Amazon Prime’s The Feed season 1, episode 8 recap

Episode 8 of Amazon’s The Feed finds a door.

Episode 8 of The Feed begins with an encounter between Natalie (Anneika Rose) encountering Lyla (Aoife Hinds), whose body has obviously been possessed by a “taker.” Initially, it seems Lyla might successfully kill Natalie with scissors, but then Lyla wanders away, befuddled.
Meanwhile, we see that Eve (Clare-Hope Ashitey) is hanging out with the simulated/hologram version of Max (Osy Ikhile).

Things get awkward, however, when the real body of Max shows up, only still occupied by the taker called “D.” The Feed cuts away from this moment to show us that Ben Hatfield (Jeremy Neumark Jones) has indeed successfully deleted his own fantasy version of Miyu (Jing Lusi). Then we see Tia (Olivia Morgan) visiting Tom Hatfield (Guy Burnet) regarding the obvious question: Who can stop the takers?

The Feed: No place safe?

With everything going haywire, Tom understandably wants a safe place baby Bea and his wife Kate (Nina Toussaint-White). That’s why Martha (Carlyss Peer) shows up to bring Kate to a secret location. As this happens, Tom is busy looking through the memory bundles (AKA “mundles”) of his dead father and Feed creator, Lawrence Hatfield (David Thewlis).

The episode doesn’t forget about Eve, who is now keeping Max (or, rather, “D”) as her prisoner. The taker inhabiting his body wants his soulmate to occupy Eve’s body. The whole thing is a bit warped, though he tries to justify his actions. Shortly after this revelation, Meredith Hatfield (Michelle Fairley) slaps her son, Ben, after learning that Gil Tomine (Chris Reilly) died in the prison break (which we saw in the previous episode of The Feed).

Enter the void

Next, Martha and Eve pick up baby Bea to leave for Tia’s secret location. This is partly because government agents are cracking down on anti-Feed “resisters,” such as Cass (Ursula Holliday), who gets arrested in this episode. Elsewhere, Eve is still being taunted by “D,” and Tom shows up to help her contain the situation, making D their prisoner. Unfortunately, Tom leaves.

D tells Eve that he wants her to find Stephanie in the void, promising that they can do an exchange where she and Max can forever be in “the void.” Later, Eve mentions to Tom that she was capable of seeing people in the void. This, of course, suggests that D isn’t merely fibbing about the whole thing. The question is, can she get the real Max back?

Meredith takes a stand, gets thwarted

After Natalie tells Meredith about being threatened by a Taker, Meredith brings it up during a chair meeting at The Feed. Being corrupt and irresponsible, they all say they want to avoid panic, so they keep the info under wraps. Moments later, we return to see Tom and D argue over Lawrence’s death. D maintains that he killed Lawrence because he was going to commit “genocide” against remaining mundles.

Though it provides insight into some of the Taker’s rationale, it would be little consolation to those taken by the Takers. Also, D is a bit sadistic either way, telling Eve that it was he who proposed to her, not Max. We see that the newest Taker-possessed person might be Cass, who is “glitching” while in custody. In the next scene, there is a brief Feed conversation between Meredith and Tom, which inspires Tom to leave Eve and D again to look for the hidden secrets of his dad’s secret lab.

Hedge maze

A number of interesting developments occur as the episode nears completion. Tom seeks answers in the hedge maze on his father’s estate, utilizing memories between himself and Ben as children. Meanwhile, present-day Ben meets with his real father, Aiden (Finbar Lynch), at a lowly fish market. They seem to get along at first, but Ben ultimately ends calling Aiden a delinquent father and an anti-Feed snob, then gets ejected from the nearby bar over an unpaid tab (it seems the bar crowd might have anti-Feed sentiments as well).

On the bright side, Tom later assures Ben that they’re still brothers. Also nice: Meredith gains some spine and sends out a mass warning about a virus in The Feed (in other words, The Takers are out there!). Unfortunately, The Feed has her account restricted mid-warning. Still, when Ben’s
old memory helps Tom find a secret door in the hedge maze, it seems more answers await (if not solutions).

Another fight!

In the episode’s final moments, Kate discovers that Martha is actually a Taker (after she passed some secret test involving coffee). This ends up leading to a substantial battle. What we don’t yet know are Martha’s particular motives. Then again, it seems not every Taker in The Feed has the clearest, sanest motives. In other words, this episode still presents more questions than answers.

What are your thoughts on The Feed? Let us know in the comments!