Netflix's Black Summer season 1, episode 5 recap: Diner

As Rose and Spears follow their mystery savior along the road in the blazing sun, William and Sun form an uneasy alliance with their fellow diner captives to escape the zombies on Black Summer.

Eat: Manny and Carmen, the passengers of the sinister black truck that tried to run William and Sun off the road, sit in their own booth in the diner. Manny tells Carmen he’s not afraid of anything, talking really big and tough to prove his manhood. He opens the blinds, which draws one of the zombies to where they sit, startling everyone in the diner. William and Manny start threatening each other while Sun and Carmen hold them both back, telling them to settle down on Black Summer.

The third passenger of the truck comes in from the back room with cans of food, saying they’re lucky they found this place. He wants to team up to escape the zombies, but William doesn’t trust him. His name is Phil and he takes William aside to make a plan to team up and get to the stadium. But Phil is clearly super sketchy, talks about separating the able from the weak, splitting up and leaving people behind.

Meanwhile, Carmen talks to Sun. Neither of them could get on the trucks because they didn’t have U.S. papers. There is a thing called the “horde” that Carmen has seen, a raging herd of zombies. They need to get to the stadium before they come, but they need to go through the warzone of downtown to get there, which means they need weapons. Sun goes in the back and starts filling a potato sack with canned food.

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A Plan: They have Sun distract the zombies by tapping on the diner window from inside while the rest of them go out and jump them. They struggle with them for a bit but are unable to kill either of them. After a while, they all come running back into the diner.

Mirage: Rose and Spears walk through a wooded path with the stranger who saved them. Rose is exhausted, maybe dehydrated, and she has a hysterical moment where she believes she sees her daughter walking along ahead of them. While she’s speaking out loud, pushes Spears out of the way to get closer, and starts to laugh/cry from happiness and then hysteria, no one makes any comment on it or seems to take notice. She gets herself back together and they all just walk on.

A New Plan: Phil wants to throw Sun out to feed the zombies so that the rest of them can run away. He says that she’s the weakest link, when in fact she’s smarter and more capable than any of them. It eventually comes out that he thinks she’s a “foreign piece of shit” and that’s what makes her the weakest link. He has Manny and Carmen convinced to back him up, and while William struggles with a decision, he does the right thing and sides with Sun. In the midst of a standoff, Sun notices a scratch on Phil’s arm, sowing fear about infection. Eventually, they all turn on Phil, knocking him senseless and throwing him outside to the zombies.

Two Bullets: Rose and Spears come across the diner but can’t get in because of the two zombies outside. Spears has two bullets, which is enough to take them down if only they’d stand still. Just as he’s trying to sneak up on one, William is throwing Phil out of the diner. Spears takes the opportunity to kill one, but misses the other. The rest of them come running out of the diner and attack the remaining zombie while William kills Phil before he can turn. Rose looks on with a complicated expression – disgust, exhaustion, satisfaction, determination – who knows what else.

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Weapons: Presumably refreshed and resupplied, the remaining survivors – William, Sun, Rose, Spears, Manny, Carmen, and the unnamed man – all leave the diner together.

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