Fire
Episode 6 of Echoes starts with Gina waking up in hospital. We’re still filling in the gaps as we see her learning Leni and the family are inbound to her location. Breathing heavily, she decides to leave. Gina heads to Georgia’s, working with her to send Leni off on her wild goose chase. Georgia was never attacked, as it turns out, she actually staged the whole thing to give Gina the time she needed to get away. In fact, she also planted the knife in her car and get her sister incriminated for Dylan’s murder. Floss interviews Leni, who’s convinced that Gina has framed her. She brings up how convenient and quickly the pictures of her meeting with Payne came through. Off the back of this, along with details surrounding Robert Craghorne (the man who died in the church fire) Floss decides to arrest Gina too. So now we have both sisters in custody, and we flit back and forth between the two, as Floss tries to make sense of what’s been happening between them. Along with that, we also see exactly what happened when the fire was started in the church. Leni was the one who orchestrated everything but Floss isn’t so sure on this narrative. In fact, she’s convinced that the twins are using their identical looks to deceive and confuse others. So naturally, from the church fire we move across to the 60k elephant in the room. When Victor is called in to see both girls, Floss watches their interactions intently on the monitors. She’s intrigued to see exactly how the girls react. However, Paula shows up with big news. It turns out the DNA prints have come back and both Dylan and Gina’s DNA is all over the cabin. Floss is taken aback, especially as she expected it to be Leni’s, while the CCTV footage hints at big holes in Gina’s story. Upon hearing this, Gina admits the truth – that she and Leni have been switching lives every year on their birthday. Floss has no choice but to free both women, given she has no idea who’s really telling the truth, but promises to come after them both when she works out what’s really happening. With the truth now out, tensions are high between Leni and Jack. Jack is hurt at being deceived for so many years. Jack points out she’s destroyed their life off the back of her lies and it’s also ruined their personal and business relationships too. In fact, Jack is so angry that he kicks Leni out and is dead-set on her not seeing Mattie for the foreseeable future. As for Gina, she meets a frosty reception from Claudia. That is, until she points out that Leni was the one who knocked her over in the past. Leni was the one who orchestrated the whole thing and decided they should switch. Still, Claudia isn’t in the forgiving mood given what’s gone down between them. When Victor collapses, Gina shows up and tries to call 911. However, Victor stops her and outright apologizes for what’s happened in the past. He knows she was there when the unthinkable happened. Remember those flashes of the bath? It seems to hint that Victor drowned her mother there, given his last words to Gina is that it’s “what she wanted.” As Victor passes away, Leni shows up and learns what’s happened to their father. She’s shocked and decides to concoct a plan to explain away Victor’s death. I mean, I’m not sure why to be honest given Victor’s deteriorating health is common knowledge in these parts but whatever. Gina has had enough of plans though and points a gun at Leni, demanding the truth. It turns out Leni did stab Dylan but apparently it was done as an act of self defence given he turned violent. As the girls fight, they accidentally start a fire that spreads across the house. As they both contemplate what to do, the flames continue to lick hungrily across the house.
The Episode Review
I said in the last recap that Echoes was in danger of meandering through its storyline and struggling to justify playing its hand so early. Alas, that materializes here as we see the fallout from the girls’ lies to the neighbourhood. A lot of the conversations drag on and don’t really resolve anything. We essentially see how damaging the whole thing has been for Jack and the others but in terms of plot and character development, there’s really not a whole lot of it here. However, this is still a watchable series, if at least just to see how the ending pans out for this one. That certainly hints toward things picking up for a bombastic conclusion to this story. Whether that will be enough to elevate this thriller or not though, remains to be seen.
