Nocturne

Episode Reviews

Oct. 30, 2026—S1, E1: “Lazarus, Come Forth!”

A boy stumbles into a roadway and is nearly hit by a truck. But when the lad is taken to the hospital, authorities quickly learn that he’s Michael Frost, a boy who disappeared three years before and had been presumed dead. But the jubilation at finding Michael alive quickly turns to a pressing question: Could Michael’s sister, the now 17-year-old Felicia, be alive, too?

Meanwhile, Jurek Walter—the man some suspected of being behind the kids’ disappearance—bides his time in a high-security psychiatric ward, looking for the right mark to do his bidding. He finds one in the well-meaning but vulnerable nurse, Karl.

In the opening scene, which takes place six months before most of the events of the series, we see Walter at work. He’s talking to another psychiatric inmate, encouraging him to bash his brains in and using religious justification to do so. “There’s only one way to stop the pain,” Walter says. “By making amends for all of your sins. And only then will the voices stop.” Walter goads the disturbed man on the other side of the wall, chiding him that prayer and talking to God won’t help him. He needs to “smash those voices out of your head.” And so the man tries—taking a running start and slamming his head into a concrete wall. He falls to the ground, a bloody mark on his forehead and blood pooling around his head. We later hear that someone killed himself in that high-security unit—presumably this poor soul—but no one knows Walter’s connection to the death.

Later, Karl is assigned to give Walter his meds—secretly a powerful sedative. It’s given via an injection, and Walter begins to convulse (a “rare side effect,” Karl is told) while Karl searches for a shiv that Walter had hidden under his bed. Walter wakes up before Karl can leave the cell, and a security team is dispatched. But Walter, instead of trying to hurt Karl, instead lures him into delivering a message to his “lawyer.” “They say I’m a monster,” Walter tells Karl. “But I’m still a human being.”

A woman is thwacked in the gut with a rifle butt. (We see the lurid-looking bruise on her abdomen throughout most of the rest of the episode because the woman wears a midriff-exposing shirt.) Several people are punched and knocked around in the same scene.

Michael is found “malnourished, dehydrated and temporarily blind” from being kept in a completely dark place for so long. Michael’s mother expresses relief that Michael’s disappearance wasn’t sexually motivated. We hear that Jonah’s last partner killed himself. We see the squalor in which Michael was kept—and perhaps where Felicia was, too. Detectives find a bottle that once contained sevoflurane, a powerful anesthetic that was one of Walter’s calling cards, at the scene.

A character works undercover in a drug operation: We see bags of either cocaine or heroin, along with a great deal of money. (A member of the cartel says that perhaps they should “party” with some of the merchandise, while another says that the merchandise will kill him.) A police briefing gathering is compared to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Someone makes a reference to testicles.

We see and hear several allusions to religion, including the show’s title. A small statue of the Virgin Mary is found in a room. A cross hangs on a wall. Michael’s recovery is called a “miracle,” and we hear a reference to the Salem witch trials.

A male character takes off his shirt. Other peoples drink beer. We hear the f-word about 10 times and the s-word about seven. There’s a suggestion that Jonah might be hiding a bit of scandalous truth. We also hear “d–n,” “a–,” “h—” and “p-ss. God’s name is misused twice, once in combination with the word “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused once.

Oct. 30, 2026—S1, E2: “For Such a Time is This”

Quinn, the FBI agent in charge of rescuing and recovering Felicia Frost, wonders how much she should trust Jonah—and whether she should put Saga into Walter’s mental facility as an undercover agent. Meanwhile, Walter continues to exploit and manipulate Karl for his own ends.

The episode opens three years before as Jonah and his former partner, Sam, question Walter about someone he allegedly buried alive. We receive an extensive description of how Walter wanted to make sure his victim “died slowly” before Walter starts suggesting that Sam has been drinking—and insinuates that he beats his wife. Sam then turns off the monitoring equipment and assaults Walter—punching him in the gut before Jonah can stop him. We later hear that Walter’s accusations were spot on: Jonah admits that his former partner did drink, and when he drank, he was a different, more violent person. (Sam later killed himself, and the show seems to suggest that it was at least partly Walter’s fault.)

Saga indeed goes undercover—wearing a cross around her neck that includes a small recorder. (The facility is unable to take it away from her because Saga is allegedly wearing it for “religious reasons.”) She’s made to take off all of her clothing, and the guard asks her to lift her breasts one by one. (The television audience’s view is sequestered to just the upper part of Saga’s chest, and nothing critical is seen.) Before checking in, Saga talks to Jonah about how to avoid taking her medication.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Saga asks Jonah.

“You could OD on Thorazine,” Jonah tells her.

Walter purposefully chokes on his food, triggering a medical response. (He eventually spits food on a nurse and uses the opportunity to plant something on the guy.) Jonah investigates a house from which an entire family has mysteriously disappeared. We hear about Saga’s father (an alcoholic who apparently died from the effects of the disease) and meet her mother (who Saga says was once incarcerated but is now, apparently, living with a nurse. Someone chokes himself into unconsciousness.

Characters drink beer. We hear 22 f-words and about five s-words. “b–tard,” “h— and one abuse of Jesus’ name are also on tap.