Paper Girls hits a season high with its fantastic third episode, “Blue Tongues Don’t Lie,” as a new figure enters the fray while Mac learns more about her future self- and she doesn’t like what she finds. Let’s dive in!
Last Testimony | A woman named Juniper (Celeste Arias) is in a field watching something through her binoculars communicating with a guy named Larry (Nate Corddry) over walkie talkie. They talk about someone making it out of 1988 before Juniper’s signal goes dark and Larry records his will on a tape recorder, stating his name, birthday and saying “Blue tongues don’t lie” in case someone steals his memory. Later that night, he goes to a house to see Juniper, but she has no idea who he is. When he plays her tape recorder with her testimony on it, she doesn’t remember and tells him to leave.
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Dead Girl Walking | After Larry freaks out in his van, a pager goes off saying “System armed.” He tracks down the signal to Future Erin (Ali Wong), who has the device and follows her as she picks up Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), Tiffany (Camryn Jones) and KJ (Fina Strazza). Meanwhile, Mac (Sofia Rosinsky) is jamming to Danzig in a hospital waiting room when her future brother, Dylan (Cliff Chamberlain), arrives and is shell shocked to see her- especially since he says that Mac died when she was 16!
Mac is obviously shook by this news and to make matters worse, Dylan calls a social worker to talk to Mac assuming that she’s mentally ill. After Mac leaves, though, Dylan sees his old Walkman sitting on the table and takes a DNA sample from the glass she was drinking from, confirming her identity. Dylan tells the social worker to get rid of her file, lying to her that she’s his child and he wants to handle it quietly. He takes her to his Tesla and tells her that he became a doctor because she wanted better for him. When Mac unsuccessfully tries to put her cassette tape in the air vent, he blasts Danzig on the radio and they drive off.
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Things Get Trippy | As soon as Mac and Dylan leave, Future Erin and the other girls arrive at the hospital, but Future Erin gets tasered by Larry, who shoves her in his van and drives off with the girls in hot pursuit. They arrive at a farm, but Larry knocks out the tires of the car Tiffany is driving and then sends the four of them to his basement until morning. Larry demands to know who they’re working for and how they got the device and when KJ tells him about how they got it and how the guys who gave it to them were killed, Larry gets very upset.
Mac is taken in by Dylan and his wife, with Dylan telling his wife that she’s his cousin, and he wants to make sure that she doesn’t die from the brain disease that her future self died from, while at the hospital, Prioress (Adina Porter) tracks down the social worker who interviewed Mac. After Larry grieves the loss of the men who helped the girls, he explains all to them: He and the men are members of the STF Underground, who is at war with the Old Watch- the soldiers including Prioress- over illegal time travel that the STF is trying to use to correct mistakes in history. The Old Watch wants to keep history exactly as is and will kill anyone who time travels illegally- including the girls. He takes the girls to a silo on his farm and shows them what’s inside: a giant “Pacific Rim” looking robot.
Paper Girls is now streaming on Prime Video.