The Ultimate “Bates Motel” Catch-Up

For three seasons, fans of Bates Motel have watched the mind-bending origin story unfold in a delicious blend of psychological creepiness and primetime melodrama.

But season four promises to be the season.

Sure, the surrounding subplots – murder, drugs, sex trafficking, organized crime – are all hitting high notes, too. But season four is Norman’s season – 10 episodes of Norman becoming Norma, Norma being absorbed by Norman, and the repercussions of that transformation putting the entire town in danger.

If you haven’t watched Bates Motel, this is the time to start. And these 10 moments will lay out exactly how we got to where we are. (Needless to say, spoiler alerts lay ahead. If you prefer to catch-up the old fashioned way, you can buy seasons 1-3 on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon, or stream them on Netflix.)

Just because Norman Bates is a budding psychopath doesn’t mean he’s immune to teenage problems. While his affections are divided between Bradley and Emma, it’s Bradley – the conventional beauty – who calls him up late at night and asks him to go to her house. When he arrives, Bradley, whose father has recently died, tells Norman that she just wants to feel something different for a while. Norman, despite his awkwardness, is happy to oblige.

It’s never easy losing a pet. But when the stray dog Norman took in gets hit by a car, Norman has an especially hard time letting go. In an act of true macabre foreshadowing, Norman decides that instead of burying his pet he will instead stuff it and carry it with him.

At the school winter formal, Norman gets into a fight with Bradley’s boyfriend and storms out. While walking home in the rain, one of his teachers, Miss Watson, picks him up and takes him to her place where she “accidentally” leaves the door open while changing. The next thing you know, Norman goes into one of his blackouts and his mother appears to him in a hallucination, coaxing him to kill Miss Watson.

In season two, Norman’s psyche begins to crack. It begins to dawn on him that the chaos going on around him isn’t happening to him, it’s happening because of him. Even worse, he becomes wary of his own mother, the one person in which he sought refuge all this time.

When Norman realizes that he may have killed Miss Watson, he enters a downward spiral. Racked with guilt and self-doubt, he storms off into the woods. Norma catches up with him and, in an intense exchange, manages to calm him down, in a way that only she could.

The last hurdle for Norman in season two is evading law enforcement who suspect him of killing Miss Watson. Norman is forced to take a polygraph. In an act of psychological acrobatics and self-preservation, Norman hallucinates that Norma visits him in the polygraph testing room and tells him that she was the one who killed Miss Watson. He passes the test and is set free.

Season three sees Norman, now 18 years old, maturing from a quasi-innocent high schooler to a dangerous adult. His sexual impulses become more erratic and uncontrollable as he begins to spy on guests at the motel. Norma, meanwhile, confuses matters more, using implied sexuality to remain close to her son.

Norma flees the hotel when her brother, who abused her growing up, shows up unannounced. This sends Norman into a tailspin. One night, Norman’s brother wakes to find Norman in the kitchen, seemingly in a trance, cooking breakfast dressed as his mother.

The complicated codependent relationship between Norma and Norman reaches a head when Norman tells Norma that he is running off with Bradley. Norma – whether out of selfishness, fear for what he might do, or a combination of both – tries to prevent Norman from leaving. When he overpowers her, she resorts to knocking him unconscious and tying him up in the basement until she can decide what to do next.

In the final scene of the season three finale, Norman breaks free of his restraints and meets Bradley to run away together. But shortly into the car ride, Norman has a blackout. He tells Bradley to pull over the car; his mother needs to have a word with her. Now fully transitioned into his mother, Norman drags Bradley from the car and kills her, saying that no one will ever come between him and his mother.

Tune in to the season four premiere of Bates Motel on March 7, 9/8c on A&E.