Pose Season 3, Episode 3 recap: The Trunk

Pose Season 3 opens up this week to the year 1978, as a young Elektra (Dominique Jackson) is seen doing her thing down by the piers to make some money. This is some years before the events we’ve seen transpire over the course of the last two seasons, and it’s when Elektra hadn’t even moved out of her mother’s home.

At the end of a successful night, Elektra learns that her friend lost her house keys, and now she is unable to change before going home. That means she’ll have to sneak wearing woman’s clothes and hope that her mother, Tasha (Noma Dumezweni), isn’t awake to see her in it.

Unfortunately, that is the opposite of what happens, and she comes home to find Tasha waiting in the dark for her. It’s a drastic change to see Elektra petrified of someone else, given she’s always the dominating person in every room. But Tasha being her mother, brings on a different dynamic, and one that brings out the fear within Elektra.

And we quickly realize that Elektra’s fear is quite valid due to her mother’s cruel and condescending attitude towards her lifestyle. She even beats Elektra hoping that she’ll get the message to be “the person she was born as.” Instead, Elektra finally takes a stand and decides to leave this home behind. Unfortunately, she had to leave behind her one trunk of belongings behind as Tasha wouldn’t let her take anything with her.

But worry not, the trunk makes a comeback later in this episode of Pose Season 3, and it’s equal parts glorious and equal parts horrifying. Now, let’s talk about everything that occurred during this week’s episode and how Elektra rose from the depths of desperation to the queen of the balls.

Pose Season 3, Episode 3 recap: The trunk holds secrets

We flashback to 1994 as Elektra heads to her new job, running a phone sex company known as Star 69 (pretty clever, right?). When she arrives, she listens to all her voicemails, including one from Lulu (Hailie Sahar) telling her she is alive.

Not long after she arrives, two cops show up asking her questions about her place of work. They take her in for questioning and reveal that NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani is trying to clean up the city and wants information on her clients.

At first, Elektra is reluctant to divulge any information until the cops tell her that they will get a warrant to search her work and home unless she cooperates. The thing about them showing up to her place is that they could find the trunk she hid her dead client in. The very same client who had overdosed and, out of fear being blamed for his death, Elektra hid him inside of her trunk. The same trunk her mother once refused to give her.

Anyway, Elektra asks to call her lawyer and rings Blanca (Mj Rodriguez) instead, asking her to get the trunk of her apartment. When she returns, Elektra finds out that they’re arresting her anyway and put her into the men’s prison lock-up.

Meanwhile, Blanca gets Ricky (Dyllon Burnside) and Papi’s (Angel Bismark Curiel) help to get the trunk out of Elektra’s apartment. They were both unaware of what secrets the trunk held, but Blanca eventually confessed what happened and why they needed to get that trunk hidden ASAP.

They bring the trunk back to Blanca’s place and put it in Damon’s room, but the atrocious smell from the trunk overtakes the room. It doesn’t seem like the wisest place to hide this secret!

Pose Season 3, Episode 3 recap: The trunk’s history

As the rotting trunk’s smell took over the room, Blanca started to look back on the history of it. Back in 1983, Blanca, Candy (Angelica Ross), and Lulu were Elektra’s children, and in those days, their living quarters weren’t exactly top-notch.

Money was hard to come by, and as the Mother of the house, Elektra took matters into her own hands and headed out to the piers. While there, she ran into a young Cubby (Jeremy McClain), Angel (Indya Moore), and Lemar (Jason A. Rodriguez), whose safety she was worried about immediately and sent them back to the apartment.

The trio settles nicely into the house alongside the others, but money is even more scarce at this point. When the electricity goes out, Elektra decides it’s time to get her trunk out of her mother’s house and sell the items inside of it for some money.

The entire house helps Elektra break into the house and get the trunk out, but a run-in with her mother seemed inevitable. Things are just as volatile as when Elektra left the first time, but this time around, Tasha tries to appeal to Elektra after threatening to call the police.

She began telling a sob story about how she’s alone and that her new neighbors know she’s the only one living in the house. She was hoping that Elektra would move back home and “tone it down a bit.” Given this is going against everything that Elektra stands for, she bids farewell to her mother for good because she is who she is, and that will never change.

Pose Season 3, Episode 3 recap: Christopher learns about the trunk

Back in the 90s, Christopher (Jeremy Pope) shows up at the apartment and immediately smells that something rotten is in their midst. He demands Blanca tell him what’s going on and let him into her life. He wants to help if he can, and he actually does once he learns what is going on.

Christopher comes to understand that Elektra’s actions result from the systemic racism embedded in the system and how it’s meant to work against them. In any case, Christopher comes to Elektra’s aid by getting her out on bail, who isn’t happy to learn everyone is in on her secret.

But there’s no time to worry about that because there is a body in a trunk to get rid of. The decision is made to throw the trunk near a sewage plant where bacteria will eventually eat it and destroy any evidence.

Pose Season 3, Episode 3 recap: New beginnings

In 1983, Elektra took her kids to the new apartment she’s gotten for them. Of course, she’s had to sell all her belongings to get it, and that is something Blanca realizes very quickly. It’s why she’s always had a soft spot for Elektra all these years, and her mother has always taken care of her.

It’s a beautiful way to wrap up the episode as we head back to the 90s during a family dinner post-Elektra’s jail stint. Thanks to Christopher, all of the charges against Elektra have been dropped, even though she’s not happy to hear it. She doesn’t want to be grateful to a man, but Blanca explains that Christopher isn’t just some random guy. Plus, she knows that Elektra gave up some much for her and the other kids, so she needs to let her do this for her.

The only thing Blanca found in the trunk after everything was sold was a picture of Elektra and her mother, and it’s something she hung out to all these years. She hands Elektra the picture as Elektra explains that she named their house Abundance because with all the children, she “finally had everything.”

As the episode comes to an end, Blanca reveals that she got into nursing school. Yay!

Oh, and one more flashback shows House of Abundance killing it on the ballroom floor as they go out there for the first time. They slay in every category, and as we know, this is just the start of their story, and what a story it is!

We’re going to miss Pose when it ends!

What did you think of this week’s episode of Pose Season 3? Tell us in the comments below!