Rabbit’s lost all the fight left in him by the time Hood and Ana find him outside on a bench, and their farewell does an excellent job of justifying why the character survived the previous season’s finale. This time last year, Rabbit’s assumed demise was as cathartic as a fireworks display, a flashy but empty celebration of Ana and Hood’s combined badassery. Now, it’s not some mustache-twirling baddie they’re getting rid of; like Hood, Rabbit once loved someone, but the violence in his life proved all consuming. “Somewhere in the future, there’s a bench just like this waiting for you,” he tells Hood, spitting out the last of his venom. “Go to hell,” Hood replies, which is meant to be a fist-pumping one-liner, but sounds like a scared rejection of something Hood is only now starting to understand.
The only one who seemed ready to die today, the one who got their closure, was Rabbit, which you see in how willingly he takes up Hood’s offer. In matching Hood against a foe as relentless as Rabbit, Banshee’s shown that the only thing worse than a villain that accepts himself as such is a villain who sees themselves as the hero. Closure with Rabbit and Ana has been Hood’s goal since day one, but his chosen methods of achieving it have been the equivalent of trying to hold water between your palms: the tighter you squeeze, the more of a mess you make.
With Rabbit dead, Hood’s free to go back to playing sheriff, Ana’s free to rejoin her new family, and Job’s free to return to New York (if this is a threat, Cinemax, we concede: do not take Hoon Lee away from this show). “Bullets and Tears” brings Banshee’s first major arc to a decisive conclusion, and it does so wonderfully. The action is bombastic and fantastic. The dramatics and overdramatics are perfectly pitched. The finale was Banshee at its very best, the kind of stuff that leaves you feeling high on the season as a whole, but eager to see what comes next. Had the episode just ended on Hood and Ana driving back into Banshee, their hands parting once they cross the city limits, returning to the only lives they have left, it would have been perfect.
But it also would have made for the shortest episode in the show’s history, and sadly, the nature of television dictates that only a series finale can be a neat and tidy affair. “Bullets and Tears” beautifully brings Season 2 to an end, then stays at the table too long by unofficially starting Season 3 with a messy maelstrom in the last 20 minutes. To recap: Kai gets out of prison for unexplained reasons, and partially consummates his feelings for his niece by naked-hugging Rebecca, who, by the way, just got back from painting the Kinaho tribal council hall red with Alex Longshadow. Meanwhile, Emmett and his wife have been gunned down by a bunch of skinheads, (presumably as payback for what Emmett did to Sharp), and Deva knows that Hood is her father. Oh, and here’s Chayton Littlestone deciding to set course for Banshee after fighting in a New Orleans Mortal Kombat tournament, because why the hell not?
Like I said at the top, Banshee didn’t need to put everything to bed before signing off for the year. In a way, the fracas that develops once Hood and Ana have completed their task just goes to show how their focus on Rabbit has distracted them from everything else that’s been going on around them, some of which may prove more dangerous than the villain they knew they had to expect. The rush to put a bow on the stories of Alex, Emmett, and Kai’s prison vacation does smell of mild insecurity, as though the writers or network were worried we wouldn’t tune back in next season if a few deaths and looming threats weren’t force-fed to us in the 11th hour.
It’s a real shame, as “Bullets and Tears” winds up being only a two-thirds terrific finale. But those first 40 minutes mean a whole lot more than the last twenty, so it’s hard not to feel like we’re going out on a high note. Whether the expanded third season will require more of the filler that bogged down the first half of season two is maybe the biggest cliffhanger we have to worry about, but “Bullets and Tears” mostly delivered on the real thing that gets fans excited for next year: proving how good Banshee is when it’s being the best possible Banshee it could be.
- Stray Thoughts
-Job’s mini-fight scene during karaoke in the flashbacks was uncharacteristically sloppy, but I don’t care because it was Job beating up a bigot while in drag, and sometimes that’s all you really want out of TV.
-As awkward an epilogue as Chayton’s appearance was, the real last image of the season, a spinning chess piece, was a nice little coda for the whole season.
-That’s all for this season! Thanks for reading fellow Fanshees (that’s what we call ourselves, right?), it’s been a pleasure. Time to walk off into the distance, muffled rap music playing behind me.
