Ezekiel – As the third episode of Black Snow begins, James Cormack (Travis Fimmel) follows Isabel’s path and times her movements. At the station, Dale Quinn (Gulliver McGrath) takes a call before telling James that the owner of the newsagent believes Joe Baker is the killer. Her hairdresser saw Joe yelling at Isabel at a hockey game once. James tells him about Isabel’s movements and how Chloe left her at the intersection. He can’t understand why her body was dumped at the cemetery instead of the nearby bushland. They agree it doesn’t make sense.

James meets with Glenda (Seini Willett) and Hazel (Jemmason Power) to get some of Isabel’s drawings. James wants to get to know more about Isabel because people’s memories can be deceptive. Glenda suspects he has felt pain like theirs although he won’t talk about it. James learns that Isabel was supposed to come straight home after the formal. Glenda was at work that night while Joe (Jimi Bani) was at home. As James leaves, he calls Senior Sergeant Angela Zhang to leave a message asking about the blue car. In Hector’s letter, he claims he is about to leave Ashford and everyone in it behind.

He’ll escape while the cool kids die in Ashford. In the present, James meets with Hector (Lee Jones) who says Izzy was beautiful, smart, and funny. Hector claims everyone was two-faced in high school and it was a small town with small minds. When he is asked about being fascinated with the occult, Hector explains that he went through a Goth phase after watching The Crow. When he did the time capsule, he clicked with Isabel so they became friends. He spent the last 25 years trying not to think about what happened to her.

James says the police didn’t interview him back then so there is no record of where he was. Hector was at the formal and went home after that, but no one was home. James mentions that Hector left town two days after Isabel was killed. Although he says he moved to Sydney for uni, James knows that uni didn’t start until February. Hector argues that people grieve differently before he tries to get rid of James. Kalana (Eden Cassady) complains about a woman at the shop saying pop killed Aunty Izzy. Hazel comforts her and suggests getting out of the house for a bit.

She takes Kalana fishing. Hazel gets a text message warning her to tell the truth or they will in one week. James receives the physical evidence from the EMF in Brisbane. While looking at Isabel’s blue dress, James urges Dale to focus on the girl and who she was when she was alive. He finds the red soil odd because it wasn’t present at any of the known locations from that night. Dale thinks it looks like she was trying to crawl and get away. James learns that Isabel’s bird necklace is missing. They discuss whether it came loose during a struggle or the killer took it like he took the hair. In a flashback, Hector (Fraser Anderson) and Chloe talk about Isabel’s necklace and whether she should wear it.

Hector thinks she should to rub it in to Anton. Chloe shows Isabel (Talijah Blackman-Corowa) the road-trip uniforms her dad bought them. When they’re alone, Hector shows Isabel the video of Steve (Erik Thomson) flirting with the young woman at the worker camp. Hector thinks it is suspect, but Isabel doesn’t think there is anything to it. When Isabel goes to work, Hector decides to join her. Mr. Ludlow enters the video rental shop to pick up Basic Instinct again. Isabel waves at Anton (Josh Macqueen) who is outside, but he leaves without responding. She catches up with him at school and learns he hasn’t been at school because his dad has been shorthanded.

He asks where she was on Sunday since he was waiting for like an hour. When she says she had to help her mom after church, Anton doesn’t believe her since Tasha saw her ride past her workplace. He accuses her of hanging out with Mick or Hector instead. They argue about him hanging out with Tasha all the time before he leaves. Isabel grabs a book to look up the Ankou. Chloe interrupts to ask if she wants a lift. While they look through their supplies, Isabel notices a young woman working nearby. Chloe explains Steve gets them odd jobs sometimes when the pickers lose their work. Chloe urges her to tell her parents again.

When Isabel gets home, she learns that her dad found I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in her room and he isn’t happy. Joe reminds her that she’ll obey his rules while she is in his house. Isabel tells Hazel it wasn’t her fault. In the present, Hazel visits James because she needs to show him something. She tells him that they were the victim, yet they were the ones under questioning. Hazel takes him to a petrol stop and explains that things have barely changed since she was a kid. When asked if she can trust him to do right by her family, James says she can trust him to do right by Isabel.

Hazel knows Izzy didn’t come home that night before explaining the phone box is gone. Hazel was sleeping on the couch when Isabel called. Izzy asked her to get dad, but Hazel wouldn’t because she wanted to know where she was. Izzy said she was out there. Hazel could hear a car pull up with a song player before Izzy went quiet. She asks if she still needed a lift. Izzy didn’t answer so she thought she was drunk and had been partying. Hazel got angry, told her to walk home, and hung up. She believes Izzy needed help that night instead of a lift. Hazel thinks it was after midnight around 12:30.

James tells her she was just a kid and he doesn’t think the information would’ve changed Turner’s mind anyway. At the station, James tells Troy (Kim Gyngell) about Isabel being at the petrol station. James says a credible witness told him, but Troy doubts they’re more credible than Chloe. Troy thinks he should ask if his witness has a reason to lie. Hazel goes to the church so she can ask Joe about the night Isabel died. She tells him and admits she didn’t say anything because of guilt and fear. Hazel wants to know where he was. Joe claims he was at the church helping a parishioner in need, but he won’t tell her who it was.

Troy complains about someone painting on the statue which Dale calls blackbirding. Dale admits he Googled James Ashford and didn’t know there was slavery in Australia. Troy tells him to save his virtue signaling for his boyfriend from the city. Hazel suspects Kalana did it although she says she didn’t. Anton (Alexander England) interrupts to see if everything is okay. He asks if Kal can stay and help since he is just getting up to speed. James reads Tasha’s time capsule letter. When he approaches Tasha (Kestie Morassi), she says she wasn’t surprised by Isabel’s letter because she liked being the center of attention.

Tasha says she is a saint now. Although it sucks that she died, that was a lifetime ago. Tasha admits there was friction there because she was in love with Anton who was in love with Isabel. She thinks Isabel broke up with Anton that night because she was seeing an older guy. Her brother saw Isabel with the older guy a few times, but she doesn’t know who he was. She only knows that he was older and black. She says the police never ask her this in 94. They only wanted to know if she spent the night with Anton and she claims to have spent the whole night with him.

Tasha isn’t sure what Isabel meant when she wrote about the Ankou. James meets with Mick who tells him how he discovered Izzy’s body near the cemetery. He checked her pulse and realized she was already gone. As for the flowers, the killer must’ve done that. Mick confirms they dated for a while although they didn’t call it that. They didn’t get back together. Mick loved Izzy more like a sister. When James wonders what Joe would’ve thought about her dating an older fella, Mick suggests asking him. As Joe leaves, he gets a call from the boss telling him someone from homicide said his father called.

His dad wants him to come and see him urgently. James claims he is okay before ending the call quickly. When he gets in the car, he gets upset about his dad wanting to call now. He burns himself with the car’s cigarette lighter. Later, James calls Hazel to see if Isabel was dating an older guy. She gets upset, insults him, and hangs up. Although Hazel thinks she would’ve known, Aunty Rosa tells her Isabel was good at keeping secrets. James learns that his boss spoke to the owner of the blue car who is named Tim Foster. He claimed he sold the car to some young guy who was doing work for him around the church.

The guy’s name is Ezekiel Iesul. When she ran his name, it pinged on the Border Force database because he entered Australia from Vanuatu in 1979. He had a visa at the time but never left. Hazel visits James at his motel and learns he is reading the book that got Izzy in trouble with her dad. He can’t tell her what Ritchie’s favorite book was. She admits there might be some truth to the older guy rumor before they realize it was Ezekiel. When Hazel learns he owned the car, she wonders if Turner was right all along. It won’t be easy to find Ezekiel since he has been here illegally for 25 years.

She agrees to try to help before giving James a picture of Ezekiel. In a flashback, Isabel talks to Ezekiel who says he lives in Sydney although he moves around a lot. He likes Ashford because he can go to the beach. She offers to take him to Shell Bay. Moments later, Hazel and Isabel hear Billy Hopkins screaming at the workers. Hazel calls him a creep. Once they go to the beach, Isabel tells Ezekiel she can’t wait to go to Sydney. He tells her where he was born and what feels like home. Ezekiel wants to go back, but he has more responsibilities now that his dad died.

Isabel suggests they could go there together one day since her family is from there too. When he gets ready to swim, Isabel notices the tattoo on his chest and remembers the guy in Dalkeith on Sunday had one too. She tells him what she saw before Ezekiel drags her out there to find out what happened. Ezekiel explains that the boy was his cousin. He gets mad so a scared Isabel decides to flee. Hector visits James to tell him that Izzy had a fight with Steve when they were at Chloe’s place getting ready for the formal. He remembers Izzy calling Steve a predator. Hector got some of it on tape but lost his camera at the formal.

Hector hopes he isn’t going to tell Steve where this came from because you don’t want to be on his bad side. Steve looks at a picture of Isabel on his phone. Someone appears to be wearing Isabel’s necklace. It could be Hector. Tasha joins her brother Billy for a drink. He is staying at the empty place that she calls a crack den. Tasha is glad he is back although she thought his parole officer got him a job on the trawlers. He changed his mind when he got wind they were reopening the case. Billy shows her the deck of cards they get inside hoping they’ll snitch. He spent a lot of time with Isabel’s card in his cell.

He thinks Turner’s story was BS back then. Billy confesses that he has been sitting on a lot of secrets so it is time to see how much they’re worth. Hazel calls James to tell him Ezekiel is supposedly in Townsville. She wants to go with him to speak to Ezekiel although James has other ideas. They go up there together and learn from Mary that Zeke died last year. He didn’t have Medicare. By the time they got to the hospital, it was too late. Mary asks if this is about the lost boys. She reveals Zeke has two cousins from Vanuatu who went missing in Ashford 25 years ago.

Zeke was supposed to protect them because they were the sons of a chief. As a result, he brought shame to this family even though it wasn’t his fault. Zeke said there was darkness in Ashford so he was too afraid to go back and continue looking for them. When he couldn’t find the boys, he got angry and hurt someone. Mary claims she doesn’t know who he hurt. He told her that the enemy got inside him that night and he lost control. Zeke had a picture of Joe who was a friend and sends them a card every Christmas.

 

Black Snow Review

The mystery surrounding Isabel’s murder continues to deepen as James Cormack learns more about the night in question. The episode added new suspects and placed even more suspicion on others. Billy seems to know something about Isabel’s murder and may have information vital to the investigation.

Steve will likely receive more attention in the next episode thanks to Hector’s revelation. The quality of Black Snow hasn’t wavered with the same highlights and issues remaining through three episodes. When Cormack is at the helm and the investigation is the focus, Black Snow is thoroughly entertaining despite some issues.

However, the series likely could’ve been slimmed down by an episode or two because topics are being rehashed. Revelations in the past are also revealed in the present which feels unnecessary at times. As a result, it can be long-winded. Still, watching Cormack befriend and question locals while dealing with his own demons is enthralling.

The episode scores a 6.5 out of 10. Recaps of Black Snow are available on Reel Mockery here. Interested in advertising on Reel Mockery? Follow this link to find out how.