The Whispers Season 1 Episode 8 Recap: A Hollow Man

The origins of Drill become clearer in the most suspenseful episode of “The Whispers” yet.

Before the craziness begins, let’s start from the beginning and pick up where last week left off.

Jessup does get Henry into his possession, but takes him to his parents Claire and Sean, who are on the run after they destroyed the giant rock. Sean is feeling the heat from his boss for letting Claire and Sean go. The Secretary of Defense tries to cover up the rock explosion by saying it all was a security exercise.

Henry said Drill came over right before Jessup picked him up and wanted to talk about his parents. The youngster said Drill sounded different and was mad about something they did. Lena confesses to her husband Wes that she had been communicating with Drill with the help of their daughter Minx. The girl says she was pretending the whole time to make mom feel better.

Claire and Sean go with Henry to a hotel room. Jessup calls Claire to tell her he received the file about case studies on imaginary friends. It was pulled from something on a psychology journal about childhood dissociative disorders. One of the subjects in the article was an eight-year-old named Thomas who claimed to Drill back in 1982. An address of the child’s father takes the family to Delaware.

Meanwhile, Lena is hiding in a room from Minx (Can you blame her?). Minx says she wants her and Drill to be friends and that she has an important message for her. Using a Scrabble-like game, Drill communicates that it/he/she wants Lena to kill. Minx goes out the window and ends up on the roof. Lena sees her outside with live power lines. Minx says Drill told her a cat needed to be rescued. Lena ends up making a deal with Drill that she will do what she is told if Minx was left alone.

Claire and Sean meet Thomas’ dad, who we find out worked for NASA as an astronomer. He recalled a summer day in 1982 where a strange signal was picked up. He told Thomas and his brother Elliot. Thomas told his dad that the alien wasn’t out there, but was already there in his head. The eight-year-old killed his brother, later saying Drill made him do it. Thomas was sent to a psychiatric institution before his release.

Sean and Claire take a look at home movies. One in particular sees the brothers by a nearby pond. Before going out of the frame, Thomas tells the camera he is sorry. The story further confirms that for Drill, it was less about the children and more about the parents and what they have access to. Thomas ended up changing his identity to Elliot as a form of identity transference. Claire, Sean and Henry set off to find him. The projector ends up turning on again on its own and the film they were watching was burned.

Wes goes home after he was relieved of his clearance by his boss. Minx tells him she thinks Lena is going to do something bad. Wes calls Lena and finds the gun in the house is gone. Lena is in a car headed somewhere that we know isn’t Disney World. Rollins and Wes trace Lena through a signal on her phone.

The show then turns into something out of a horror movie or thriller. It had all the elements complete with rain in the middle of the night and a house without electricity. Henry stays in the car while Wes and Claire head into Thomas’ house. They find him in the basement. Sean recognizes a symbol, which is also similar to one Harper drew in the tree house before her mom fell through.

Thomas says people were basically the ones who brought Drill to them. From 1945-1982, 1,703 nuclear tests around the world were conducted. Each explosion sent a trail of energy to space, which created a beacon. His father picked up the signal and the whispers started soon after. With a dying planet, Drill was sent after a beacon of heat. Drill realized he could only speak to kids and a signal needed to be sent out. Thomas says he killed Drill, leading to believe there are others like Drill out there.

Lena arrives at the house. Henry witnesses this, but is locked in the car. Wes and Jessup arrive, but it’s too late. Lena shoots Thomas before he can reveal how he killed Drill. We have two weeks to let all this information process with “The Whispers” taking next Monday off and returning 10/9CT Aug. 3 on ABC.

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