This is the episode we’ve been waiting for since The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart first aired. The secrets are out in the open, and they are as twisted as we would expect them to be. Additionally, we got a peek into how hard it can be to break out of generational traumas when we saw Alice Hart unable to stop herself from doing the same thing as her mother. On a different note, it was one of the easier episodes to sit through, considering the pacing, which was decent. Some of the episodes of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart have been slow, while others have been alright, making for a very jagged viewing experience. If episode 5 had been placed earlier, the audience might have been a lot more enthusiastic about the show, but for now, let us go through the recap of it.
Spoiler Alert
What Is Happening At Thornfield?
Twig goes to the Morgans’ place and sees Charlie for the first time, but all is not well yet because she finds that there are more secrets that June has kept from her. There was something in the coroner’s report regarding the Hart family’s death, but we have yet to know about it. Despite June’s crime, Sally tells Twig that she paid for everything related to Charlie, from his medicines to his hospital visits and probably his education as well. She had not abandoned him but had kept him away from Thornfield and his sister due to fears of her own. Twig tells Charlie that Alice never received his letters and had no idea of his existence so far. Alice has always felt guilty about Charlie because the fire that killed her parents and him (supposedly) was started by her. Therefore, there was an urgency to tell her that her brother was alive. Twig tracks down Alice with the help of John Morgan and sets out to find her, promising Charlie that she will bring her back soon.
At Thornfield, June has come to know that she doesn’t have long to live. Her doctor recommends putting her on a new drug, but June neither wants to tell anyone nor take any different medicines to prolong her life. Twig leaving Thornfield has hit her hard, and she probably has no hope of her ever coming back, forgiving her, or wanting to live with her the same way they used to before. June was a woman with a mission, but she had lived for that for the majority of her life. The one thing that made her happy was her family, namely Alice, and Twig, and now they were both gone from her life. Not to be insensitive, but her plan is to probably keep rubbing honey on her wounds.
She tells everyone, which means Candy and the other Flowers that she has completely healed. But she cannot fool Candy, who received the call from June’s doctor beforehand. Candy is hurt and disappointed that June won’t confide in her, and when she confronts her about it, June admits that she doesn’t know how to talk to her at all. Considering what we come to know next, we believe that true feelings were not conveyed as they got lost in deflection and guilt. Candy takes off her makeup and her blue hair in an effort to see if her vulnerability will get a reaction from June. It eventually does, but only when June sees that her silence has hurt Candy despite her having done everything to protect her. We finally understand what the darkness in Clen was, that June so often spoke of before. We know that we had speculated that Candy and Clen were involved before, but we had missed the fact that Candy was just a 13-year-old girl at the time. She was not of an age where she could give consent or understand what it meant to be with someone so much older than her. And Clen was bad enough to say that he was in love with her, not realizing that what he had done was sexual assault and grooming.
June needed to protect Candy, and Agnes showed the way. When she came to the farm, June understood that she could divert Clen’s attention away from Candy by bringing him closer to Agnes. It was a terrible thing to do, to tie Agnes to a potential abuser, even if it was to protect someone else. Maybe June couldn’t hand him over to the police because that would bring them to Thornfield, or maybe she loved her son at the end of the day, but tying him to another woman just made June an enabler and put her against everything she had worked for. This was her shameful secret, the one that she hadn’t been able to talk about for all these years and which she finally confessed to Candy. All this time, Candy felt that June was embarrassed by her and had replaced her with Agnes. But knowing the truth, we have to wonder whether any of June’s love for Agnes was true or if it was all a lie for the purpose of keeping her son away from a minor. June not only hid Charlie from Alice, but she was also the reason her mother suffered throughout her life.
Why Does Alice Tell Dylan About Her Past?
In Agnes Bluff, Alice gets a job as a park ranger, and she is an instant fit thanks to Dylan, who is helping her every step of the way. Lulu seems quite aware of the growing closeness between Alice and Dylan, but she doesn’t say anything until a little later. In the meantime, Alice has broken up with Moss because she did not feel the spark. This spark has ruined more lives than it has brought people together. It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t make women lose sight of what is important and what is not. It is easy to blame Lulu’s queer-coded behavior for why she warned Alice about Dylan, saying that he was “a lot,” but there is something to be said about listening to other women’s experiences without demanding proof or wanting to find out for ourselves. Not all questions are worth knowing the answers to. Alice and Dylan go on a date, and while watching the sky, Alice asks the question that has been plaguing her, which is whether Dylan ever brought Lulu to that place.
As Dylan angrily storms off, Alice keeps apologizing to him. She did not stop even once to consider why she was so scared of making him angry or what about the question warranted such a response. She did not even hold it against him that he had left her alone in the middle of nowhere. When he comes back the next morning and apologizes, Alice is more sorry than him. The man’s manipulation has worked, and Alice is safely in his trap. This is what he calls his bad side, and he acts as if he has been vulnerable with Alice by doing so, and the girl falls for it once again, revealing her secret in return at the end of episode 5 of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. She tells him that she was the one to set fire to her house that killed her father, and Dylan assures her that her secret is safe with him. If only June had not protected Alice so fiercely, she would have known not to trust men like Dylan.
Final Thoughts
Dylan is the final piece of the puzzle. Something with him is going to happen that will make Alice understand the actions of her grandmother. We doubt there is absolute forgiveness in this journey, but there is a lot of learning, and we doubt it can be covered in the two episodes left in this limited series. The pacing was a result of some terrible creative decisions, and we hope that we can be proved wrong with what is left of the story.
