Homecoming season 1, episode 3 recap: Optics

Homecoming channels more of a Hitchcockian feel as Shrier and Walter go on a field trip while Thomas looks into Heidi’s Geist employee file.

Homecoming is so Hitchcockian, and I love it. From the music to the way each frame is shot to the overall mystery of it all, it’s so riveting and exciting. It’s like every moment is taking us further down the Homecoming mystery and what exactly happened during Heidi’s time there.

Thomas is motivated to find out what he can about this facility and Heidi so he heads deep into the warehouse to seek out her employee file from Geist. He looks up her box number which is #452 and upon arriving at the exact location where it’s being kept, he learns there are multiple boxes labeled with that number.

This means he has to shuffle through each and every box to find the one piece of information he’s looking for–Heidi Bergman’s file. The entire scene with Thomas in the warehouse and the lights turning on with his every movement is just so poetic and fitting and encapsulates the darkness of Homecoming, Heidi, and all the men who were once there.

Given Shrier’s increasing paranoia and belief that something sinister is going on at the facility, Walter makes it his mission to prove to Shrier that they are not being held against their will. When the two of them go to the front desk receptionist to say they are going to go get a beer, she reacts nervously and immediately excuses herself to call someone.

Credit: Amazon Prime Video

She tells them that they are supposed to sign a form ahead of time but it doesn’t seem like it’s actually that simple. Not waiting to be rejected, Shrier grabs keys from behind the counter and runs out of the building as Walter chases after him.

Shrier is ready to leave whether or not Walter wishes to join, but not wanting to let him go at it alone, Walter joins him in the van and they speed off the grounds of Homecoming. They are pretty much driving solo on the road until one car appears in the darkness of the night, and as it cuts them off, they both notice the Florida license plates.

This still isn’t enough to convince Shrier that they are in Florida, and he begins to talk about how when they were training in Arizona, their outpost was made to look like a North African village, and everything from the smells to the roads was created. He believes it’s not out of the realm of possibilities for the same thing to be happening to them at Homecoming.

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They arrive at a desolate, quiet town and run into a man lurking around in the dark who Shrier assumes is someone that’s against them. It turns out that it’s just a security guard patrolling the streets of the retirement community that they are in the middle of.

The next day Shrier and Walter are both back at Homecoming, and during a session with Heidi, Walter confesses the quick rendezvous was good for them because at the very least it proved to Shrier that they are in Florida.

Heidi isn’t as thrilled as Walter, however, because she feels that Walter is always babysitting Shrier.

Walter goes on to explain that in order to form such a bond with someone you have to spend hours and hours with them as he did with Shrier during active duty or while on a road trip. He maps out this entire road trip and it ends up being quite the flirtatious conversation between him and Heidi (wink, wink).

The relationship between Heidi and Walter is becoming questionable and there is definitely some sort of tension there–perhaps even sexual. As a result, Heidi seems less and less interested in Anthony and it results in her kicking him out of the house.

She doesn’t have much time to process whatever is going on with Anthony because Colin calls with a request that she’s not very supportive of–kick Shrier and Walter out from the Homecoming program. He believes Shrier has been progressively acting out and because Walter was with him on their mini trip, Colin believes he needs to go too.

Heidi reminds Colin that pulling someone at this stage with the dosage they’re on is going to produce disastrous effects as they’ve seen before (that wasn’t enough to stop the program? Jeez.) Not willing to let Walter go, Heidi provides a pretty solid argument in his favor while Colin is too distracted at his daughter’s birthday party to argue back.

Instead, he suggests that they start overmedicating and once again, Heidi has to put her foot down and remind him that they aren’t sure what could happen to these men if they do that. It turns out that the medication is infused with their food and the pills they get nightly are just placebos. Ugh, what is this place?!

In the present, Heidi and Anthony reconnect over dinner and it becomes clear that Heidi intends to use him to refresh her memory of the Homecoming days. This irritates him to no end because it always goes back to her work, but perhaps even more frightening is the fact that Heidi doesn’t even remember annoying, aggressive Colin.

After rummaging through all the #452 boxes, Thomas finally finds Heidi’s file and is immediately drawn to one point–both Heidi and Walter left Homecoming on the same day. And the plot thickens. Dun dun dun.