Tales from the Loop Season 1, Episode 3 recap: What happens between May and Ethan?

May and Ethan’s paradise hits a snag

Then, while basking in post-coital bliss, they start considering going back to normal. Ethan asks May if she’ll break up with Jakob, and she seems hesitant. Is it because she wants to experience falling in love again? It doesn’t matter since the device doesn’t work. May assumes they need to find a fresh vial, but it is clear that Ethan is getting antsy.

The truck where May first got the vial is empty, so she starts ransacking the guy’s house instead. Inside, she is devastated to find her mother and the worker from earlier amid passionate lovemaking —  stuck like that, for all to see. That explains why he clammed up when he saw May before.

May is deeply troubled by the discovery that her mom is having an affair, primarily since she built her life around the idea of her parents’ everlasting love and the possibility of a forever with just one person. Perhaps, she even sees herself in her mother, in the same way, she is potentially trying to have both Ethan and Jakob in her life.

Ethan playfully jokes that the pair have a “forbidden love,” unaware that is May’s mother. His quip jolts a nasty fight between the young lovers. Ethan storms off while May tries to throw all the clothes inside the house outside, so they have “nothing to cover themselves up in.”

Eventually, May comes around. She rushes out to find Ethan, and can’t seem to track him down until she tries the beach where they first met. May tearfully apologizes for everything, but then she realizes that he is frozen in time. He took off his bracelet.

It is a devastating moment for May as she understands that Ethan chose to leave her, despite promising he never would. For all he knew, May would be stuck inside that frozen place forever, all alone — her worst fear. Yet he chose to leave her anyway.

Once May turns the device off, Ethan awkwardly walks away, and May doesn’t attempt to stop him or repeat her earlier apology.

The end of the episode mimics the beginning, with May laying in her bed, brooding. She’s tucked the device under her bed inside of a box.

She goes to the beach with her dad again and tells him she and Jakob might not be together much longer.

“Sometimes things are special because they don’t last,” he tells her.

At home, May drops her mother’s earrings — the ones she found at her secret boyfriend’s house — on the bathroom counter in front of her.

Ethan and May share one final moment. They see each other across the street, the very same one where they consummated their relationship. Ethan crosses over to May, and they ask how the other is doing.

She can’t get over the fact he broke his promise, but he counters with “you said what you said.”

Then Ethan tells her he loves in Chinese. May drinks it in, savors the moment one last time, and walks away. It’s devastating, but it might mean May is growing up a little and learning that nothing can stay the same forever, no matter how much you wish it could. I like to think she took her father’s words to heart.

All eight episodes of Tales from the Loop are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.