is finally ready to put him down.

Ronald escapes the house out an open window, and as he walks through the grounds, Wolf attacks him from behind in a barn. And now, the second of our three way shootouts is about to go down! Wolf points his gun at Ronald, and Lindor walks in and points his gun at Wolf, telling him not to shoot. Wolf taunts Lindor, like, “Oh whattya gonna do, arrest him?” and he points the gun at Ronald. Lindor shoots Wolf to prevent him from killing Ronald, but in the process, Wolf’s gun is thrust up and he accidentally shoots Lindor. WHAT.

Lindor seems okay though, when Cassie shows up in the barn, Lindor says he’s called for backup, and Cassie runs off to find Ronald. He attacks her with a crowbar-type hook (I assume there’s a more farm-y name for whatever tool it is) and basically stabs her in the chest with it. He tells her she should have stopped looking for him and just let him go, and then Phoebe runs into the barn, distracting Ronald for a second, and Cassie takes the hook out of her own wound and STABS RONALD IN THE NECK. “I was a good boy,” he laments as he keels over. Cassie paid a price for her pursuit of Ronald Pergman, but at long last, she got her man.

Let’s just take a look at the numbers for this episode before we leave, because they’re not insignificant: Dead people: R.I.P. to the poor doctor, T-Lock, Scarlet, and Ronald all killed (I think… Just when I assume someone’s dead they always pop back to life). Mysterious up-to-bo-gooders: Two. We’ve got one Travis who is even more mysterious and devious than we thought. And Alicia, who is hiding a secret, along with Verr, from Ren and Jag. Injured in battle? Three: Cassie, a Lindor, and a Wolf, all critically wounded in their search for Ronald. Major storylines resolved? One: Congrats to us all, wrapped up the two-season-long search for Ronald and Scarlet. May we all pour out some Cocoa Chunks in Ronald’s honor.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.