The first season of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series was intended to be both an adaptation and expansion of the much-loved film of the same name. Because of this, fans of the movie knew about and expected the tonal shift that was to come at the halfway point. Whereas the first half of the movie, like the series, is about criminals on the run, the second half shifts to a much more supernatural scenario. It’s been a long (but fun) road to get here, but From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series has finally made it to that tonal shift by arriving at the Titty Twister at the end of the fifth episode.
Before getting to the main action, “Place of Dead Roads” opens with a scene of a seemingly crazy man looking for food. After missing a deer with his gun, he kills a snake with the eye knife that has been seen throughout the series. While eating the snake, the man has a hallucination of a woman, revealing that this man is Richie. Through this flashback, we see how Richie gets involved with his brother’s escape.
Back in the present day, Jacob tells Seth that he is ready to leave with his family now that he has completed his end of the deal, but Seth informs him that he can’t leave just yet. Instead, the gang heads into the bar, where Seth sees a stone statue that is identical to the symbol on his brother’s knife. Seth tries to find out when Carlos will be there, and he discovers that Carlos owns the bar. Ranger Gonzales, meanwhile, hallucinates (whether due to dehydration or something more supernatural), and his vision directs him to the Titty Twister. Elsewhere, Carlos prepares for some form of ritual, ignoring Seth’s phone calls, and he informs his associates that this night will bring a war.
Seth tries to bond with the Fuller family as his worries grow bigger and bigger, but Jacob refuses to accept that the group is now a “broken family.” To break the ice, Seth confesses bad things that he’s done while coercing similar confessions out of the Fullers. Tensions grow higher between Seth and the Fullers, while Freddie thinks back to a lesson he learned from Earl about the “place of dead roads,” the last stop before hell. After a chance glimpse at the back room of the restaurant he’s in, it is revealed that Freddie is in the same place as Carlos’s ritual. A kid pretends to show Freddie around, but he ends up getting taken by Carlos and his men. After finding the knife on Freddie, Carlos reveals that it is the reason for the hallucinations, and he uses the blade to peer through Freddie’s life.
Outside the Titty Twister, Seth has a run-in with the bouncer and his friends, and the encounter ends with Seth in their grip. The men decide to torture Seth and play with him a bit before killing him, but an acquaintance of Carlos stops the festivities. Back inside the bar, Katie bumps into the professor from a few episodes back, and he tells her that he is going by “Sex Machine” now. She brushes him off and finds Richie to ask him to get her and her family out of there. Unfortunately, he can’t help her. Meanwhile, Seth is told by the man who saved his life that he’ll never get to El Rey, even with his deal with Carlos.
Unfortunately for Carlos, the blade revealed his life to Freddie as well as vice versa. Freddie tries to use this to his advantage, but Carlos decides to have him killed anyway. He decides to finally head to the Titty Twister, where Seth and Richie are having an argument. The brothers settle their dispute over a knife-throwing contest, and the bar prepares for a performance by Santanico, the woman that Richie has been seeing in his visions. Meanwhile, Freddie manages to escape from his captors, but not before figuring out that there is more to the men than meets the eye. He heads out on a motorcycle to find Carlos at the bar.
From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series has been an entertaining ride since the beginning, but things have really begun to click now that all of the elements of the show are together. The story only gets deeper and deeper with each episode, and the tonal shift has been a welcome change that keeps the show from becoming stale.
[Photo via Netflix]
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