TV
All a Bit New: How ‘Torchwood’ Formed an Unexpected Gateway to Horror (and My Own Queerness)
As a repressed teen with a burgeoning interest in horror and a big lesbian awakening coming her way a decade later, Torchwood was something of a foundational show for me. It was one of the first pieces of media I can remember watching that made me question the concept of heterosexuality as the default setting. It was far from perfect in its presentation of this concept, but it was better than I was getting elsewhere.
And best of all, it could be scary. I was hooked.
Like a lot of nerdy kids growing up in Britain in the early 2000s, I had a major Doctor Who phase. During showrunner Russel T. Davies’ first tenure (2005–2010), I watched each new episode religiously, had action figures lined up along my windowsill, and even got some artwork featured on the kid-friendly companion show Totally Doctor Who (2006–2007). Yeah, I was just that cool.
My dad, a life-long science-fiction fan, was fully supportive of this phase and didn’t bat an eye as I rolled seamlessly into watching Torchwood, Who’s adult spin-off show, when it arrived on BBC Three in 2006. But while he would occasionally sit down with me for an episode of Doctor Who, he wasn’t particularly interested in Torchwood, so I watched it alone in my bedroom, unsupervised and unexamined.
I’m grateful for that. If my parents had looked a little closer at the show, I doubt I would have made it past the first episode, because Torchwood started as it intended to continue: splattered with blood and pretty damn queer.
As a repressed teen with a burgeoning interest in horror and a big lesbian awakening coming her way a decade later, Torchwood was something of a foundational show for me. It was one of the first pieces of media I can remember watching that made me question the concept of heterosexuality as the default setting. It was far from perfect in its presentation of this concept, but it was better than I was getting elsewhere.
And best of all, it could be scary. I was hooked.
“Modern” Talk and Subversive Stereotypes
When Doctor Who made its triumphant return to British screens in 2005, I was 12, living in a small, insular town on the east coast of Scotland. Homophobia ran rampant in my high school and the community at large. When I look back on my lonely, confused teenage years and wonder why I didn’t realize I was queer sooner, the answer is painfully clear. It was easier to hide, even from myself.
The British television landscape didn’t help. Queerness was largely absent on mainstream TV at the time; where it did appear, it was typically presented for laughs. Some of those jokes are still funny. Many cut deep, even now.
Openly gay showrunner Russel T. Davies certainly wasn’t afraid to insert queer jokes into Doctor Who and, later, Torchwood. But the humor tended to stem from the absurdity of homophobia, rather than coming at the expense of the queer characters themselves. In the Who episode “Gridlock” (2007), for instance, an elderly lesbian chastises Thomas Kincade Brannigan (Ardal O’Hanlon) for insisting on calling her and her wife “sisters,” with Brannigan responding that they should “stop that modern talk — I’m an old-fashioned cat.” The episode is set five billion years in the future on the planet of New Earth and Brannigan, a humanoid cat, is in an inter-species relationship with a human woman with whom he’s had a little of kittens. But two women being married? Still considered “modern talk.” Good fun.
But Davies’ queer influence on Doctor Who went much further than jokes. With the introduction of Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) in the very first season of the revival, Davies gave Who not only its first-ever openly queer character, but a horny “omnisexual” who subverts stereotypes by looking and acting like an archetypal masculine hero, all while flirting with everyone in sight. Harkness even kisses both Rose (Billie Piper) and the Doctor (played at the time by Christopher Eccleston) on the mouth before his heroic self-sacrifice in “The Parting of the Ways” (2005).
As Davies told Pink News in 2020, he was “thirsty for that kind of material” growing up — and he clearly wasn’t the only one. Captain Jack immediately grew a fan following, making him the obvious candidate for a spin-off show.
That show is Torchwood, which continues Jack’s story following his death, resurrection, and realization that he has become accidentally immortal. Believing the Doctor can “fix” him, Jack hunkers down in Cardiff to await the Doctor’s inevitable return, joining and later leading the Torchwood Institute — an organization set up by Queen Victoria to defend the Earth against alien and supernatural threats — along the way.
With a presumed adult audience, Torchwood was able to turn the queer dial up several notches. But it also leaned harder into the horror elements that the more family-friendly Doctor Who could only flirt with.
Blood and Bodies (and BBQ Sauce)
After a brush with Halloween (1978) when I was far too young, it took me years to build up the courage to start watching horror movies again, despite my growing fascination with the genre. To ease the transition, I read a lot of scary books, looked at the pictures on horror DVD cases, and watched Torchwood.
Torchwood is not a horror-forward series, but it certainly has its moments. The debut episode, “Everything Changes” (2006), sees an alien creature with a face “like Hellraiser” ripping a custodian’s throat out with its teeth, sending gouts of blood spurting in every direction. The third season, known as “Children of Earth” (2009), deals with an alien threat demanding that the human race hands over 10% of its kids, claiming they will “live forever.” When we get a glimpse of the fate that awaits them, the image is truly nightmarish.
And then there’s “Countrycide” (2006), an early episode that feels like a Welsh folk horror take on The Hills Have Eyes (the remake of which was released earlier the same year), complete with corpses stripped down to bloody skeletons and a fridge full of human meat. The true horror of the episode? There appears to be no alien influence at play. When the traumatized Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) demands an explanation for the murder and cannibalism, the all-too-human ringleader provides one that offers no catharsis or comfort, saying he did it “‘cause it made [him] happy.”
Sure, Torchwood could also be supremely silly — see the sexy Cyberwoman slathered in BBQ sauce getting pecked at by a pterodactyl (“Cyberwoman,” 2006). But I can’t deny that the series sparked my creepy curiosity. Episodes like “Countrycide” made me eager to seek out the films that influenced the writers. I also tracked down several of the series’ tie-in books, which could be even more explicit in their gore. Andy’s Lane’s Slow Decay (2007), involving an alien tapeworm that makes its hosts so hungry they’ll eat anything — rats, other humans, even their own flesh in a pinch — has always stuck with me.
What I appreciate most about Torchwood in hindsight, however, is not its willingness to show blood, which Doctor Who has always been squeamish about, but the way it challenged my small-town understanding of sexuality as a teen.
Quaint Little Categories and Problematic Queers
Jack Harkness’s sexuality was no secret going into Torchwood, so it’s no surprise that showrunners Chris Chibnall and Russell T. Davies seized the opportunity to delve deeper into this aspect of his character. In the second episode, “Day One” (2006), Torchwood’s medic, Owen Harper (Burn Gorman), comments that the only thing they know about the mysterious Jack is that he’s gay, because “period military is not the dress code of a straight man.” Tech wiz Toshiko Sato (Naoko Mori) challenges this narrow notion, noting that Jack will “shag anything if it’s gorgeous enough.” Jack, who was born in the 51st century, later teasingly chastizes his team for their limited 21st-century understanding of sexuality: “You people and your quaint little categories.”
Like Davies’ Who before it, Torchwood does not relegate Jack’s queerness to mere words. Throughout the series, we see him engaged in a will-they-won’t-they flirtation with Gwen in between making out with multiple men, from the closeted World War II captain (Matt Rippy) whose name he stole, to former-lover-turned-enemy Captain John Hart (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s James Marsters). By season two, Jack is getting hot and heavy with Torchwood team member Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd). In the final season, “Miracle Day” (2011), he has same-gender sex scenes that were heavily edited for the UK broadcast and lambasted by bigots.
And Torchwood isn’t content to place all its queerness in Jack’s basket, though it struggles to handle its other characters’ sexualities with as much nuance. Owen, Toshiko, and Gwen all have queer encounters throughout the first season, with some even resulting in sex. None of these are what I’d call particularly good representation, however, especially by modern standards; all involve predatory elements and none are ever mentioned again, with the characters going back to exclusively heterosexual relationships afterward. The show’s understanding of gender was also limited, with the episode “Greeks Bearing Gifts” (2006) even shoehorning in an uncomfortably unfunny joke at the expense of an unseen trans character.
But it wasn’t all bad. By far, Torchwood’s best representation outside of Jack comes in the form of the aforementioned Ianto Jones.
Ianto Jones and Coming Into Your Queerness
Ianto undergoes a major evolution during his run on Torchwood, starting out as the unassuming “tea boy” and gradually growing more emboldened, funny, and heroic. At the same time, he’s coming to terms with the idea that he’s not as straight as he (and the audience) originally thought.
At the outset of the series, Ianto is trapped in a doomed relationship with a woman partially converted into a Cyberwoman. But as Torchwood’s first season progresses, Ianto begins to flirt with Jack; the two are implied to have hooked up in “They Keep Killing Suzie” (2006), with season two’s debut, “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (2008), making their relationship official as Jack asks Ianto on a date. Gwen later walks in on a steamy, shirtless moment between the two in the episode “Adrift” (2008).
By the time the third season rolled around in 2009, Torchwood’s already slight core cast had been decimated, creating more space for exploration of Ianto’s relationship with his newfound queerness. The season opens with Ianto nervously exhilarated by the idea that people recognize him and Jack as a couple. When Jack asks if it matters, Ianto admits it’s “all a bit new to [him].” Later in the same episode, in response to his sister asking him if he has “gone bender” (a British slang term for gay, usually used as an insult), Ianto explains that “it’s weird. It’s just different. It’s not men, it’s… It’s just him. It’s only him.”
While I know plenty of bisexuals who aren’t thrilled by the trope of a character only being attracted to one specific person of the same gender, the idea that you might not know you’re queer until you know really struck a chord with me. Years later, when I came to the gradual realization that I was a lesbian in my early 20s, I thought of Ianto Jones. There was no singular dashing Captain who unlocked my queerness. But it was all a bit new to me, too.
Ianto sadly did not survive the season. Following the grand tradition of burying your gays (and Torchwood’s own compulsive need to murder most of its cast), “Day Four” ends with Ianto dying in Jack’s arms, heartbreakingly telling the immortal man that “In a thousand year’s time, you won’t remember me,” with Jack promising that “I will.”
Fans remember him, too. A shrine to Ianto Jones exists in Cardiff Bay to this day.
Torchwood was Flawed Yet Formative — and Often Very Fun
I never finished Torchwood. By the time the fourth and final season rolled around, I was preparing to leave for university, had already dropped off Doctor Who, and was slowly graduating to more explicit horror media. Torchwood wasn’t what I needed anymore, especially in its newly Americanized form. I watched a few episodes but never found out how it ended.
A few years later, I would kiss a woman for the first time, and a few years after that I would finally admit to myself that yes, I was queer (duh). Another deeply queer, horror-tinged TV series, Hannibal (2013–2015), would play a crucial role in that self-acceptance, helping me find a queer community that made it easier to finally come out.
But for all its flaws and problematic tropes and BBQ-slathered sexy Cyberwomen, I can’t deny that Torchwood played a role, too.
We had a damn great time during our stay at Hell Motel this summer. However, they recently asked us to check out when the season finale dropped. The episode, ‘Grand Guignol,’ delivered a few more shocking surprises. It also packed quite a few meta moments and easter eggs for Slasher fans who followed this crew to the Cold River Motel. With so much going on, many people are still confused about whether Paige (Paula Brancati) or Andy (Jim Watson) was our bonus Baphomet.
As Horror Press’ resident Hell Motel Lady, and nerd with too much time on her hands, I’m here to break down the season finale. If you’ve seen it, continue reading to learn how I reached my conclusion. If you haven’t seen the finale yet, then save this for later because I’m packing spoilers.
The ‘Grand Guignol’ Recap
The episode, written by Hell Motel co-creators Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin, spends a lot of time playing with the audience. Right up until the very end, they allow viewers the chance to doubt themselves. They also gift us various lines that could mean a couple of different things. The season finale catches up with Paige and Andy after the events of the most recent Cold River Motel massacre. As the only two survivors, they both have some shared trauma, but have drifted apart.
Paige has found herself back in the Doomed Service franchise playing Caitlyn Ridgeley (Lauren Lee Smith) again. This time, she’s leading a new requel that will kickstart a trilogy. To make things even better, her director, Aaron Berrance (Breton Lalama), seems receptive to her having more input in the films. Meanwhile, Andy is teaching at a college where the students don’t want his lectures on comedy. They want him to talk about horror and how he survived a fairly recent murder spree.
After a particularly grueling day of students trying our suspect, er, professor, he heads over to Paige’s place for dinner. She is finally returning a text he sent while she was filming. She wants to make him a meal and invite him to a special early screening of the newest Doomed Service movie. We also get a peek at Paige’s gorgeous apartment filled with Doomed Service merch. This sheds light on just how much this franchise means to her and forces the audience to wonder what lengths she would have gone to for a chance to return to the franchise.
No One Gets Out of this Season Alive
This also strikes Andy as odd. He finally brings up that he found Portia’s heart in Paige’s ceiling at the motel. Paige pins that on Floyd (Gray Powell) and Shirley (Yanna McIntosh) and asks why Andy didn’t take his suspicions about the heart in her room to the police. He claims he didn’t know what to think but knew he had to protect her. Obviously, the heart business and wine results in them moving the conversation to the bedroom. Afterwards, Andy asks Paige about this new Doomed Service entry and admits he has seen all of the movies. Paige tells him that this one gives Caitlyn a daughter, and Andy points out that the real Caitlyn didn’t have a daughter. This is when my wig was snatched, and I realized Andy was the third killer the whole time. However, the writers were not done toying with us yet.
Andy and Paige go on this date to Doomed Service, and clearly, things get stabby. After Paige is humiliated by finding out they killed her character off after she told the crowd she would be around for a trilogy, all hell breaks loose. The audience is confused by Caitlyn’s crime scene photos, which interrupt their supernatural slasher film inspired by Caitlyn’s murder. Aaron asks where the projection booth is, and Andy gives him directions before allegedly going to find the light switch. So, it’s suspicious he knows his way around the theater, but the lights do not come on. However, Aaron is wearing his guts on the outside after meeting a mysterious figure in a hallway. Coincidence?
A Bloody Ending
We all have to be looking at Andy differently, but it wouldn’t be as fun if he just owned his shit and confessed. Instead, he tries to blame Paige for killing Aaron and the Hell Motel Squad (trademark pending). This is when Paige starts asking the serious questions, and we find out Andy loved Caitlyn. Andy tells her what a great woman the real Caitlyn was and shares his thoughts on the reductive character Paige has turned her into. Things get heated, and Andy moves too quickly toward Paige, so she instinctively runs him through with the weapon Aaron pulled out of his guts and left nearby. As Andy bleeds out, Paige apologizes for her part in the films and tells him she never considered how people who knew Caitlyn might feel about them.
It seems like Andy is accepting her apology as he dies on the floor. However, the police kick in, and he starts screaming that Paige is trying to kill him. In the confusion, Paige stands up with the machete and asks him to tell the truth. The cops shoot her in her glorious eveningwear, and she falls down next to Andy. His spiteful ass thought he would have the last word, but Paige tells him she will see him in hell. This is when the Hell Motel season finale really earned the episode title, ‘Grand Guignol’.
A Professor and a Killer
Andy was the extra Bathomet running around this season of Hell Motel. The revelation that Caitlyn is his mother explains Andy’s views on the genre and his reactions to certain conversations this season. This development sheds a new light on his instant bond with Paige. It also explains why he felt he had to protect her instead of telling people she had a heart in her ceiling when they were rescued in the previous episode. He didn’t allow her to live just because she seemingly felt bad for her role in sensationalizing a murder. He spared her because she’s a mother figure of sorts.
I’m not going to walk us through Psych 101, but Andy becoming a murderer makes too much sense. Andy’s motives for this killing spree add so many layers to everything he said and did this season. All of his scenes carry more weight because we assumed we knew Andy’s intentions. However, we never even scratched the surface.
One example is when Aaron is telling Paige that she’s no longer valuable to the Doomed Service franchise. Andy is not just feeling bad for his co-survivor and possible new girlfriend. He is also hearing that his murdered mother is no longer relevant to these movies that have been profiting from his pain for most of his life. Knowing the real reason he is pissed at this moment made me recall the times Andy froze when looking at Floyd as Baphomet. Our little murderous professor was facing his mother’s murderer, and that was making things a bit too real. So, he was being put through a lot this season while trying to take a stab at the genre he has beef with.
Why Andy Being the Killer Works
There was one point of view that Hell Motel was missing this entire season. In a season that holds a mirror up to true crime media, creators, and connoisseurs, it felt odd not to hear from a victim’s loved ones. I thought Paige was Caitlyn’s daughter, but that would have taken away from her arc dovetailing with Caitlyn’s story. So, having Andy be the son of the victim is a very smooth fix. After all, he grew up watching his trauma become profitable as his mom’s humanity was forgotten.
Andy being the murderer, not only snags a Psycho nod, but it also gives us insight into how this killer was made. It’s not fun being constantly reminded of a loved one’s murder. More importantly, watching the media spin your pain for clicks and headlines triggers a special kind of rage. Hell Motel would have felt incomplete (for tons of reasons) without Caitlyn’s angry offspring.
To add another insult to all of the strays Andy caught this season, his mother’s killers were never caught. People harassed his dad into an early grave (to be fair, it is usually the husband). However, it became a cold case, leaving Andy without anyone to direct his grief and rage at. At least until he came face to face with the murderers and watched Paige deal with them in the previous episode, ‘Cat and Mouse’. He might have started his Hell Motel journey as a simple mission killing spree. However, our sweater king was also thrown a couple of surprises.
The Last Page on Paige
Most viewers blamed Paige all season (and I am guilty of that too). That would have put too much on our final girl’s plate though. She was here as a commentary on how the industry treats women of a certain age. Andy’s confusing Mom Goggles, and her weird attachment to this character aside, Paige’s ending dovetails beautifully with Caitlyn’s. When Aaron tells Paige that they used her to bring the old fans back to the franchise. The reasoning is that they have a new young actor, Paula Lynde (Raíssa Souto). She will keep the old audience and pull in a younger crowd. Aaron is saying the tragedy that started it all, and the woman who played the infamous victim, are no longer relevant. While she might be “too hot to die,” she’s not too hot to be shoved out to pasture for a new model.
The actor (and the victim that her character was inspired by) are no longer trendy. There are so many fun threads to pull at this season of Hell Motel. However, this idea of what we as a society make popular and how quickly we discard it is what stands out to me. Not all true crime podcasters, authors, fans, etc. are ghouls. Yet, the genre does seem to be built on sensationalizing horrific events. So, it’s not lost on me that the final scene of the episode is an actor auditioning to play Paige in a movie about this bloody night.
Is This About Us?
This season holds a mirror up to all of us, including horror fans who like to pretend some of our favorite films do not have real-world ties. It’s asking us to sit with that for a moment and think about how we got here as a species. Sure, it is easy to get lost in the snowblowed frat boys and skinless cooks at this murder buffet. However, the show is also an examination of our own relationship to the media we consume. After all, it is easy to become desensitized after living such unprecedented lives.
Hell Motel gave us plenty to chew on (even though Eric McCormack’s Chef Hemingway died before breakfast). I’m thinking about the lifespan of a trend in this era, where none of us can focus on anything for longer than a few seconds. What becomes of the surviving family members when the rest of the world decides they are ready to close the book on their life-changing tragedy? When the memes die down, and the media thinks their stories no longer bleed enough to lead anymore, what then? I don’t know what to do with all these thoughts yet. However, each of us might want to unpack these ideas as we consume so much information via social media.
That’s All I Know About That
I do not have answers to the questions the season poses. I don’t have an eloquent statement to end this article with or a list of actionable items. What I do know is that Andy was literally cutting up at the Cold River Motel, and that Paige got to be a real final girl for a few moments. I also know I had a damn good time being Horror Press’ Hell Motel Lady this season. Fingers crossed I get to whip that self-made title out again soon!
Caution: This article contains major spoilers for Hell Motel.
I love slashers, TV, and audacity. Which is why the sixth episode of Shudder’s new anthology series, Hell Motel, has been living rent-free in my mind for days. The episode “Guts and Glory” is a standout in what has been a bloody and addictive season of television. For most shows, this episode slot would have been a cool-down moment, allowing the audience to catch its breath and emotionally prepare for the remaining two episodes. However, Hell Motel put a boot in our windshield and offered us a side of slasher to complement our main slasher. It serves as a gory reminder that series co-creators Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter are unafraid to push their symphony of carnage to new heights.
A Frat House Massacre Sets the Stage
“Guts and Glory” opens in the middle of a frat house massacre. This place, where young men do questionable deeds while assuming they have their whole lives ahead of them, is awash in red light. The visual danger cues are underscored by pure horror. The expected sounds of parties and laughter are instead cries of terror and screams as someone on a mission is cutting through young people. We see Blake (Atticus Mitchell) and his friend running from a masked assailant, who is not the cloaked killer we come to Hell Motel for every week. It is also impossible to ignore that this killer is purposeful in his moves, which makes him more terrifying.
Our first impression of the murderer is watching him calmly terrorize the frat house. He makes his way through the chaos and stomps on Blake’s phone before carrying on with his business. He kicks in a door and commits some unseen act of violence on someone(s), who thought they found safety. However, it is the intentionality on display as he sticks a knife through Blake’s friend’s foot that signals this is about to be a moment. A gruesome scene on its own right that is underscored by the knife he then plants in this guy’s back. This victim cries out for Blake, not knowing the worst is yet to come. Our killer then uses a knife to carve a jagged smile into the still screaming mouth of this college kid as Blake runs off.
A Personal Vendetta Fuels the Carnage
This is when it became apparent that this killing spree was personal. It was also a very vicious warning shot that Hell Motel was about to do something wild. The series was about to bench this season’s killer(s) long enough to give us a glimpse into possibly one of the best slasher movies we will never see.
The episode, penned by series co-creator, executive producer, and showrunner Ian Carpenter, had the difficult task of adding depth to a character that most of us had written off. We all have thoughts about frat boys, which is why the frat house killer’s motivations made sense. However, Hell Motel has spent the better part of the season feeding its audience breadcrumbs that this kid and his unchecked trauma might become a problem. So, this episode’s juxtaposition of these two make-or-break moments in this character’s life is interesting.
We see the flashbacks of this previous night of terror slam into his present-day situation, where he is holding the other four survivors of Cold River Motel at gunpoint. His trauma has finally won in the present day. The thought of being made a victim (again) after scamming his way into a hero’s narrative has caused him to snap.
A Slasher Within a Slasher: The BOGO Horror Experience
Hell Motel’s audience knew this week would see Blake die. We assumed we would see what went down during that fateful evening to crown him the series’ resident final boy. However, arguably very few fans could have guessed that Blake would be at the center of the best episode of an already stellar season. The show’s penchant for using flashbacks to give audiences bonus upsetting kills in addition to the small cast in the present day is cranked up this episode. The habit becomes a vehicle to deliver an unexpected slasher within our weekly slasher. Like a bloody BOGO deal that no horror fan can pass up, or a holiday meal with extra trays of your favorite side dishes, it enabled us to overindulge.
The frat house murders are a free-for-all because they are not bound by the rules of episodic TV. This killer has to make his impact now or never, and he does. From the very beginning, we are captivated by this angry menace. Whether it’s the kill I refer to as “The Cop Fountain” or watching him kick in the windshield of a cop car, the audience knows this person is on a mission. It is hunting season, and Blake is the target. It is impossible to watch our guest killer in action and not wonder what Blake and the boys did to trigger this reign of terror. This is in huge part because director Adam MacDonald and the stunt guy(s) give us that story. We see in the performer’s physicality that this is personal.
A Killer’s Motive Rooted in Revenge
As a lover of slashers, I have seen countless killers just doing things and moving without a real purpose. Yet, in this delightfully unhinged episode, our murderer’s movements telegraph that this is no random spree. He is locked in, causing ghouls like me to tune all the way in. This makes it easier to lean into the carnage and wonder if you are silently rooting for him. So, we are not surprised when he finally peels his mask off to reveal that he is a college kid bullied to his breaking point.
We actually feel a little justified when he confirms this whole night was triggered by Blake’s callous actions. Cullen (Augustus Oicle) is here because Blake and his cronies took their hazing way too far. He explains how they ruined his life and alludes to various forms of abuse he has suffered. Hurt people, kill people on this fateful night.
After Cullen finally forces Blake to remember him, he gives him the chance to own up to what he has done. He can swap places with the girl he claims to love, Farah (Rojan Molanian), allowing her to live as he reaps what he has sown. However, he runs and leaves her to pay the price just as he did with his friend, who bit it on the stairs at the top of the episode. Blake makes his way downstairs as Farah calls out to him before catching the business end of a knife. He is greeted by police officers who see a wounded kid and begin to paint the narrative that this coward is a hero.
Challenging the Frat Boy Archetype
I always feel a little sad for actors like Mitchell who pull the frat types we all involuntarily discount. A role we all love to hate and immediately dismiss because, like Cullen, most of us have baggage with these dudebros. Hell Motel never allowed us to forget his trauma or how he is different from the other people invited to this present-day deadly weekend. While we tried to write him off as similar characters we disregard in the slasher subgenre, they kept dropping hints we should not.
Like most characters in this world, Blake is not a good person and will answer for his crimes. In fact, he meets a particularly grisly death in the present day. As he bleeds out from a knife wound in the cold weather, our series regular slasher appears with a snowblower. Blake, being too weak to run from what he is owed this time, is forced to meet his fate head-on. As Baphomet drives through him, it’s a symbolic gesture of our side quest killer handing the wheel back to our main murderer.
A Memorable Conclusion to a Standout Episode
Hell Motel leaves the audience with a shot of the remaining pieces of the final boy. Of all the somber endings we have seen this season, this one stands out. It is a fairly iconic way to end a nearly perfect 42-minute episode of television. From start to finish, this was an event that showcased why so many of us were happy to see the Slasher team reassemble for a new show. Fans have watched this team kill beloved horror icons, slaughter beloved TV actors, and produce wicked kills before. So, many of us showed up to this murderous motel knowing they set a high bar for themselves and wondering how they were going to meet it.
While Hell Motel has met (and at times surpassed) the gleefully glorious kills we expect from this team, “Guts and Glory” feels like they have truly moved into this anthology. They decorated it in bodies, blood, and an eagerness to remind their fans to never get too comfortable. This episode sees the entire team excelling in their respective lanes to craft a gripping and gory gem. By the time the credits rolled, I found myself no longer wanting a second season, but actually needing it. I have to know how they will raise the bar for themselves yet again, if that is even possible. I have no idea what to expect from the remaining two episodes of this season. However, I know they have their work cut out for them following one of the best episodes of TV we have gotten in 2025.
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