Saint X (Season 1), Episodes 1, 2, 3: Recap & Ending Explained: The first thing that I felt like doing after watching the first three episodes of Hulu’s Saint X is picking up Alexis Shaitkin’s novel of the same name, which the show is based on. Let me put it right away, the show is a run-of-the-mill product of the incessant urge to turn a best-seller novel into a movie/show and expectedly mediocre at best. The writing is wobbly and lacks flair, the direction is nothing groundbreaking, and the acting is mostly artificial.
But it still works because the story has enough meat and the central mystery is simultaneously baffling and fascinating. By work, what I meant is I would have kept watching this even if I didn’t have the work commitment. Of course, I did research a little about the novel and found really exciting things, which is making me hopeful for the remaining episodes of the show, even though I don’t expect those to be any better than the first three.
In this article, I am going to do a recap of what happened in three episodes and then put everything under a microscope to find some answers, if possible. And from this point, I am going to stop mentioning anything about the book. Because at the end of the day, our main focus here is the TV show, not the book.
Saint X (Season 1), Episodes 1, 2, 3 Recap:
A young black man is running through the woods, clearly hiding from the police who are after him and probably his friends/associates for doing “something.” The something is vaguely revealed through infused montages of a white American family vacationing and their elder daughter Alison, getting raped and killed.
The major problem here is the show seems confused whether it wants to make clear what has happened or reveal the big crime at a later stage. The result of that is the same montage coming back in the narrative again and again, which is plain bad storytelling.
There are three different timelines intercepting each other. To put things into perspective, I’m going to do the recap following the chronological order as much as possible.
The past
Upper-middle class Thomas family from Westchester arrives at Indigo Bay resort in Caribbean island Saint X for a lavish, relaxing vacation. There is a constant conflict in perspectives between the corporate father, Bill, and their rebellious, anti-capitalist Princeton-going daughter Alison. However, the two seem to love each other as well. The mom, Mia, stands between the two of them while the youngest, seven-year-old Claire, a rather shy kid, mostly latches on to her big sister.
Other major vacationers are: a pregnant couple where the asshole husband later leeches on Alison; another family of four where the husband gets close to a single alcoholic woman who has come with daughter Olivia, abusive father Todd, and his teenage son Tyler; a gay couple with their teenage son.
Alison appears to be very outgoing and approachable which prompts young ressort worker Edwin to make a move on her. Edwin, a dynamic local young man who is not more than two years older than Alison, appears to be mischievous and charming enough for Alison to reciprocate his advances. However, Edwin’s best friend Clive aka Gogo, who also works at the resort seems to be really against Alison and Edwin and tries his best to stop both of them.
Gogo, a nice young man, has his own troubles going on. He has an infant with a young woman Sara, who he loves but she only sees him as the mostly absent father of the child and nothing else. While Gogo struggles to provide for his kid with his only job at the resort, he does everything to be a good father. Sara has a relationship going on with a married man named Keithly, which is heartbreaking for Gogo who has been in love with her for ages.
Edwin and Gogo’s childhood friend Desmond also works in the resort and upon Edwin’s request, Desmond plans to hook them up with One-eyed Mike, a drug dealer as a means of earning quick money. While Edwin is very excited about the prospect, Gogo wants to steer clear of any trouble and, like a true best friend, tries to convince Edwin out of it as well. He also tries to warn Alison about Edwin and requests her to not go forward with whatever she is doing.
But Alison can’t help being drawn to Edwin. She also has a thing going on with Tyler, whom she genuinely seems to like as well. Allison getting all this attention makes Olivia jealous, but the two eventually seem to acknowledge the fact that they’re confused teenagers with absolutely nothing about life already figured out. Alison keeps sneaking out during the nights which makes her sister sad but Bill and Mia turns out to be cool enough to let their college going teenage daughter live a little.
Edwin’s meeting with One-eyed Mike doesn’t go well while Gogo’s life continues to get harder. He still refuses to accompany his best friend for any illegal business and Edwin drops him eventually. Alison goes missing one night and she is seen with Edwin and Gogo. The same night the local police chief picks up the duo and eventually, they are cleared although Gogo gets arrested for possession of drugs. We don’t know how that happened at this moment.
Alison’s lifeless body is eventually discovered by Desmond and the other family of four in Faraway Kay. This nearby small island can be seen from Saint X. The island is known for lore that goes around regarding a scary female ghost, and Alison has shown her interest in visiting the place, which we have already seen.
With the body found, Bill and Mia are absolutely shattered, and even though the island authorities clear Edwin and Gogo, they claim it is these two men who have raped and killed their daughter. The island authorities are perhaps doing a cover up in order to keep the tourism business afloat, which is the main source of the Island’s economic growth.
The Present
We meet Emily, an environmental documentarian, at a New York City bar when a random man tries to hit on her. Emily lives with Josh, her boyfriend, a genuinely caring and affectionate young man.
Here is the deal. Emily is Alison’s little sister Claire (who now goes by her middle name to avoid unnecessary attention; I found this from my research about the book). Her childhood trauma hasn’t left her, as Emily has a lot of anxiety and PTSD related issues. Life is not at all easy for her and she is forever cursed with the memory of her big sister, the person she loved the most in the world, going away from her life in such a horrible fashion.
Josh and her friend Sunita try their best to shield Emily from every possible thing that can remind her of the island although that doesn’t seem to be an easy task. Emily keeps trying to live as normally as possible, despite life not at all being easy for her. But as fate would have it, one day, she boards a taxi which happens to be driven by none other than Gogo aka Clive.
Saint X (Season 1), Episode 3 Ending Explained:
One thing I would like to address is the show’s decision to occasionally go extremely deep into the past, way back into the time when Gogo and Edwin were kids. This is so badly written and has failed to make any impact. I do get the idea here is to humanize these characters instead of pigeonholing them as suspects, and I know for a fact that the book has done that exceedingly well, but the writers of the show have sadly made a mess here.
What we have however, is some necessary information. Gogo had a stammering problem when he came to the island. He was bullied by other kids and had no friends. Until one day Edwin steps in and invites him to play a cricket match and the two have been best of friends since then. Despite being naughty, Edwin always seems to protect Gogo from every kind of danger- indicating that the friendship is very much real. We get to see Desmond and Sara as kids as well.
Like what you expect, shy kid Gogo gets smitten by Sara just after hitting puberty and desires to be her savior after getting to know her disturbing situation at home. And the person Gogo turns to for help is Edwin of course, who goes directly to Sara with the promise of helping but that comes with the condition of staying away from Gogo, because little Edwin also has a liking for her which I don’t find surprising.
Why does Emily want to be friends with Clive?
Coming across the person she probably never expected to see ever again in life freaks out Emily and she rushes out of the taxi. It’s the same man who has been directly involved in the rape and murder of her sister after all. In a state of absolute panic and hurry, Emily forgets her phone in the car.
When she tells about this to Sunita, she first tries to comfort her like a true friend and tries everything to stop Emily from obsessing over it. But Emily can’t help but go on a spiral and go through everything related to Alison’s death over the internet, which ends with her calling her own phone, Clive picks up, and the two decide to meet at a popular restaurant the next morning for the handover of the phone.
The Clive she meets appears to be pretty much of a dead persona, with a chilling coldness around him. While Emily offers him some money after receiving the phone, he strongly refuses to take that and quickly leaves. But she absolutely doesn’t let this man go as she continues to be fixated with him. The burning desire of her questions being answered and the hope of finally finding closure is too hard to let go, so she takes necessary.
Josh and Sunita obviously fail to properly take care of Emily, but the latter decides to join the quest. So how is Emily going to do it? The answer lies in the caption above- being friends with him. While being friends with your Sister’s murderer and rapist seems like a horrifying idea, it does make sense as well, given the only way to find out anything is to make Clive talk, and the only way to do that is win his trust.
So Emily meets Clive at the restaurant again and strikes up a conversation by saying how guilty she feels for not being able to do anything nice for him after getting her phone back. Clive gives into Emily’s persistence and agrees to her buying a meal for him, which she does. Then she decides to buy a meal for herself as well and eats it with Clive. With bare minimum talking, Clive finishes eating, thanks Emily for the meal and leaves hastily. Does he know who Emily is? We don’t know yet. How did he end up in NYC also remains a question as well.
We are going to know more as the upcoming episodes promise enough twists and thrills.
