We are a little late to the recap this week, but John Sugar is still not budging in spite of Ruby and the others asking him to stay away from Olivia’s case. Episode 7 of Sugar is where we finally see a lot of mysteries unraveling. We learn why John’s associates have been trying to protect Stallings in spite of him being involved with Olivia’s disappearance. We also learn that a threat looms large in Sugar’s investigation.
In the following article, I go through Episode 7 in detail. Please be aware of spoilers.
Sugar Episode 7 “The Friends You Keep” Recap:
The episode opens with Ruby and her superior, Miller, sending a message through their communication device. It is a strange little briefcase-like thingy that works like one of those lie detectors, and while we can’t exactly see what it is saying, from the looks of it, it’s clear that they’ve received orders to bring in John.
At the motel, John wakes up extremely tired from the last episode. When he wakes up, Melanie demands all the answers. John, who is aware that he can’t tell her anything, especially about who he really is, sends her out for coffee, promising to have some words for her when she comes back.
Is Olivia alive?
At Davy’s funeral service, which is a small gathering, Jonathan and Bernie briefly discuss Olivia’s not showing up. For the first time, Bernie is eager to know where she is because even if she was using and possibly MIA, she would have shown up for Davy’s last rites. And just like that, we get our very first glimpse of her. She is trapped in some kind of underground room.
Melanie returns with the coffee, but Miller and his associates show up, so she is forced to hit him over his head with a tap bar and escape with John. She drives away to a safe place after John removes the tracker from his car, and when she questions him again about what’s going on, he is only able to hint that he and his people work day jobs like being a Private Investigator, etc., but their ‘mission’ is to observe. Since these hints are super-vague, Melanie comes to a conclusion on her own and starts denoting him as a ‘foreign spy.’
After their little talk, John realizes that Miller and his people might go to Henry next because he helped him out. They rush to his university, where Henry is a professor, to warn him about what’s coming, but before they can reach him, he is taken away. This is when John, who is carrying Moss’s phone around, realizes that Miller and his people are rounding up everyone who is connected to Stallings and that Moss could be next. When they reach his place, he’s already dead.
This is when John goes back to his original hotel room, leaves Melanie with the dog, takes his gun, and goes out to get some answers. He tracks Miller from his trailer to a big house, expecting to see why his mission and associates have turned into low-lives who would not allow him to find an innocent girl. However, when he follows him to the house, he finds everyone including Henry and Ruby inside.
What does John learn about the mission?
Ruby tells John that their mission is over, and they are being called back home. John is upset, so upset that he wants to question everyone’s moral stand on this. However, Henry takes him to the other room and tells him where Olivia was last. He also tells him that a minister’s son, who was a client of Stallings, was the reason behind the disappearance. Since this person, and eventually the politician, who is a really powerful person, knew about John and all the other aliens working in a human form, their mission was threatened. So now they are being called back.
John wants to bring everyone who has been okay with the disappearance of a girl to justice so they can protect themselves. But since they need to leave soon, Henry asks him to just go to the address and try saving her. He also warns him that he shouldn’t get involved in the mess anymore.
Why is John so fixated on finding Olivia?
One important thing comes up before John leaves. Henry, who feels like a therapeutic personality, questions John about the reason why he killed Stallings when it was not self-defense. John confesses that the first two people he killed at his house were in self-defense, but Stallings got killed because he truly wanted to.
Henry tells him that the more time they’ve spent on earth, the more human they have become. This is the reason John has been so fixated on finding Olivia. He wanted to find her not because he was really good at his job but because the loss of his sister, who he felt looked a lot like Olivia, pushed him to find some kind of semblance of peace by doing this good deed.
Sugar Episode 7 “The Friends You Keep” Ending, Explained:
Does John find Olivia?
John drives to the address and sneakily gets into the house, but a policeman cuffs him for trespassing. While they are inside the house, John sees the same policeman’s photo in the election campaign posters for the ‘politician’ that was mentioned before. It doesn’t take him long to realize that this policeman is, in fact, the culprit he has been looking for. John tries to talk this man out of something truly dangerous that he is about to do and learns that his name is Ryan. However, not soon after, Ryan tries to hit John with the hammer in his hand. John, who is cuffed, tries to protect himself, and when Ryan’s gun is pointed right at his face, he pulls the trigger and shoots himself in the face.
Later, John walks into the basement and is appalled by what he sees. The basement is full of snuff films with names of women written all over them. It is also full of torture tools that make us realize the psychopathic extreme of what Ryan had been up to.
The ending of Sugar Episode 7 sees John finally finding a lock in the basement just near the stairs, which he then unlocks. The final word of the episode is John uttering ‘Olivia’ in complete shock. Now, the question arises: Is Olivia alive and well? From the snippet we saw earlier, it is possible that Ryan tortured her and kept her alive for more of his fetishes. However, if she is fatally wounded, anything is possible.
