‘The Terror’ Recap: ‘We Are Gone’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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If there’s one thing people love when it comes to a story, it’s a happy ending. For joyful finales help provide us with hope, comfort and a sense of safety, and we enjoy those things because we know that in real life, happy endings aren’t always the norm. It’s one of the many reasons we enjoy the escape and safety of fiction, since we can find uplifting wonders within the framework of a story. But sometimes, the happy ending just isn’t possible when it comes to storytelling, and the characters we love must suffer as people often do in real life, and it just so happens that a sour ending is what awaited Captain Crozier and the men he commands in the season one finale of The Terror.
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For ‘We Are Gone’ was quite frankly an angry and twisted tale, one filled with surprises and sorrow and oddly enough, sacrifice and that’s perhaps the best place to start with this recap, since that storytelling element is what started this spiral into darkness. Because shortly after Crozier was brought into Hickey’s mutineer camp, Dr. Goodsir seemed to realize that the captain was likely going to be the men’s next meal, and rather than let that happen, he saw an opportunity to put an end to this madness by making it appear he had sacrificed himself for the good of his shipmates. But no one had a clue that Goodsir poisoned himself before passing into the great beyond, meaning that the next meal these men would enjoy would be a rotten one at best.

However, while it seemed that Goodsir did this for vastly different reasons, his decision ended up saving Crozier in unexpected fashion and it made the good doctor an inadvertent hero as well. For shortly after their poisoned meal, Hickey led the men on a quest to confront and defeat Tuunbaq, and it was during this journey that Hickey revealed he isn’t who he claims to be. In fact, he killed the real Hickey in order to escape Great Britain and all the trouble he’s caused has been to escape the country he despises and well, this wacky scheme was the last one he’d ever concoct. For Tuunbaq arrived after all and killed every last man but Crozier with ease, since so many were sick from their poisoned meal. But what kept the captain alive, was that this was Tuunbaq’s final battle as well, since it succumbed to the poison and its many other injuries before it could consume him. 

But the captain did not get out of this final battle unscathed, for Tuunbaq did injure him badly and thankfully, the return of Lady Silence (whose name we later learned is Silna) brought about his salvation, which in turn led him to the sorrow in question. For after Francis recovered from his injuries, including a lost hand, he and Silna came to discover the fate of the crews of Erebus and Terror and well, their trek toward civilization ended in horror. Because the captain and Silna found their last camp and found severed and cooked limbs and mutilated bodies, meaning the men gave into hunger and madness and lead poisoning, and it made Crozier the only surviving member of this expedition. And well, everything he’d seen on this voyage, especially when it comes to the evil of man, prompted him to stay out here with the Intuit people, all in the hopes of seemingly paying a penance for not bringing out the better of the men he was tasked with leading. 

If anything, this was a powerful way to end this harrowing tale, and the final shot of Captain Crozier hunting for seal was desolate and stunning to say the least, for he truly believed in that moment, this was the only fate appropriate for a man that watched a crew unravel. Which is fascinating since, none of this was his fault. For nothing he did truly prompted ‘Hickey’ to sow dissension, nor did his actions make the men worse and that is perhaps the greatest twist when it comes to The Terror in that, it was always about the evil within our hearts and how the right circumstances can bring it out. Which makes this story a chilling one to say the least, one that is still haunting me a day after finishing it and truly, I cannot wait to see how this show grows when season two premieres tomorrow, since it would seem Infamy is only going to up this show’s game by diving into social commentary as well. But in the here and the now, it’s best we applaud this particular tale, for being bold in its bleak nature and for providing us with a magnificent, old school horror story that truly captured the terrifying power of the most brutal monster of all. Until next time. 

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