♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
(SCREAMING)
From now on, we have to assume that whatever Claude sees
and hears, it sees and hears.
You asked me where my people are buried around here.
The old Bear Cave. It's been sealed since 1947.
(MEN SHOUTING)
HOLLY GIBNEY: He's in there. We found him.
RALPH ANDERSON: We're gonna be back in a couple of hours.
It's not right. Not telling them that that thing's out there.
What if it doesn't cotton to being contained?
Then we kill it before it can kill us.
What if it can't be killed?
CLAUDE BOLTON: Do you know what you just did?
I know what I just did.
I gave you the heads up of your life.
CLAUDE: He's in my head, Seale.
So, you just told that thing
that all of those people are coming for it.
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
(GUNSHOT)
(EAR-SPLITTING RINGING)
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
- (GUNSHOTS) - (JACK GROANS)
There you go!
(SHOTS CONTINUE)
(BULLETS RICOCHET)
- (YELPS) - (GUNSHOT)
- Jesus Christ! - YUNIS SABLO: Fuck!
(DISTORTED SNARLING)
(SCREECHES)
- (JACK GROANS) - We gotta get outta here.
SABLO: And go where?
I don't know. Just to get the fuck outta here.
ANDY KATCAVAGE: Who's the shooter?
(GUNSHOT)
(YELLS) Jack! We can talk about this!
Motherf...!
ANDY: No, no, no. Come on, come on!
(GUNSHOTS CONTINUE)
(JACK GROANS)
- Ah! Goddammit! - Take this! Take this!
(GROANS) Motherfucker!
(HUMMING)
SABLO: Is that fucking Howie?
Uh-oh!
JACK HOSKINS: Oh, yeah, get in there.
- Jesus Christ! - SABLO: Keep going! Keep going!
- Is that Pelley? - Go! Go! Just go!
- RALPH ANDERSON: Go! - Get the fuck out!
- Move! - Jesus Christ!
- (GUNSHOTS) - HOWARD SALOMAN: Oh, my god!
(GUNSHOTS CONTINUE)
Hey, Seale, what the hell you doin', man?
(JACK GROANS)
Motherfucker!
(SNAKE TAIL RATTLES)
Oh, no! Get off!
- Go! Go, go! - ANDY: Go now! Go now!
CLAUDE BOLTON: Seale! Seale, whatcha doin', man?
RALPH: Get back here!
(YELLS)
CLAUDE: Hey Seale, get back here!
JACK: I got you.
(GRUNTS)
(INAUDIBLE)
(LAUGHING MANIACALLY)
Yeah!
- Shit! - (DRUNKENLY SINGING)
Fucker! (PANTING)
(GUNSHOT)
- (GUNSHOT) - I see you!
- (SABLO YELLS, GROANS) - RALPH: Oh shit!
Fucker! Get up! Get up! Up, up...
Get up, up, up, up. We don't have... Go! Go!
Oh, shit.
HOWARD: Fuck!
Let's get the fuck outta here!
- (GRUNTS) - Oh shit! Seale!
RALPH: Claude! Don't go out! Damn it! Don't!
CLAUDE: Seale!
Fuck!
(DRUNKENLY GROANS) Motherfucker!
CLAUDE: Oh, God, man.
They got him good, man. Oh shit!
Fuck! Oh! Oh shit!
Oh, man.
Fucking hurts to be shot, man. Fucking hurts.
RALPH: Yeah. With the slugs he's using,
you're lucky you didn't get your arm taken off.
- SABLO: Hurts to get shot. - RALPH: You know what...
ANDY: If we could just get some fucking bars!
Don't even think about it.
Hey, when the GIs were getting chewed up
on the beaches on D-Day, you know what they're told?
Um... Uh... Ad... Advance or die.
- Or something like that. - That's fucking right.
(GUNSHOT)
RALPH: Can you fire lefty?
SABLO: Yeah, that's about all I can do.
- Take this! Take this! - No! No! No, no, no!
HOLLY GIBNEY: Andy!
What the hell is he doing?
RALPH: I don't fucking kn... I think he's going to get reception.
Ah, Jesus, man. Why couldn't you stay where you are?
Son of a...
- (GUNSHOT) - Jesus!
- (GUNSHOT) - Fuck!
- HOWARD: Go, Andy! Go! - (ENGINE STARTS)
- One... two... boom! - (ANDY GRUNTS) Fuck!
SABLO: Just go!
Shit!
RALPH: Go!
Go! Go, Andy!
HOWARD: Go, go, go!
(PANTING)
(GUNSHOT)
- (GUNSHOT) - (GRUNTS)
What happened?
Andy! No!
No, no!
HOWARD: No! No, no, no! Holly, no! No, go back!
- I'll get him. I'll get him. Go! - No!
Go back!
(SCREAMING) Yeah!
Mother nature! (LAUGHING MANIACALLY)
Ah!
RALPH: (ECHOING SHOUT) Holly!
Holly!
Holly! Holly, get back here!
Fuck!
What the fuck is she doing?
RALPH: Holly, get back here!
Holly!
Get back here!
(YELLING, ECHOING) Damn you to hell!
(PANTING)
Oh, he definitely will.
- (SNARLS) - (WINCES) Ow!
Fuck!
- Fuck you! - (SNARLS)
(JACK CRIES)
- No more. - (ROARS)
(SNARLING, GROWLING)
(SNAKE'S TAIL RATTLES)
(PANTING)
(CHUCKLES) Come at me, motherfucker.
- (SNAKE SNAPS) - (SCREAMS)
- (ROARS) - (JACK'S SCREAMS ECHO)
(JACK GROANS)
RALPH: Holly!
- (GUNSHOT) - Fuck.
Come on, come on.
- Jack's done. - (GUNSHOT)
Tell Sablo to save his ammunition,
and tell him to stop shooting. It's...
It's splitting my head in two.
It's time.
(ROARS)
(SNARLS)
(GROWLS SOFTLY)
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
You're gonna be all right out here by yourself?
I'll be fine. You be careful.
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
(WHEEZING, GASPING)
Ralph!
(WHEEZING CONTINUES)
SABLO: Put it down, Jack.
Jack, just put it down, man.
(JACK CONTINUES WHEEZING)
JACK: It's in there.
Kill it.
No!
(GATE CREAKS)
- RALPH: Watch out. - (HOLLY GASPS)
- (WOOD CRACKS) - (RALPH GRUNTS)
HOLLY: You okay?
Yeah... Yeah, yes.
Uh, better be careful.
(RALPH BREATHES DEEPLY)
HOLLY: Look.
He can be killed.
- RALPH: How's that? - HOLLY: He's scared of falling.
Like us.
(LEVER SQUEAKS)
HOLLY: He's feeding.
RALPH: Breadcrumbs from hell.
(RALPH GRUNTS)
(WATER SPLASHES)
(ROCKS SHATTER, FALL)
HOLLY: Stop.
(HOLLY GRUNTS)
HOLLY: He was in a frenzy.
- RALPH: Holly. - Hmm?
RALPH: Look.
This is where it happened.
HOLLY: They're all in there.
Must have been going crazy trying to get to them.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
- (WHISPERS) Holly. - Hmm?
RALPH: See it?
The light?
EL CUCO: (AS CLAUDE BOLTON) Watch your step coming in.
It's very slippery.
Stay close to the walls in case you need to grab onto something.
You haven't come all this way just to turn back now, have you?
Well, howdy there, sheriff.
And you must be the lovely Miss Holly.
Claude doesn't know your last name,
but he thinks about you all the time.
It's Gibney.
Holly Gibney.
EL CUCO: It's you I have to thank
for this situation I find myself in, ain't it?
I wanna know what made it so easy for you
to believe in me,
and how on earth did she manage
to convince a cowpoke like you, sheriff.
What are you?
(EL CUCO SCOFFS)
- What is your name? - EL CUCO: Oh... you know.
Where did you come from?
- I don't remember. - What is your nature?
We're not very good answering each other's questions, are we?
- Are there more of you? - Why?
Have you seen someone like me before?
Are there others?
'Cause there have been times when I...
- sense there could be more... - Shut up.
You really gon' pull that trigger, sheriff?
(BED CREAKS)
Well, you go ahead and do it...
if you don't mind dying.
(YELLING) Will the real Claude Bolton please stand up?
- (ECHOING) - (CAVE TREMORS, CRACKLES)
(ROCKS SHATTERING, FALLING)
- EL CUCO: You see? - (RALPH GASPS) Step back!
- (ECHOING) - Stop yelling.
(DEBRIS SCATTERING)
EL CUCO: They're here, you know. The dead.
The rescuers that couldn't even rescue themselves.
But... you couldn't get to them, could you?
Well, it don't matter. I still feel their presence.
Especially the four Boltons. They give off such a glow.
Glow?
They're the blood that I'm becoming.
It feels like...
like I'm being entered.
And what enters me, fills me.
You have no idea what it feels like to have
all of that emotion inside of me.
Why children?
(WHISPERS) Stop asking him questions!
I eat to survive, just like you.
- Shut up. - Why children?
'Cause they taste the sweetest.
- Motherfucker! - HOLLY: Stop!
He's poison.
EL CUCO: I can't let you leave.
You know that, right?
HOLLY: No.
We're the ones who can't let you leave.
(SCOFFS)
RALPH: Jack left one of us out there.
He knows we're in here and he knows what you are.
He'll send more.
I see.
But I need to eat.
(GUN COCKS)
Claude.
Put the gun down.
HOLLY: Don't shoot.
Don't shoot. If you shoot, the whole chamber will fall on our heads.
RALPH: Hey, Claude.
Just take your finger off the trigger, okay?
HOLLY: Claude, just...
Just look at us.
That's it.
Now... Now put the gun down.
(DEEPLY INHALES)
(GUNSHOT ECHOES)
(ROCKS CRACKLES)
HOLLY: Oh, my God.
It's collapsing.
RALPH: Move! Now! Now! Holly!
HOLLY: Claude!
RALPH: Holly!
Cover your head! Tuck your head!
(ROCKS CRASHING)
(CAVE RUMBLING)
(SPLASHING)
CLAUDE: Hey.
Over here.
(RALPH SIGHS)
(CLAUDE GROANS) Sh...
- I can't move. - RALPH: Hold on... Oh, shit.
Okay. Um...
Ready?
- Three, two, one. Yeah. - (HOLLY GRUNTS) Okay.
- You got it? - (PANTING)
Oh, man.
- You okay? - Yeah, I'll live.
(BREATHING HEAVILY)
- Told you not to shoot. - (HOLLY CHUCKLES)
Okay. We'll be back in a moment, okay? Hold tight.
All right.
Ah, fuck.
RALPH: Hmm.
HOLLY: Do you have some kind of knife?
Good.
(HOLLY GRUNTS)
Yeah, Holly. Leave it. Leave it. Leave it.
If we were ever to claim that this thing
killed Frankie Peterson, they'll write us off as loons.
Terry's name will never be cleared.
Who's Terry?
(GROANS)
Did I kill him?
HOLLY: Yeah. Yeah.
RALPH: Okay, buddy.
- We do this on three, yeah? - HOLLY: Mm-hmm.
- Okay. Three, two, one. - HOLLY: Two, one.
(CLAUDE GROANS)
- HOLLY: Ooh-ooh-ooh. - CLAUDE: Ah, shit.
- RALPH: Watch your head. - HOLLY: All right.
- Yep. - (CLAUDE GROANS)
Ah, man.
♪ (SINISTER MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
HOLLY: What's wrong?
- Nothing, I'll catch up. - HOLLY: Okay.
(RALPH GRUNTS)
(SIGHS)
Now look at you playing possum.
How I know?
What's left of your heart.
Whatever it's called, it's still pumpin'.
Otherwise, you got nothin' comin' out.
Sawdust.
I didn't know whether or not you could be killed.
I thought you could be like anyone else, but...
I'm not so sure anymore.
I know that, uh, this knife's certainly...
isn't doing the trick. Here's how I see it.
You're weak. You're getting weaker.
You can't run.
You can't hide.
You can't hunt,
which means you can't feed and fill yourself.
There's nothing stopping me from just walking outta here right now,
come back with a bus load of tourists and just watch them
fucking push each other out of the way,
desperate, trying to get the best angle
of what's left of your fucking face.
- (GRUNTS) - (EL CUCO GROWLS)
And then comes the ever curious scientific community.
They're gonna be real interested in you.
Poking, probing, injecting, extracting.
They'll cut little pieces of you off,
take it back to the lab,
Just keep fucking carving you and carving you and carving you
- until... - (EL CUCO GROWLS SOFTLY)
Yeah, you wouldn't want that, would ya?
(RALPH GRUNTS)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
And it would serve our purposes much better...
if no one ever knew that you ever existed.
So...
you gotta go.
(EL CUCO SNARLS)
(SKIN AND BONES CRACKLE)
(BLOOD SQUELCHES)
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
(SIGHS)
He, uh...
He came here to be with me.
That was the only reason.
Holly, the locals could appear at any stage.
We need to talk pretty fast.
Get our story straight.
(CAR ENGINE STARTS)
(SIRENS WAIL IN DISTANCE)
(SIRENS GROW LOUDER)
(PHONE RINGS)
Lieutenant Sablo from GBI.
- Hayes. - SABLO: Hayes, it's Sablo.
We're down here in Cecil, Tennessee.
There was a shootout in the parking lot.
The gift shop, Alec Pelley's dead.
Howie Saloman is dead. Jack Hoskins is dead.
They're dead?
SABLO: The shooter was a cop. One of your own.
But he didn't act alone.
In fact, he was compelled to kill by someone else.
Like... he had an accomplice?
SABLO: No, I'm saying Hoskins was the accomplice.
The alpha who I believe killed Frankie Peterson
is still out there. He attempted to grab another boy
down here two nights ago. He got away,
but we got him on video, so I'm gonna send you the link.
Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, just, uh...
SABLO: It's nobody's fault, okay?
But I believe certain decisions coming out of your office
need to be revisited. Wouldn't you agree?
RALPH: So, Seale Bolton receives a phone call
from an unknown individual who says he works with me.
This individual claims to have knowledge of the whereabouts
of a more likely suspect in the Frankie Peterson murder.
SABLO: You wanna tell me what happened, Claude?
- CLAUDE: I already told you. - Well, I'd like to hear it again.
(CLAUDE SIGHS) Detective Sablo and Anderson,
they came to interview me when the Cherokee County DA
was considering reopening the Frank Peterson homicide.
SABLO: Why you?
Because I identified the man they arrested for it,
Terry Maitland, when he walked into the Peach Crease, covered in blood.
But the more you thought about it...
CLAUDE: Well, the more I thought about it,
the more I... I realized I made a mistake. It wasn't him.
It was just someone who looked a little like him. That's all.
HAYES: Witnesses from the Peterson homicide.
I need the transcripts from the interviews.
DETECTIVE: This caller, did he specifically tell you where to find him?
Yeah, the abandoned souvenir shop on the side
of that hill, so we went to investigate.
- DETECTIVE: You went there? - Yeah. My assumption is that
he's there to take out Claude Bolton,
who he perceives as a threat.
Him being Jack Hoskins.
The detective from your squad who's been in the wind
for kidnapping, attempted murder.
The same.
Yeah, so, I, uh... interpreted the phone call
as being made to set up an ambush.
Frankly, I thought the whole thing
was gonna turn out to be bullshit.
Was wrong.
(PANTING)
How long they gonna keep my brother's body for?
Hopefully not for too long.
CLAUDE: Well, how long is not too long?
Claude, tell me about the phone call.
March 3rd through the 7th,
Maitland's last visit to see his father, um...
On my investigation, I encountered Mr. Katcavage,
uh... former Dayton PD detective who had worked dozens
of homicides over the years. I found him...
I found him, uh, highly competent,
so I recommended that my employer...
hire him as part of the team.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
♪ If you stop ♪
♪ To catch your breath ♪
Hey, darlin', it's me.
So if we're gonna pull this off, Jeannie,
there's something I need you to do.
♪ ...At your heels ♪
♪ You may find That loneliness ♪
♪ Is indeed ♪
♪ Your oldest friend ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Thank you. Thank you.
JEANNIE ANDERSON: Whether you accept or reject the reality of that thing,
it's not important right now. What is important...
is that when they ask you,
and they will definitely ask you
about that meeting with Holly Gibney,
please don't mention anything about shape shifters
or El Cucos or anything that might sound supernatural.
Okay?
Otherwise...
I can do that.
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
♪ You may awake ♪
♪ In the night ♪
♪ And wonder who you are ♪
♪ If you don't turn on The light ♪
♪ You may remain a lost star ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
What I've come to tell you today, Mrs. Maitland...
is that there have been certain developments
in the Frankie Peterson homicide case.
Some new avenues of inquiry have opened.
We're reopening the case.
What about your slam dunk forensics?
Well, we reexamined the perp DNA
we got from the crime scene and discovered that
what we actually had was a mixture of samples,
perp and the victim,
which makes it unreliable in court.
Girls, I need you to go upstairs, please.
On Monday, I'm holding a press conference
to announce the reopening of the investigation...
and to officially go on record regarding the dropping
of charges against Terry Maitland.
Your family has suffered enough,
and I just want to do whatever I...
Because of your pending lawsuits against me and my office...
I have to refrain from telling you
what is in my heart.
I completely understand.
(SIGHS)
MAYA MAITLAND: Was he mean to you?
No, my love, he wasn't mean to me.
Flying or driving?
HOLLY: Driving.
About ten hours, right? Chicago?
- Yeah. - Ten hours?
I have a couple of stops I have to make along the way.
RALPH: You know, I wouldn't mind teaming up again,
the opportunity ever arose.
I mean, preferably on something simple
like a gangland triple homicide. Something like that.
When I was in the caves,
El Cuco asked me, uh, why I was so open
to believing in its existence.
My father was ex-military and when I was little,
he would say, "A man knows a man."
Well, if I had the time to think in that cave
and the inclination to answer that thing,
I would have said...
"An outsider knows an outsider."
(DEEPLY INHALES)
Holly. What else is out there?
(SIGHS)
RALPH: I never told you but... I saw Derek.
He... spoke to me.
- JEANNIE: What did he say? - RALPH: Well, it...
it wasn't Derek, so...
Ralph... Tell me what he said. Just humor me.
He said that I need to let him go.
Let him go?
- Well, fat chance of that. - (CHUCKLES)
I don't know.
I like to think the way this whole experience...
cracked the world open.
Maybe the next time he appears,
maybe it's gonna be the real Derek.
Or maybe after a few years pass,
many more years,
we'll just go visit him.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
♪ (SINISTER MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
(HOLLY GASPS)
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (DISTORTED MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
FEMALE DJ: "Get Out and Get It". That's Devon Gilfillian.
Before that, Janis Joplin with "Get It While You Can",
and a song of the same name by Robert Finley
right before that on the show.
Now, here's an obscure little gem
for all your audiophiles out there.
This is a Dixieland revival romp,
peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, 1963,
and it's one of my personal favorites.
Here it is.
♪ ("WASHINGTON SQUARE" BY THE VILLAGE STOMPERS PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CROWD CHATTER)
He has my brother! Someone!
You know, there's a universal dread
of what comes in the night.
CYNTHIA ERIVO: This being has existed through time
in different cultures under different names,
under different guises.
They all seem to center around some kind of a boogie man.
Some kind of a creature from outside.
That is El Cuco, the outsider.
One of the... the characteristics of this creature is that
he also feeds off grief and chaos.
We know that he will go near the biggest point of grief
in his target's life.
And we know by this point that his target is Claude.
ANDY KATCAVAGE: El Cuco likes to hold up near his victims' families.
If the Bolton's have people buried there,
we should check it out.
DENNIS LEHANE: They're looking for graveyards,
and they're looking for cemeteries.
They're looking to find out where the Boltons were buried.
Meanwhile, you have this sequence set in the 1940s.
That whole cave flashback
was beautifully done by Dennis Lehane.
Boys?
Why that story is in there
becomes one of the big questions of the episode.
George, daddy's coming!
- (ROCKS PUMMELING) - (GROANING)
That's the biggest graveyard in the Bolton family.
They didn't die of, like,
being, you know, pummeled by boulders.
They died of starvation, and it was an awful thing.
HOLLY GIBNEY: He's in there?
That's the good news and the bad news.
Y'all are thinking, "Yeah, we got this thing now.
It's in the cave waiting." But maybe it's waiting for you.
The time for philosophical discussions,
the time for... for Hamlet is over.
I wanted nine to literally just reach out
and grab the viewer by the throat and hold them.
(SHOTS FIRED)
ANDREW BERNSTEIN: As our folks have, sort of, descended upon the exterior
of the cave to go confront El Cuco, Jack Hoskins is up
in a perch above the cave. He's been sent there
by El Cuco to, sort of, take out our people.
We spend about a good ten...
twelve minutes in a massive shootout.
- (SHOTS FIRED) - (GROANING)
(LAUGHS) Yeah!
And at the end, Jack Hoskins becomes a mass murderer.
BERNSTEIN: It was a... an emotional scene.
- I mean, Andy gets killed... - (SHOTS FIRED)
and Holly has to confront that grief and what happens.
ERIVO: It's a... It's a huge moment for her
because of the... the size of the loss that she suffers.
She ends up losing a lot.
You have to watch her, sort of, figure out how to deal
- with that... - Andy. No, no!
...whilst realizing that the reason she's feeling
that way is because she was in love.
That is heartbreaking, really.
I've never shot anything like that.
There're fire going over here, and there's...
- Holly! - ...everyone's senses
are on high alert. I think we got something great.
It's time.
When we finally confront the creature,
unlike a lot of Stephen King characters, he doesn't explode
into something, you know, phantasmagorical,
but in fact, is conversational.
EL CUCO: Watch your step coming in.
In the cave, he's speaking to them.
Cuco was filled with confidence, arrogance...
EL CUCO: It's very slippery. Stay close to the walls
in case you need to grab on to something.
She sees that the person is fearing falling,
something can happen when they fall
which means he can die. He can be killed.
EL CUCO: And you must be the lovely Ms. Holly.
Claude doesn't know your last name,
but he thinks about you all the time.
It's Gibney.
He wonders how Holly so easily believed in him.
El Cuco seems to recognize that Holly has been a believer
all along. It seems to be that he knows her a little more
- than... than others. - What is your name?
(GROANS) You know.
Where did you come from?
- I don't remember. - What is your nature?
We're not very good at answering
each other's questions, are we?
He just... He doesn't know anything about
who he is really. "Am I... Am I part of a race?"
- (SNARLING) - "Or am I a sole...
a singular, malevolent aberration?"
The real MacGuffin there, to use a Hitchcock term,
was the idea that, um... Ralph has his gun,
but he can't shoot this thing, because the echoes
will bring down the cave. It's very...
in very fragile shape.
Will the real Claude Bolton please stand up?
(ECHOING)
(CEILING SLOWLY CRUMBLES)
ERIVO: It's a strange... thing that happens
when you're underground for a really long time.
Because it's cold, it's wet, it's damp.
Um... There's not very much light.
You can't really see very much.
This amazing ability that very few shows get to do,
to go into a cave and shoot for a week.
And really shoot a cave for a cave.
You know, it wasn't built on stage.
It was all done practically.
I eat to survive just like you.
Shut up.
He's got an opportunity to say here's this, uh,
internal mandate. But at the end of the day,
- you're food. - Why children?
'Cause they taste the sweetest.
Do you ever feel remorse for the egg
that you've just eaten? Well... you're an egg to me.
He's been in isolation, basically, his entire life.
So, it was about this, sort of, lonely being finally being able
to explain himself.
Paddy Considine was a really important, um, choice.
His ability, as an actor, to believably play
a cold, calculating monster on one side,
and a meek, sort of down-and-out,
kind of petty criminal on the other side.
You needed an actor that could do both of those things.
Ralph sees, uh, his dead son, standing sentry, basically,
at his exit to the cave.
Ralph is not so convinced, and he tells them to go on.
'Cause he's assuming the creature is still alive.
(EXTRACTING KNIFE)
Well, it's like that, when two genuine
nemesis forces, or... get a chance to interact
with each other.
RALPH ANDERSON: I didn't know whether or not
you could be killed.
I thought you could be, like anyone else, but...
(CLICKS TONGUE) ...I'm not so sure anymore.
This time I said, "We don't know about that entity."
Sort of El Cuco morphs, and we see the faces
of, sort of, all the people that El Cuco
has been previously.
- (GROWLING) - (FACE WRINKLING)
It's basically like, almost like,
El Cuco, you know, is thumbing his nose at Ralph and going,
"You can kill me, but, like, you know, this is who I've been
and this is what I've done throughout my life.
And I'm gonna sort of show you my cards before it happens."
And Ralph kind of ends it right in the middle
of that transformation.
(SKULL SMASHING)
His world from now on, moving forward,
is different. And will always be different.
And that will inform his decisions
as he moves forward.
ERIVO: Just as Holly sees herself in Ralph,
he sees himself in her.
- Flying or driving? - GIBNEY: Driving.
BEN MENDELSOHN: It's got a really, old-fashioned,
romantic quality to it, their pairing.
ANDERSON: You know, I wouldn't mind
teaming up again.
If the opportunity ever arose.
They're a good team. They're a good team.
El Cuco asked me, uh, why I was so open
to believing in its existence.
If I had the time to think in the cave,
I would have said, "An outsider knows an outsider."
PRICE: I love exploiting the universality
of this creature. My Baba Yaga is your Cuco.
So, the concept of this... this entity,
that everybody thought was a fantasy,
is real.
How does a person cope with the unbelievable?
To me it's a very resonant subject.
Because you can say, "Oh, all this is supernatural,
all this is make-believe. We have to take these in,
and say, "I can't believe this.
Uh, this doesn't make any sense to me, there's no reason for it.
And yet, there it is."
And that's it for the creature, or is it?
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪