The Gloaming Season 1, Episode 2 recap: Hell’s Black Grammar

The investigation into Dorothy Moxley’s death continues in The Gloaming Episode 2, further complicated by Dasiy’s sudden suicide. But do these two deaths intersect?

As the hour unfolds, Molly and Alex continue their investigation, which is complicated by the discovery that “Dorothy Moxley” is not who she claimed to be. It’s not yet clear who this woman is, but she’s not Dorothy. The real Dorothy died years before.

Their only real lead is Jenny McGinty’s ID card found near the body. Alex and Molly visit Jenny’s mother Eileen (Anni Finsterer), deeply rattling her. Her other daughter, Jenny’s sister Stephanie (Airlie Dodds), is visiting at the time and excuses herself quickly after the detectives begin asking questions. Could she be hiding something? And for that matter, is Eileen withholding information?

According to Eileen, Jenny was wearing a backpack the day she died. The backpack was never recovered. She always assumed Jenny’s ID card was inside it. So why did the dead woman have her daughter’s things? Alex also remembers Jenny’s backpack and he notices a photo of Jenny on Eileen’s mantlepiece. In it, she’s wearing earrings that match the one he found at his brother’s house.

Molly and Alex show Eileen a photograph of “Dorothy” next. She claims not to recognize the woman but suddenly comes down with a headache and asks the detectives to leave. Clearly, she knows more than she’s letting on.

While Molly and Alex are in the field, they stop at a petrol station to refuel. There, Alex runs into Gareth. The two men attended school together as teenagers and were both on the rowing team. Gareth wasn’t great academically but he was a star rower. Realizing that Alex is a detective on the murder, Gareth prods for some details into the case and their potential suspects. At this point, Alex obviously doesn’t have much to say.

From the car, Molly watches Gareth with interest and notices Jacinta Clunes in his car. Alex is oblivious to the potent tension between all three. We still don’t know what the connection is.

Back at the station, Molly asks Freya to look into Jacinta and her business dealings.

Meanwhile, Alex decides to peek into the evidence box leftover from Jenny’s cold case. He discovers that Lewis Grisham was one of the first investigators on the case and immediately confronts him. Lewis admits that one of the main reasons he put Alex on the case is because of the potential connection to Jenny’s murder.

But he also admits that Molly might have been right, Alex is too emotionally connected to this case and could be a distraction. He agrees to take Alex off the case and put him on a plane the next day back to the mainland. Alex is relieved to be done, or so she claims.

However, it doesn’t seem likely that Alex is going to quietly slip away into the night as one of the series’s leads, now does it? In the final moments of The Gloaming Episode 2, Alex and Molly get a call to the morgue. The coroner tells them that she might have found a link between Dorothy’s murder and Daisy’s suicide!

The Gloaming Episode 2 recap: What’s going on with Lily, Daisy and Freddie?

The teen drama on this show is almost as compelling as the central mystery, especially since it obviously directly relates to the main story. While we don’t yet know what happened between Daisy and Freddie that seemed to trigger her suicide, Molly does find a strange symbol drawn in her shed in the same spot that Daisy died.

Freddie is horrified to learn that Daisy is dead. He confronts her foster parents and implies that they’re not who they seem to be. “I know who you really are.” He threatens to kill them if he doesn’t find Daisy, refusing to believe that she killed herself.

We also learn that Freddie was once “dead for seven minutes,” according to one of the men at his work, a place he is routinely harassed and antagonized by his coworkers. For the most part, it seems like Freddie is alienated and alone. I wonder if his supposed death explains the mysterious cloaked apparitions he keeps seeing everywhere.

Then there’s Lily, Molly’s daughter. She and Molly are estranged. Lily believes that her mother cares more about “street kids” than she does her own daughter. Over dinner, Molly tells Lily she won’t be able to take her over the weekend because she doesn’t want Lily near the shed where Daisy’s suicide occurred.

She also begrudgingly tells Lily what happened, imploring her to keep the details to herself since the investigation is ongoing. Lily mentions that Freddie called Daisy his “girlfriend” although she doesn’t think they were having sex. Molly warns Lily to stay away from Freddie.

Of course, the first thing Lily does after Molly drops her off at her dad’s is to go see Freddie, who is yelling at the cloaked figures in an underpass –– totally normal! Lily tells him what happened to Daisy. There is no mention of that cam-girl thing from the first episode. I’m not sure if Lily knows that Freddie is one of her regular customers.

What did you think about The Gloaming Episode 2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

New episodes of The Gloaming air Sunday nights on Starz at 8 p.m. ET.