Cursed Season 1, Episode 2 explores Nimue's childhood

Cursed Season 1, Episode 2 explores Nimue’s childhood.

The second episode of Cursed Season 1 opens with Nimue running through the woods. She arrives in the spot where she’d previously told Squirrel to hide and calls out for him. Unfortunately, in the process, she attracts the attention of a wandering Red Paladin. Squirrel is forced to watch the scuffle unfold from the shadows as he cannot warn Nimue without giving himself away.

As she fights with the Paladin, we get a flashback to when she was a child and lured into the woods by some kind of demonic talking bear. The animal attacks her, and she hears her mom’s voice telling her to call to the Hidden Ones.

Both the young and older version of Nimue access her gifts, using them to destroy their respective antagonist — the Paladin in the present, and the bear in the past.

Cursed Season 1, Episode 2 sees the Paladins catch on to Nimue’s trail.

Elsewhere, the Weeping Monk and Red Paladins follow tracks from the village. They reach the scene of Nimue’s wolf slaughter and are shocked to learn a single Fey girl did that. They also find the Paladin from the opening, who is still alive, being strangled alive by the twisting, gnarled tree branches.

Father Carden tells the monk to kill every Fey in the wood, although the monk takes a distinct interest in the “wolf-blood witch.”

Carden instructs his men to travel to all the neighboring villages and keep an eye out for a Fey girl wielding a large sword, threatening anyone who hides her will burn alongside her.

Meanwhile, Nimue tries to wash the blood clean from herself and the sword, while a flashback shows her mother cradling her as a child after finding her in the woods after the bear attack. The other elders think Nimue is doomed to die, Lenore even pleads to her father, Jonah, but he, too, thinks she won’t survive.

Obviously, her mother thinks differently since the Hidden Ones saved her. She tends to her daughter’s wounds while a present-day Nimue sobs for all of her losses over a riverbed.

Poor Squirrel gets discovered by the Weeping Monk, who cares little that he is a child. He kidnaps the kid, demanding he tells him how many Fey escaped into the woods.

“Enough to kill you, scum,” Squirrel spits at the monk, who then takes him away just as Nimue returns to find him.

Nimue manages to escape to the nearby village, but several circling Paladins guard the entrance. Nimue finds a doctor riding his cart into the gate and convinces him to let her ride with him inside. She lies and claims she has an ailing tooth, desperately needing to get inside to have work done.

A guard asks the man to state his business along, and the doctor says he’s finishing his rounds. But a Paladin, sensing something is amiss, asks Nimue to take down her hood. He questions where she’s from and attempts to poke holes in her alibi. Finally, he tells the doctor to pull her tooth right there if she really is who she claims.

Yep, the dear old doctor forcibly removes one of Nimue’s perfectly healthy teeth to keep up the ruse. It seems to work, although the Paladin doesn’t look fully convinced. Still, they’re granted entry into the village.

Squirrel ruthlessly mocks the monk as he’s forced to trail along behind his horse with his hands tied.

“Do you kill Moon Wings because you’re so ugly and they’re so beautiful? Even your horse is ugly, and I love horses,” chirps the kid.

Back in the village, a town crier announces the Paladins’ demand for any news on the Fey murderess. They offer coin in exchange for her under the order of the Holy Roman Emperor. Anyone who protects her will be labeled a heretic and treated as such.

During the flashback, we learn Nimue was a troublemaker from a young age, often running off on adventures. Jonah encourages Lenore to be much harder on her, even saying she should be whipped.

Nimue is upset because no one likes her due to her scars, and no children will play with her, which is why she runs off so much. Despite Lenore loving her and being a fierce protector, others in the homestead, including her own father, were never kind to Nimue.

A group of Fey finds the Weeping Monk and Squirrel in the woods while they slumber. They hope to rescue Squirrel, but soon learn that the monk was only using the boy as bait for the Fey. He slaughters all of the kids’ would-be rescuers.

Ultimately, the monk releases Squirrel, giving him a sinister message to deliver to his brethren: “Tell them I’m coming.”

Cursed Season 1, Episode 2: Nimue and Arthur reunite.

Nimue runs into Arthur again and tells him she lost everyone. She begs Arthur to help her and to flee along with her, but his oafish pal Bors, the same man Nimue hustled in the last episode, assaults her and demands she give him her sword or he’ll sell her to the Paladins. Nimue slices off his hand.

“Try again, and I’ll have the other.”

Arthur rides into her rescue, and they escape together on horseback. They barely make it out from the gates before they’re closed. He takes her to a safe place and initially vents his frustrations at her act of violence. Now he’ll have a bounty on his head, just like her.

But Nimue doesn’t care about Arthur’s problems right now since they’re somewhat minimal compared to hers and what she’s just lost. Once she reveals that to Arthur, he softens and helps clean her wounds.

In another flashback, a young, fresh-faced Nimue is lured into the woods alongside a boy named Wallo, who is promised to another girl named Peri. At first, it seems like he might genuinely like Nimue, but quickly becomes apparent he’s part of a group intent on playing a cruel prank.

Wallo, Peri, and another teen forcibly pin her to a tree and rip down her shirt to get a look at the scars on her back from her scuffle with the Dark God — a.k.a. the freaky bear. Her powers activate, almost killing Peri as the tree roots drag her beneath the ground. Luckily, the boys and Nimue manage to extract her, and they run off, leaving Nimue sobbing.

Her mother comforts her later, building her up and encouraging her to see how strong and powerful she is. Lenore tells her not to let a stupid butcher’s boy like Wallo get under her skin.

Arthur takes Merlin’s sword from Nimue and wields it like a pro. He’s clearly delighted by it, fawning over its power and mystical nature.

“This is the kind of sword that gets you an audience,” he gushes.

He offers to help her sell it, since it could help her pay for a ship to escape. But Nimue is intent on fulfilling her mother’s dying wish to deliver it to Merlin, even if it is the ones from the stories.

Arthur says he’s seen a lot of lives wasted on trying to do things like that. He reminds her that she cannot change her mother’s fate, only her own.

Cursed Season 1, Episode 2 recap: What happens at the end of the episode?

Speaking of Merlin, he shows up back at the homestead and discovers Lenore’s dead body. Gingerly, he closes her eyes, and it’s obvious he cared for her as he carefully places her body on the illuminated stone slab and lays her to rest.

Outside of the temple, he kicks down the burned stakes. A woman in a widow’s shroud appears behind him, fittingly called “The Widow.” She asks who the Lenore was. He calls her “The Healer.”

The Widow says he told them the Sword of the First Kings (I’m assuming the sword Nimue has) was destroyed. Merlin says he believed it had been. The Widow warns Merlin that the Shadow Lords will see it as a sign of betrayal and that as the Fey is on the verge of extinction if the Church gets their hands on the Sword of Power, then they will decide who becomes king.

She implores Merlin to “finish the war he started,” and demands him to remember the ancient words they live by — a creed Merlin apparently wrote.

“The world needs Merlin, not this piteous creature you’ve become.”

To which he officially reveals that he has no magic! It would appear his magic is locked within the mystical sword. He asks the Widow to reveal its location since he no longer has the Sight.

She tells him she senses great power and fear around the sword, that it is coming toward Merlin, but whether by pommel or point, is not yet clear.

Merlin concocts a plan to melt the sword down in Fey Fire, as it was forged that way. He needs to go to a mysterious kingdom to find it, as it is now one of the world’s most coveted, rare treasures. He asks the Widow to give him his horse, the whereabouts of the kingdom, and clay that cannot be burned even by Fey Fire.

Arthur promises to take Nimue somewhere safe, somewhere Bors won’t find them. He carries into a hallowed hall of some kind, taking her beyond a closed door “among friends.”

While Nimue sleeps, we see Arthur steal the sword from her, but not for a nefarious reason. Arthur intends to fulfill Lenore’s dying wish while leaving Nimue behind to keep her safe, although I doubt that will last long. He tells Sister Igraine that Nimue will probably need to stay for at least a week.

The final shot shows Arthur galloping off on a new adventure.

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Cursed Season 1 is now available to stream on Netflix.

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