'The Outsider' Ended With One Last Nerve Wracking Twist. Here's What It Might Mean.
The Outsider's first season was about as slow-burning as a monster hunt can get. But after nine episodes worth of meditative investigation and low-key supernatural spookiness, the season finale began with a tense shoot out that left half of our heroes dead. What, did you think we learned all about Jack Hoskins sharpshooting expertise for nothing?
The episode largely wrapped up the action in its first half: The shootout with Hoskins kills Seale Bolton, Andy Katcavage, Alec Pelley, and Howard Salomon, and injures Yunis Sablo. Hoskins is bitten by a snake, which seemingly breaks El Cuco's control over him, allowing him to shoot himself with his own rifle. That leaves Holly, Ralph, and Claude Bolton to square off against the monster itself deep inside the cave network.
So what happened at the end?
In the bear cave, El Cuco, now wearing Claude's face, gives its villain speech, which doesn't really reveal a whole lot. It eats people because it's hungry, and targets kids because they're the tastiest. Claude shoots the monster, triggering a cave collapse, and, after she stabs El Cuco in the chest, he and Holly begin their escape. Ralph realizes the shapeshifter was only faking dead, so he seemingly finishes it off by bashing its face in with a rock. At this point, we can't be sure if El Cuco's dead, or if it even can die, but the creature sure looks like it'll be incapacitated for a good long time. The survivors cook up a non-supernatural cover story that gets them off the hook and clears Terry Maitland's name, and all seems to end well.
That is until the episode's post-credits scene (yes, TV shows have those now.) It begins with a jump scare: Holly briefly sees the mirage of Jack Hoskin's face in her bathroom mirror. Then, she listens to the song "Washington Square," which Ralph told her played at his mother's death and son's birth, while searching online for information about the Frankie Peterson investigation. As she gazes at her laptop, it's clear that she has a large scratch on her arm.
What does the post-credits scene mean?
What occurs here is not what happened in the Stephen King novel on which the show was based. In the book, Ralph and Holly kill the monster in the cave, and look pretty poised to live happily ever after, no scratches in sight.
That makes the scratch pretty perplexing. The series thoroughly established that El Cuco scratches people in order to shape shift into them. And Holly was also seen behaving a little strangely. In the cave, when Ralph mentions clearing Terry Maitland's name—you know, the motivation for the entire investigation—she asks, "Who's Terry?" And in the post-credits scene, she's listening to music, which is something she'd specifically mentioned not enjoying earlier in the show.
But people who've been scratched by the monster don't undergo personality changes; Claude and Terry seemed very much like their normal selves even as El Cuco was running around impersonating them. Those simply touched by the beast, like Hoskins and Tracey Powell, do undergo violent changes, but they also sport a tell-tale rash on the back of their necks. The scratch wouldn't explain why Holly's acting kind of weird—but she also very clearly doesn't have the neck rash.
The book doesn't have any sequels, but the addition of the cliffhanger helps leave the door open to a second season of the TV show. In fact, Ralph flat-out tells Holly that he'd like to work with her again, and if Holly really is feeling some ill-effects from her run in with El Cuco, Ralph would probably be one of the first people she'd turn to. Until then, it's hard to say exactly what Holly's scratch means. Does she have a double out there? Was she poisoned by the creature? It looks like we may have to wait for a Season Two to find out.
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