First Blood – As the second episode of First Kill begins, Calliope (Imani Lewis) and Juliette (Sarah Catherine Hook) make out. Once Jules bites her neck, Cal stabs her in the chest with a wooden stake. Juliette explains that you have to live with the consequences once an action is taken. Calliope runs from the house and out into the street. She ends up running from the cops. Back at the party, Ben (Jonas Dylan Allen) and Noah (Roberto Mendez) eyeball one another before the lights go out. Ben begins using his phone to look around and runs into a body on the ground. When the lights turn back on, Ben checks on Ashley Stanton (Sarah Stipe) who has been badly injured. They rush to call 911 as a woman seems to smirk at Ben. Cal manages to evade the police by jumping on a trolley that takes her away.
She checks her neck only to find there are no noticeable injuries. At home, Talia (Aubin Wise), Theo (Phillip Mullings Jr.), and Apollo (Dominic Goodman) suspect something is wrong. They’re surprised to find a shambler downstairs. They begin fighting with it to prevent it from destroying the kitchen. Juliette wakes up and pulls the stake from her flesh. The wound heals itself. When she gets up and looks through the door, she hears the police talking in the other room. Although she leaves her phone on the ground, Jules manages to sneak out of the house without being spotted. Talia and the others notice that the Shambler (Derek Mears) is looking for something. It finds a summoner which Apollo admits he found at the cemetery. He claims he didn’t know what it was. Talia kills the monster before making Apollo clean up the mess.
When Jules makes it home and climbs the stairs, she is confronted by Margot (Elizabeth Mitchell) who calls for Sebastian once she sees the blood. Sebastian (Will Swenson) joins them and learns that Juliette has got her first kill. Elinor (Gracie Dzienny) finds out what has happened and asks who it was. Margot believes they can have Jules’s consecration ceremony next Sunday after saying her dad will deal with the body. Juliette makes an excuse to get out of it, but her mother says it has to be the full moon after the first kill. It was the same for Elinor and 2,000 years of legacies before her. Jules says she is tired. Her mother tells her to get some rest because there is no bigger day than the consecration ceremony. Margot tells Sebastian that she needs to call her mother because their baby girl has finally grown up.
Meanwhile, Talia and the others clean up the mess. Theo asks Apollo when he is going to apologize for this crap show. He reminds him that you don’t treasure hunt in graveyards. When Apollo says he already has a father, his mom tells him he is lucky his father isn’t here. Talia complains that the item he had to have teleported the Shambler into their home and bypassed all the Barriers the Guardians had in place. Their house is trash because he couldn’t follow one simple rule of not stealing stuff. Apollo wonders what it was doing in the cemetery in the first place because people don’t go around dropping summoners. Theo shows him the last picture of his mother and asks him to think before he acts. They begin shoving one another before Talia makes them stop. Talia catches Cal trying to sneak inside.
Cal tells her that she thinks she got her first kill because she staked a vampire. Once the vampire passed out, Cal ran. Talia suggests she wasn’t a vampire since she didn’t disintegrate. Cal knows what happens when vampires are killed although she doesn’t know why it didn’t happen this time. They agree to discuss the matter more in the morning. Jules goes to the bathroom to deal with the stake and look at her wound. Cal has a dream about her first attempt to kill a monster when it didn’t go well. Talia saves her before reminding her that the worst monsters are the ones that appear to be human. She gets her daughter up while Elinor goes to the morgue where she talks to Malcolm (Adam Fristoe) to talk about the Stanton girl. She reminds him that she works for the District Attorney’s Office. He says she is a paid intern working for her father.
She learns that the Stanton girl’s liver was excised. When Elinor looks at the body, she finds it odd that the girl still has blood in her veins. Malcolm believes it is happening again since he was bodies ripped open and organs missing when he first started. Elinor uses her powers to change his mind and convince him that it was a head injury instead of something monstrous. She tells him he shouldn’t drink bourbon out of his thermos and pretend it is iced tea. Cal tells her mother about the nightmare that she had again. Talia argues she is a hunter who made a mistake that may bother her for a long time. She wants Cal to show her exactly what she did to the vampire. Cal explains they were in a pantry because it was a dare. When she saw her fangs, she stabbed her with the stake. Talia makes her do it over and over until she gets it right. She tells Cal that her form is perfect.
Once Cal says she is positive she saw fangs, Talia instructs her to go to school, keep her head down, and keep her eyes open. Margot finds out from Sebastian that Detective Orr just dropped off Jules’s phone that was left at the party. When questioned about the head wound, Margot suggests their daughter got a little carried away. Sebastian believes it was more than that and reminds her that they feed instead of slaughtering. He is worried because he doesn’t want Juliette to become anything like him although Margot says she is nothing like him. At school, Juliette learns from Ben that someone died at the party. She asks whether he has ever taken credit for something he didn’t do because it was such a big deal to everyone else. Ben wants her to explain where she was since she wasn’t answering his messages. He suspects that she was in the pantry with the new girl.
Ben says they claim she fell and hit her head. There was so much blood. Juliette agrees to come to the vigil tonight. Juliette checks her locker for blood pills before noticing Cal walking through the hallway, but it isn’t actually her. Later, Sebastian watches a new report about Ashley’s death. Elinor enters to tell him about her visit to Malcolm that he won’t remember. She was trying to help because Malcolm was about to start blabbering about monsters in Savannah. Sebastian warns her that her talent is uncharted territory and no one else has it. She complains about him comparing her to Oliver since she isn’t collecting dead squirrels to play with. Elinor believes he should be thanking her because Jules did a number on the girl including ripping out her liver. Later that night, the Burns brothers meet with Clayton Cook (Joseph Reitman) who explains there is always a meeting after an incident.
Clayton believes Apollo needs a lecture. He goes on to say there was a time when everyone knew about monsters. When asked about the summoner, Apollo dumps it onto the table. Clayton quickly grabs it, puts it back in the bag, and explains you don’t take it out of the protective bag. He finds that it is damaged although Apollo can’t tell him when that happened. Cook asks Apollo to take that giant chip off his shoulder and tell him what happened. Sebastian goes to Juliette’s room to tell her he is proud of her. He returns her phone and recommends being a little more careful about what she leaves near her bodies. They begin talking about her stuffed animal called Amanda Victoria. Sebastian tells her she has compassion although Jules admits her mom thinks it is a weakness. He says her mom is a different breed. Jules knows she is more like her dad and her mom doesn’t think that is a compliment.
He argues that compassion is a gift that should be embraced. Sebastian thinks she will show some restraint the next time she takes a life. She tries to tell him that she didn’t, but she can’t get it out. During the vigil, Ben tells a sob story about Ashley dying in his arms. As Cal arrives with Talia, she admits it is awkward since she didn’t even know her. She claims she doesn’t see the vampire she staked. Elinor goes to the same club as Apollo and bites a man’s neck in a bathroom stall. Once she finishes, she tells him that this never happened. Jules listens at the vigil as Ashley’s parents speak to the small crowd. When Juliette goes into the school, Cal finds an excuse to leave her mother and follow her inside.
Cal yells at her in the hallway while saying she just wants to talk. They say it was instinct what happened before. Eventually, Cal begins chasing Juliette through the school. By the time they reach the rooftop, blood is coming from Jules’s eyes. Jules says she bit her because she wasn’t herself. Cal believes she was herself and that is why her family was sent to Savannah. They begin fighting after Jules shows her fangs. Once Cal hits her in the face, Jules’s blood paralyzes her arm. Jules tells her it’ll wear off before she runs away. At the bar, Elinor calls Ashley’s death tragic while Apollo calls it a cover up. They talk about the school where his sister goes and where Elinor went. He suspects she was the homecoming queen. She asks him if he has ever hooked up in a women’s bathroom stall.
When he says no, Elinor tells him that he will. The next day, Principal Waters (Christopher Duncan) scolds Jules and Cal for going to the roof. Jules tries to take the blame before Margot joins them. Talia enters next. While Jules explains what happened, Talia texts Cal to ask whether this is the girl she staked. Margot argues it was just a big misunderstanding. The girls are allowed to go back to class while the adults stay and chat. Outside, Cal tells Jules that she is a bad liar. She admits she didn’t go onto the roof to make her feel better like she claimed although Jules was the first person to welcome her here. That was before she realized what she is. Everyone has tales if you look hard enough and Calliope couldn’t keep her eyes off her. Juliette knows she was planning to kill her at the party. When she followed her into the pantry, she just wanted to kiss her since she has been thinking about when she first walked into her class.
Jules didn’t mean to bite her, but Cal would’ve staked her either way. Juliette tells her she can hear her heartbeat because it races when you lie. Margot invites Talia over for lunch since it is hard being new in town. She suggests next Sunday after church. Once Talia agrees, Margot says she likes her and can already tell they’re going to be friends. Later, Jules enters her bedroom where Elinor admits she can’t believe she did it. She wants to hear all the details, but Jules says she just bit her. Elinor waves the stake around while saying that isn’t what she heard. She shows Jules the pictures of Ashley and asks whether she had to bash her head and take her liver. She wants to know about the stake. Jules doesn’t want to tell her anything about it. Elinor reminds her that they don’t keep secrets from one another so she’ll be there when she wants to talk. When Cal makes it home, she finds Tess, Sara, and her father Jack (Jason Moore) with everyone else.
They tell her that she staked the girl perfectly, but she is a legacy vampire and that is why she didn’t die. They’re born vampires so their bloodlines stretch back thousands of years. They’re hard to find and even harder to kill. Talia says each and every one of them must die. Cal talks about her family and how they’ve vowed to rid the world of all monsters.
First Kill Review
First Kill may just be bad enough to be surprisingly watchable for certain viewers. Many aspects of the story are downright silly while the music is on the verge of being obnoxious. The show is so cringey that viewers will be able to feel it in every fiber. It is strange that Elinor would be able to change everything by brainwashing Malcolm into saying that Ashley just fell and hit her head. You couldn’t just sweep something that big under the rug, especially since so many kids at the party saw the state of Ashley’s body.
Sarah Catherine Hook is the real standout from the cast while little else really shines through. First Kill does have a unique charm about it because it is so bad that you’re almost compelled to feel sorry for it. The second episode scores a 5 out of 10. Recaps of First Kill are available on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our work at this link.
Jay Skelton is a fan of all television shows and movies. He tries his best to keep up with the latest foreign television shows and movies. Jay loves skinny dipping in the dark too.
