In the latest installment of Freeform’s supernatural-thriller Dead of Summer, the counselors are no longer in a state of denial about the strange things that have been happening at Camp Stillwater and they realize it is up to the to save the camp.
In order to do that, they have to learn who is the leader pulling the strings. In the closing moments of last week’s episode, “Townie,” Deputy Garrett Sykes (Alberto Frezza) came face to face with the man in power — Sheriff Heelan (Charles Mesure) — and gunned him down to his death.
“What we discover in [“Townie”] is the Teacher has been a force behind the scenes that has been manipulating the Satanists to try to bring back this demon,” Dead of Summer Co-Creator Adam Horowitz says.
“We learn that it’s not just out of pure evil, it’s out of this sense of being a powerless person in a small town who now has found an outlet for that frustration.”
“[Sheriff] Heelan realized that there is a power to be tapped into at this lake and that takes you from being a townie to something extraordinary,” adds fellow co-creator Ian B. Goldberg.
Right before his death, Heelan admitted that he wasn’t responsible for killing Dave and Carolina “Cricket” Diaz (Amber Coney).
“If Heelan didn’t kill Cricket, then who?” co-creator Edward Kitsis asks. “Was it the Tall Man, was it the demon? That question will haunt Sykes and the rest of the campers for the rest of the season.”
Viewers did see a mask-wearing Satanist cult member standing in the distance during the final seconds of the episode, but with the whole lot of them sacrificing themselves in a pool of their blood earlier, it definitely couldn’t have been one of them.
Maybe the one in the mask was already dead. The love scene between Deb Carpenter (Elizabeth Mitchell) and the ghost of Keith (Dylan Neal) was probably shown for a reason — to let us know that those on the other side can do things physically here in our world with the living.
That said, it’s quite possible that Cricket’s killer could have been someone who died previously: Keith, Garrett’s father Jack (Dan Payne), or maybe even Joel’s brother Michael (Lovell Adams-Gray)!
On tonight’s episode, “The Devil Inside,” Cricket returns from the dead, so hopefully she could provide her fellow counselors some insight on what happened that night.
Dead of Summer airs Tuesdays at 9pm on Freeform.