The Clearing Episode 4 Recap & Ending Explained: ‘The Clearing’ slowed down this week as more than revelations, its character studies gained greater importance. But like most effective character studies, choices made by characters slowly start to induce plot progression via revelations. And even while the show is still sticking to its structure of timeline hopping between the past and the present, the relative frequency of that hopping increases, signifying that the mental barrier that Freya had built in her mind to shut her past as Amy off is slowly beginning to crumble and more and more of the memories are spilling forth. For ease of reference, we will stick with the demarcation of the two timelines.
The Clearing Episode 4 Recap:
Episode 4: The Foundlings
Amy
The episode opens immediately with the children undergoing medical care and a thorough examination for malnutrition and PTSD. The bruises on their arms and hands, due to their “aunties’” random teaching techniques, did not help matters. But because Stockholm Syndrome is the dominant emotion these kids can comprehend, they could not fathom being separated from their “mother” and being kept as wards of the State. But as Detective Joe Saad learns, Adrienne has fled the country and flown to Paris, presumably because no one had been looking for her. Saad is still unaware that his partner, Colin, was responsible for tipping Adrienne off.
We also see Freya’s mother, Christine, being part of the Child Protective Services Committee, establishing her identity and revealing her relation to Amy, later Freya. During the investigation, Amy’s diary effectively points to Henrik having been responsible for taking Sara home, which is contrary to the real events as Sara had never reached home, and Henrik is missing, and he is the one key Joe needs to solve this case. This confession by Amy also enrages loyal Anton, who blames Amy for the raid by the “Blue Devils”.
Colin’s membership in the cult appears to have been known to the leadership in Kindred, even though he was unaware of what they were doing in Blackmarsh. Only Anton stays steadfastly faithful to the cult and its mistress. These children are gradually returned to their own homes, leaving just Anton and Amy behind. The police are unable to rule out the likelihood that they are the biological children of Adrienne because their relatives cannot be located. At the age of 16, Anton is already very hostile to everyone and everything, as is evident by the breakdown he has, leaving Joe to almost handcuff him and leave him lying on the floor for him to calm down. He has ambitions to have his own house, as he confesses to Amy while they are alone.
We also realise why Freya will communicate with Joe in the future as Joe tries to introduce Amy to a semblance of normal life by bringing her to dinner with his family. But we realise this, and our hearts break as we see her completely overwhelmed and out of touch with the outside world, unable to answer any questions regarding her hobbies or her likes and dislikes. The sadness is more palpable as we see Amy bonding with Joe’s older daughter over makeup and music, which is juxtaposed with Joe’s wife rightly refusing to take responsibility or adopt Amy as she is not equipped to bring up “emotionally damaged children”. She also reminds Joe to focus on the family he has rather than letting work encroach upon their world. Unfortunately, Amy hears this conversation.
Back at the police station, Henrik appears to confess to Sara’s kidnapping. He had kidnapped Sara because he wanted a taste of fatherhood, and he endeavoured to return Asha/Sara home once he realised his mistakes. According to him, he had left Sara at the doorstep of her house and now has no information to refute otherwise. He staunchly proclaims that the Kindred had nothing to do with the operation, and because Joe had no case against the Kindred, he had no choice but to accept Henrik’s statement and arrest him which, as we learn in the future, had been the plan all along – for Henrik to take the fall for the leadership duo of Adrienne and Latham.
Freya
In the current timeline, we see Freya visiting Henrik in prison and connecting the dots between Henrik’s change of arrangements and the impending loss of her home. Henrik had taken the fall for the duo, but now that his parole has been approved, there is a high possibility of Henrik recanting his statements and thus, Adrienne and Latham are paying Henrik to keep quiet. Hence, the change in living arrangements.
Freya’s visit to the prison was to cajole Henrik to be on her side, but Henrik was completely on the side of Latham and “Maitreya” as he believed the events about to occur were just recompense for the hardships he had experienced over the past twenty years, caused due to the lies Freya had written in her diary under the orders of Adrienne (the defence that she was a child does fall on deaf ears considering that she is taking care of her “mother” even now). She stops to ask Henrik about Sara, to which Henrik just advises her to stop looking as she still isn’t ready for them. But deep down, Freya (and the audience too) know.
Back at her place, we see the adult Anton reconnect with Freya and attempt to bond with her son, Billy. For most of the show, Anton comes across as a restless nomad with little to his name. He has been in Thailand for ten years, without anything to show for it. And now that the money has run out, he has gone back home to act as a go-between for whatever remains of the cult. His unquestionable loyalty to their “mother,” even after what they had gone through, truly rubs Freya the wrong way, especially considering her conflicted state of mind. She finally decides to boot Anton off her house and make one thing right; while dropping Billy off at school, she chooses to inform him that Wayne is his father. We see Freya later dropping Billy off with Wayne, and the two of them playing football. Perhaps small steps will be taken by Freya to strengthen relationships she truly believes might be worth strengthening.
Another relationship that Freya had been planning to start reconnecting with is with her daughter, Max, but as she plans to have dinner with Max, Anton reads her text message surreptitiously and goes himself to meet Max without informing Freya. There, Anton tries to connect with Max, regarding how Adrienne had helped both of them throughout their lives and how Max, like her mother, can “see through the bullshit”.
It is even more troubling when we learn that Max connected with her mother after calling Adrienne regarding her actress. Compounding it is Anton dismissing all of the online news sources “demonising” the cult, calling it rubbish. Perhaps because she hadn’t been able to connect to her mother and Anton is the closest approximation at the moment, she chooses to trust Anton. It begs the question – how far along was the plan to resurrect the cult in motion? And Freya being manipulated by Adrienne is already a given, but is Adrienne also planning to indoctrinate a multi-generational family into the cult, and entrust that job to Anton? If that is supposed to be ominous, it is because we see Anton having the capability to manipulate as effectively as his “mother”, and also how quickly he can shed the “loafer” attitude he had been depicting throughout the times he had been interacting with Freya.
Freya’s suspicions are further aroused when she goes to meet with Adrienne and finds Anton living there, after having effectively been booted off Freya’s place. What sets her red flags off is the familiarity Anton has with the workings of the house, as well as how eager Anton is to look after their mother and ensure Freya remains away from the place. It accomplishes two things – the ease of planning with Adrienne, as well as Anton succeeding in becoming his “mother’s favourite”, a position he had been pining for ever since he and Amy were children.
Freya is reminded of her painful recollections of the past when Carrie Anderson, a little girl, goes missing in the present. Freya hears through the news that someone has been observed speaking to the girl and is now a key player. A CCTV camera had managed to capture the back of this man. Later, Freya finds that Anton is wearing a shirt with the same colour and pattern designs as the individual depicted in the video.
He also travels in a van, which prompts Freya to recall what took place with Sara. Connecting to the scene in the bedroom at the foster home with Anton, Freya recalls how, as Amy, she had tried to convince Anton that their “mother” could not care less about them and only used them to escape. Anton smugly reminds her that she was there that day as well when they kidnapped Sara, along with Tasmin and Anton, who was the driver we hadn’t been privy to in the first episode. However, Sara’s strong will had been the cause of all the troubles for Kindred in the past couple of episodes.
Back in the present, Freya gets in touch with Joe, who attempts to tell his ex-partner Colin about the situation, but it turns out that Carrie has been found. She had apparently gotten lost and taken shelter in one of the abandoned summer houses near the area of Brickmarsh until she was found by the police. We can assume that this was done to throw the police off the scent, once they had realised that there was a chance Freya recognised the van, and they had to pivot their plans.
The Clearing Episode 4 Ending Explained:
The final scene connects the events of both timelines. On the one hand, we see Amy being driven by Joe to Christine’s house in the suburbs, and we see Christine trying to give her a life and an identity completely separate from her past, even dying her hair brunette. Back in the present, we see Freya driving to their old house at Brickmarsh, now abandoned. She searches through the room, assaulted by memories and almost stumbling through them until she finds the trapdoor to a basement. There she sees the basement, where a water bottle and a blanket are kept.
There is a clear implication here that Henrik had been the fall guy selected to protect both the leadership and Anton, who had been responsible for what had happened to Sara. And with the tonality of the show being this bleak, we can safely presume that Sara is dead, and honestly, that isn’t even the worst scenario. The pace and the ominous tone throughout the show fill us with an existential dread, which doesn’t dissipate as we see Anton entering a seminar organised by Latham where he is teaching what we will soon realise are the tenets of the cult, and Anton’s cleaned-up attire is a dead giveaway. The plan to resurrect the cult has been activated, and Adrienne is preparing for a “glorious comeback”. Maybe that comeback doesn’t account for her daughter, but it accounts for loyal Anton, who is clearly on a recruiting spree, via kidnapping (Carrie Anderson) or brainwashing (Max).
