What if, one day, your partner vanishes into thin air during a romantic vacation? Well, that’s the premise of Amazon MGM’s latest mystery thriller, Vanished, starring Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory) and Sam Claflin (Me Before You). Episode 1 begins with Alice Monroe, an archaeologist, washing blood off her hands in a hotel bathroom. A delivery person knocks on her door, and when she chooses not to respond, the knocks escalate into loud bangs. The man clearly isn’t a delivery guy; he is a professional killer. Alice seems aware of the possible threat, and as soon as the banging grows louder, she climbs out of the balcony and somehow makes it to the road out front. The man follows her; he starts chasing and is almost about to stab her with a knife when the screen goes black. To understand why the ‘delivery guy’ targeted Alice, we have to go back to a few weeks earlier.
Spoiler Alert
How did Alice and Tom fall in love?
Since Alice was an archaeologist and Tom worked for SOS Global (a nonprofit committed to helping refugees), it was a challenge for them to make time for their personal lives. In the course of the four years of their relationship, they met in several hotels all across the globe. They didn’t let the distance affect them, and every time they were together, they were at their happiest. Alice met Tom in Jordan; he needed a lift after his car’s tire got punctured. He had a box of vaccines with him that would have gone bad if he didn’t make it to the camp in two hours. Alice figured she couldn’t live with her conscience if she chose not to help him, so she offered him a lift, and that marked the beginning of their relationship. Alice was surprised and impressed when she saw Tom stand up to the local bandits who’d stormed into the camp and attempted to abduct refugee women to later sell at a price. He had a gun to his chest, but that didn’t deter his confidence. He made it very clear that if they wanted to take the women, they would have to kill him. The bandits knew they would be in trouble if they shot him, so they had no choice but to leave. Alice remembered Tom’s colleague had mentioned that he was brilliant at convincing people, and Alice didn’t doubt her statement. He’d persuaded her to drive him to the camp even though she wasn’t heading to the same direction; even the bandits figured that he wasn’t someone they would want to mess with—Tom had a way with words, but maybe there was someone out there who hated his guts, and that was why he ‘vanished’?
Was Tom abducted?
The night before Tom disappeared, Alice had told him that she’d been offered an associate professor position at Princeton and she was thinking of considering it. Tom was happy for her, but when she added that she was looking forward to living together with him, he didn’t look quite sure. While he loved Alice, there was something that bothered him. Maybe some unfinished business that he had to take care of before settling in the United States? Or, perhaps he was worried that the kind of shady people he had to deal with in his line of work might stir up trouble in Alice’s life. Tom figured that Alice was really hoping he would say yes to her proposition, and so he agreed to move to the United States and build a life there with Alice.
The next morning, when Alice woke up, she saw Tom talking to someone on the phone. He looked a little secretive about the call, but he clarified that he’d been speaking to his uncle Brian, and he’d arranged for them to stay at a fancy hotel in Arles. Alice was overjoyed; she looked forward to their relaxing vacation, but unfortunately, the future would be far from relaxing! During their train journey to Arles, Tom received a call from an unknown number. The woman seated opposite them pointed out the no-phone-call policy in the coach. Tom stepped out of the coach, and that was the last time Alice saw her boyfriend. Soon after Tom left, the train had briefly halted, and Alice had taken a photo of the bridge she saw from her window seat as well. Alice briefly dozed off, but when she woke up, panic started to set in. Tom hadn’t returned yet, and she couldn’t figure out what could’ve taken him so long. She searched for him on the train, but she couldn’t find him. When she asked the train assistant to help her, he was rude to her. She begged him to let her in the staff cabin, since that was the only place she hadn’t checked, but he refused to entertain her.
An investigative journalist was also on the train, and she looked quite intrigued by the situation. She’d offered to help Alice after they got down at the station, but Alice wanted to figure it out on her own. Helene Lando handed her business card to Alice and asked her to call her if she needed help. Was it quite the coincidence that an investigative journalist was in the same coach as Tom? Did she already have information that something would go wrong and plan on using Alice to find clues that could help her investigation?
Alice decided to file a complaint at the local police station, but Inspector Drax refused to do so unless 48 hours had passed. He suspected that the boyfriend had left Alice, and she was yet to come to terms with it. But Alice knew that Tom wouldn’t just abandon her even if he wasn’t sure about the future that she’d envisioned. The next morning, Alice decided to visit the bridge that she’d seen a few minutes before the train stopped at Avignon. She noticed a hole in the wire mesh that stood between the railway track and the road, suggesting that someone could’ve easily climbed out of a train and escaped. She searched for clues and found a chewing-gum wrapper that she figured belonged to Tom. She also came across a waterfall, and she was immediately reminded of Tom’s phone call that she’d received when she was frantically searching for him on the train. He didn’t say a word, but she’d heard the sound of a waterfall, and a few seconds later, the sound of a car engine starting. She noticed tire marks on the road, and she wondered if someone at the house nearby could help her solve the mystery. As she walked into the property, she noticed blood on the ground. She followed the blood trail and found a gutted animal hanging. After Alice returned to Arles, she spoke to the police officer again, but he didn’t think a chewing gum wrapper was a significant discovery that required his attention. He simply asked her to wait for 48 hours, but Alice wasn’t ready to let things rest. She ultimately contacted Helene. The investigative reporter encouraged Alice to dig up clues; she reminded her it wasn’t all that different from her work as an archaeologist. Helene was ready to help Alice if she found something worth looking into, and a wrapper didn’t really qualify as potential evidence to prove Tom was abducted.
What does the eagle tattoo symbolize?
After Alice returned to her hotel room, she rifled through all of Tom’s belongings. His passport was missing, and while that could be interpreted as Tom intentionally ghosting Alice, maybe there was more to the story. She found an envelope with a ‘Regina Hotel’ stamp, and inside there was the hotel receipt, along with a mention of the phone call made from the hotel room. This was the hotel Alice and Tom had stayed at before they traveled to Arles, and the phone number mentioned on the bill was supposed to be ‘Uncle Brian’s,’ but the fact that it was marked ‘local’ made Alice suspicious, since Brian was supposed to be in London. Alice decided to dial the number; she wondered if the Uncle Brian story that Tom came up with was completely false. The person on the other side of the call said that it was the ‘SOS Global Marseilles office.’ So, Tom was clearly not talking to Brian, and that explains why he’d been so secretive about the call.
At the very end of Vanished episode 1, Alice went through the pictures on Tom’s camera, and she realized that Tom and his colleague (the one Alice had met in Jordan) at SOS Global had the same tattoo—an eagle. Was Tom part of a secret group that got involved with the wrong people, and now they wanted him dead? Did Tom find out something about SOS Global’s operation, and did he raise his concern, and did they want to silence him? Or, perhaps, some ‘bad’ men wanted some favor from SOS Global, so they abducted Tom? Also, is Tom even the benevolent man that Alice thinks he is? One thing is clear: Tom wasn’t honest with Alice. Maybe it was because he wanted to protect her, or perhaps he never considered Alice a part of his long-term plan. Tom is far more complicated than what he appears to be, but hopefully he is still the heroic man whom Alice fell in love with.
