Tales from the Loop Season 1, Episode 3 recap: What happens between May and Ethan?
By Mads Lennon
May tries to find a way to bottle the feeling of falling in love after she meets an intriguing boy named Ethan, in episode three of Tales from the Loop.
Episode three of Tales from the Loop, aptly titled “Stasis,” revolves around May — Jakob (secret Danny’s) girlfriend from the episode before.
It begins with an overlay of May’s monologue pondering why we can’t capture the feeling of falling in love forever. She asks why we know the moment is there in the present, but we have to let it fade. It reminded me of the popular saying, “nothing gold can stay,” or “nothing good lasts forever.”
We then see May and her father spend a quiet day fishing at the beach. She reels in a rusted canister she held in the opening moments of the episode. I imagine that it will become important later. Her dad asks how Jakob is doing, and May gives him an unenthused, “fine.”
It is a little unclear where we are in the May/Jakob timeline as May attends a wedding and doesn’t interact with Jakob. Instead, she spends her time with a new boy named Ethan, the same boy she saw at the beach. They ditch the wedding and take a walk in the woods together. May notices his bum foot and asks him if it hurts. He tells her it does, sometimes.
“I guess everybody’s got something,” replies May.
Hm, does that mean May has an affliction of some kind?
Next, May asks if she can see Ethan’s foot, and he lets her. Before things can progress any further between the two of them, May’s friends and Jakob come looking for her.
When we see them together again, May manipulates Ethan into helping her steal something from a man’s truck, it’s a vial similar to the one we saw her pull out of the canister earlier. She brings Ethan back to her house to show him her workspace, and he asks to see her room.
The show cleverly points out the self-portrait Jakob made for May (that Danny gave to her), so we know that she is with Jakob/Danny at this point, a question Ethan himself also posed.
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Ethan isn’t fond of Jakob’s work.
“I can’t draw, but you’re prettier than that.”
Things quickly progress between May and Ethan from there. The two start to kiss and begin to get hot and heavy when May’s mom interrupts.
Later, May starts fiddling with the strange device again and manages to stop time. She takes it to school and shows Ethan.
Frozen students fill the hallways. May tells him this is how they can be together. Uh, wouldn’t it just be easier to dump Jakob and move on with Ethan?
With the world around them frozen, May and Ethan have fun exploring and messing with people. They play a game like the one in the graveyard, making up stories for people. One of them is the guard from the Loop, Gabbis.
May gets the crazy idea for them to have sex in the street since everything around them is frozen in time anyway. Ethan is apprehensive at first, but as she points out, when will they ever get a chance to do something like this again?
After that, everything is euphoric between them, at least, for a while. May teaches Ethan some Chinese phrases; they exchange “I love yous,” and it appears like perfection.