The Devil’s Hour – Season 1 Episode 6 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Amor Fati

Episode 6 of The Devil’s Hour starts with Gideon’s chilling narration. “I’ve died more times than I care to remember.” For some reason, he’s been returning from the dead. Gideon mentions how life is a looped record that continues to skip by and how we all obliviously repeat everything without knowing it. The trouble is, Gideon has somehow stepped outside the conventional norms fate has given us and he can move the proverbial needle on the record.

What happened in Gideon’s past?

During flashbacks, we see Gideon’s upbringing, including his abusive father who slaps his hands with a belt and eventually leaves, having lost their fortune. The bonds Gideon and Malcolm have are bound by their father’s absence. When he finally returns, he drives them out to the cliff-edge and encourages them all to pray for their mother, who has sinned (cheated) against him. And as they pray, Lawrence floors it and kills them all.

The timeline repeats again and again, with Gideon dying repeatedly in the same horrific way until one loop everything changes. Gideon changes things. He senses flashes of what’s going to happen but this time decides to take matters into his own hands.

Determined to save his own life – and that of his brother – he grabs a knife and sneaks into his father’s room while he’s sleeping. He stabs him repeatedly, going on to wash the blood off his hands and running away, as far and as fast as he can. Alone and with no one to look after him, Gideon is found numerous times and it always ends the same way – he commits suicide and repeats the cycle.

What is Gideon’s recurrence?

Gideon calls it recurrence, and while Ravi is a sceptic, Lucy starts to understand. Gideon’s repetition means he can bet on the correct outcome for various sporting events, meaning he never wants for money. He also saves a family from a fatal crash too, slashing their tyres to stop them getting involved in an accident.

Gideon believes he’s doing the right thing in saving them and every time, he learns about a different tragedy and what happens. It becomes a fixated routine. That fly-tipping dump we saw before? All those appliances? They’re all faulty equipment that he’s stopped from starting big house fires and destroying everything.

As for Harold Slade, Gideon had every intention of turning him into the authorities but after seeing all the child phonography on his computer, Gideon decided he had to die. So why write everything down if he can’t bring it into his new life? Well, that comes from the idea of revision. Gideon is a man possessed, and works to write down everything that’s happened so he can remember them like lyrics from a song.

Is Jonah Taylor still alive?

Gideon knows everything that’s going to happen and encourages Ravi to check the last book of the notebook after making a quip about Gideon’s terrible handwriting. A nicely written note reads: “Is this better Detective?”

So what about Jonah Taylor? Well, he’s still alive and Gideon hasn’t killed him. He dropped his teddy out the window, while Gideon hid Jonah to protect him from his parents, who intended to kill him and bury him in a shallow grave. He took Jonah to someone who can keep him safe, someone saved from the path they were destined to lead. But where?

Gideon points out that “the lives we lead are like tracks in the snow” Only, when things change then some people find it hard to adjust. Evelyn – the girl he saved from the car crash – started to see things, including shadows; strange ghosts drifting in and out of her reality. The tracks that others have left behind, if you will. These ripples, from the changes, can result in some people going mad. Gideon though, saved her from the psychiatric hospital she was admitted to and taught her how to survive and adjust. As a result, she too can change things.

Why did Gideon kill Aiden and Connor?

So what of Aiden? Well, he stabbed a pregnant mum, so as a result Gideon decides to get there first, stabbing him multiple times in order to save the pregnant mother. When Nick jumped in though, he changed things and Gideon struggled to control the chaos.

Connor Larsen’s case is much the same. Connor raped five women in another life and the “torture” Gideon conducted on him was actually part of an experiment. He wanted to try and make this rapist repulsed by sex, explaining the horrific videos and the bucket of rotten flesh.

Ravi doesn’t believe him, naturally, but Gideon isn’t looking to convince him, he’s trying to stir Lucy. He brings up one question – what’s the worst thing she’s ever experienced. In one reality, Gideon admits he stayed alive for 25 years in prison, where he shares a cell with Shane, who murdered his partner and child (Explaining why he was killed earlier in the season). This was all so he could see Lucy and change things. But how has Lucy survived the recurrence? It turns out the truth stems from her mother.

What is the significance of 3.33am?

As a child, Lucy experienced Sylvia killing herself. Gideon though, changed things. He stopped Sylvia from killing herself by removing the firing pin and the bullets. In doing so, he also dropped the pin from his jacket on the floor, explaining its significance after all this time. When Sylvia pulled the trigger, she stayed alive and it gave Lucy a second chance at life, but also unhinged Sylvia who lost her way and struggled to find her tracks.

Lucy starts to understand what Gideon is doing and locks Ravi outside the interrogation room. He watches helplessly as Gideon brings up a promise they made in a previous life. Lucy is not who she was and Isaac is not supposed to be here. Gideon took Isaac, not because of that, but – with the example of a shoelace – he’s now experiencing life as a loop. All his previous lifes are happening simultaneously and parallel to one another. The loops are so tightly wound they’re almost touching, meaning they’re glimpsing the world the way it was originally.

The gunshot from Sylvia’s shotgun occurred at 3.33am, explaining why Lucy has been waking up at that time every night. Isaac isn’t like any of them. He’s not bound to this lifetime. While Lucy can see echoes of previous loops, Isaac can actually reach out and touch them, crossing over if you will. When Isaac loses his balance, he slips from one lifetime to another. He’s an anomaly and not supposed to exist.

What happens to Isaac and Mike?

Mike sits with his son and tells Isaac that his arrival destroyed his life. It’s a horrific thing to say to anyone and Mike even pours beer all over his head too. Isaac carries on staring, eventually deciding he’s had enough. Noticing his phone, Isaac takes it off charge and heads upstairs. As he does, Gideon points out that Isaac’s emotionless being comes from his lack of existence. He’s a husk, according to Gideon. Claiming he’s never going to be real, Gideon presses on while we see glimpses of Isaac leave his shirt on the heater. Lucy bites back and claims that Isaac does love her. “You’re the husk Gideon,” She says.

Back home, Mike heads up to Isaac’s room and notices the shirt on the heater and a fire starting, licking hungrily up the curtains. Instead of helping his son, Mike simply shuts the door. Lucy receives a voicemail from Isaac, confirming that Mike is the one who made him cold and wants her to come home. He also tells her he loves her.

While police take Gideon back to his cell, his last words being “I’ll see you soon,” Ravi heads into the interrogation room and notices the shoelace is missing the end. Of course, this is deliberate given Gideon uses it to release his handcuffs and destroy the guards either side of him and slip away. When Ravi catches up, it’s too late.

How does The Devil’s Hour end?

As for Lucy, she returns home and finds Mike outside in shock. Apparently he went back for Isaac but he was gone. Lucy refuses to believe this and immediately heads into the burning house herself, determined to find her son. Instead, she loses consciousness and dies right there in the burning building.

With flashes of an alternate life bleeding through, we cut to Lucy working as a detective. That fire from before? It’s the Warren house on fire, not her own. She seems to understand what’s happened, with flashes of the past coming through. “Deja Vu.” She says.

The Episode Review

What a fantastic ending! The Devil’s Hour leaves the door wide open for a possible second season to follow and there are plenty of ways this could go. We won’t dive into that here but suffice to say, many of the questions we’ve been graced with across the season have finally been given some much-needed answers

Sylvia’s journey, for example, now makes a lot more sense while Isaac being an anomaly is a great touch, although we can see that he’s capable of empathy, albeit in a slightly different way. It’s also possible he’s still alive, having potentially shifted to a different reality.

Peter Capaldi really gets a chance to shine in this episode though and that much is especially apparently with the way he chews through the scenery. He’s absolutely fantastic and understanding why Gideon has been working the way that he has, is a nice way of contextualizing and rationalizing his actions. Either way, this has been a great ending to what’s otherwise been a surprisingly robust and absolutely gripping series.