Banshee Season 3 Finale Review: Wiping the Slate Clean

Banshee S03E10: "We All Pay Eventually"

You always hope that a finale will pull together a season's worth of storylines in an effective fashion, but Banshee has a knack for producing cathartic conclusions that weave in resolutions to both short-term and long-term stories. Likewise, while basically all TV dramas are, on some level, about consequences, the impact of consequences on the lives of all involved parties is simply so pronounced and well done on this show. Even in a third season where at least two separate episodes could've easily served as finales ("Tribal" and "All The Wisdom I Got Left"), Banshee still engineered a thrilling and wholly satisfying ending.

I'll get right to the action because good lord, that extended sequence in the first half of the episode, with the cross-cutting between the guns and the swords and the blood, was as good as expected. But "We All Pay Eventually" thrived on a story and character level as well. I've been thinking a lot about Hood's arc throughout Banshee's first 30 episodes, and I have to applaud the show for where this hour ended with him; on a macro level, it seems at least a bit surprising. You might have anticipated that after dispatching of Rabbit and many of those demons at the end of Season 2, Banshee would've shifted its focus to Hood embracing his role as sheriff and merging some of his less-than-official tactics with a real sense of community and kinship with the people. While that happened to some degree early on in Season 3, the speed at which Banshee told stories this year, and the emotional effect of those stories, eventually meant that Hood became a man trying so hard to quit the job of sheriff. He let people into his life (namely Siobhan), and started to feel a bit comfortable (as much as you can), but that all came crashing down on him, earmarking the last five episodes of the season for a story about a broken man driven by revenge and kind of going through the motions elsewhere.

It's funny because one of Hood's key characteristics is that he's always focused on a very specific target. His goal-oriented nature means that there's always a Proctor, a Rabbit, a Chayton, or a Stowe in his sights. But he halfheartedly participated in the heist, and while he was partially successful in his attempts to save the rest of the crew from Stowe and Stowe's mercenaries, it made total sense that by the end of it all, Hood had little to nothing left. He doesn't want to be the sheriff. He never really wanted to be the sheriff. The gig was a means to a potential end (a relationship with Carrie), one that he basically gave up on last season. So with Siobhan gone, his latest revenge plots cleared from his proverbial slate, and even more of his associates dead or missing, Hood finally just let it go and threw in the towel. In fact, he was so over it all that he was willing to share a weirdly moving moment with Proctor over the fact that he never should have been sheriff in the first place. When you've been through as much as Hood has—all the way back to his apparently abusive father and his participation in a Treadstone-like black ops merc program, as we learned about here—enough is eventually enough. Banshee might still be a story about an outlaw who becomes a lawman, but Season 3 was ultimately about the costs of trying to be both things at once.

Naturally, some of those costs continued to be of the human variety. Hood's big plan to take down Camp Genoa and Colonel Stowe hinged on the participation of his former rival and current frenemy Gordon, who unsurprisingly turned in one hell of a gunslinger performance during the duo's semi-successful siege. Unfortunately, Gordon became yet another piece of collateral damage in Hood and Carrie's star-crossed and deadly tale, even if he indeed went out like an absolute hero in saving Carrie from Stowe when Hood simply couldn't.

That final showdown itself was embedded with so much history and meaning. Hood was racked with flashbacks of Chayton's assault on Siobhan, but it was also the umpteenth time he'd found himself in a such a situation with Carrie (as Job had so angrily pointed out earlier in the episode). Similarly, Carrie had now pulled Gordon completely into this criminal world, forcing him to go full assassin on a slew of trained killers, and yet his last-ditch save attempt ultimately gave the character a W after a season or more of drinking and depression. The Hopewells had just decided not to get a divorce in the penultimate episode, but as we've learned on this show, A) no one can ever be happy, and B) the dangers these characters get themselves into are very, very real. What a tremendous sequence by everyone in the cast. Rus Blackwell was a boss throughout the entire episode, and quite affecting in Gordon's final moments, while Ivana Miličević sold the loss supremely well.

Meanwhile, the simmering tension between Hood and Job took on new meaning once Job was captured at the very last second by an enterprising Leo, leaving Hood to fire aimlessly at a helicopter and later to snap at Sugar because he had no idea how or where to look for Job, given that he'd normally be asking Job for help with such an endeavor. Last week's episode did some of the grunt work to fill in the historical blanks regarding Hood and Job's relationship (there was another moment in the finale where Banshee insinuated that Job helped wipe Hood's identity from the NSA database in 1994, but that might be a misdirect or a misunderstanding on my part), and as a last-season development, I thought it paid off handsomely here. Hood angrily and dejectedly shooting at the chopper, well aware that he'd ultimately failed one of his oldest friends, was tough to swallow. And considering Hood's psychological damage, it's again no surprise that he blew up at Sugar's poking about how they'll save Job. He's now lost two people who were close to him and also watched the man who raised his daughter bleed out on the ground. He's hopeless. Antony Starr will never earn any Emmy recognition because of the kind of show Banshee is and the network it airs on, but I really do believe that he delivered a performance in the back half of the season that's worthy of the conversation. He was excellent here, as he's been for a while now.

While the other key story in "We All Pay Eventually" was certainly less emotionally draining, it was still very satisfying, and it actually ended up in a similar place. Kai, Rebecca, and Burton joined up with Morales to take down the Black Beards and Frazier, resulting in an amusingly violent sequence with the four of them working through the Black Beards' HQ and eventually handling Lennox and Frazier with relative ease. Like Hood, Proctor experienced some real personal trials this season, and also like Hood, he eventually realized that he couldn't fool himself any longer. Proctor certainly made it through his trials with fewer scars than Hood, but their destinations weren't dissimilar. That's what made the final little moment so great—these two dudes who understand one another better than they'd like to admit can't help who they are.

And even though all the character stuff was wonderful, this finale was yet another technical showcase for the Banshee creative team. Director Loni Peristere and executive producer Greg Yaitanes made a great decision to set the Camp Genoa attack during the day so that it would immediately look different than the heist in the same location from a few weeks ago, and while that sequence was brought to life by the jittery handheld camera, this one looked more epic in scope, like a more traditional—and still great—action sequence.

As always, the scenes was expertly choreographed and paced, developing mini set pieces within the larger whole. While Hood and Gordon were trying to outgun the mercs, Sugar and Job were fending off grenades and knives, and Carrie and Stowe were elsewhere having a bloody knockdown-drag-out of their own. The confrontation between Stowe and Carrie was especially brutal, because Banshee does those close-quarters throwdowns better than anybody else, and I love how it simply isn't afraid to put men and women together in scenes like that. But let's not forget that this sequence also featured multiple sizable explosions, countless emptied clips, and Job dominating someone with only a belt. You see, it's not just that Bansheedoes fight or action scenes better than every other show on TV; it's that it constantly does different versions of those things, week in and week out.

And again, the action at Camp Genoa was successfully cross-cut with similarly hectic bloodshed in Philadelphia with Kai and company. Somehow, the episode managed to "take a breather" from its supremely intense and very relevant action set piece by cutting to another intense and relevant action set piece, without hitting the brakes in either one of them. That's not easy to pull off, but this is Banshee, after all.

"We All Pay Eventually" was everything I wanted it to be, and then some. For a season that continued Banshee's upward trajectory as a great television show and proved that its greatness doesn't just come from the blood and the punching and the stabbing, this finale couldn't have been much more gratifying. Somehow, things are probably going to get worse for Hood, Carrie, and Job come next season, and I have no doubt that the show will find a way to put them all through the emotional ringer yet again. I can't wait.

NOTES

– I didn't discuss it above because there was so much other stuff to talk about, but the C-plot with Bunker, his Nazi brethren (including his legitimate brother, the group's leader), and Brock was surprisingly great. Bunker is quickly becoming Banshee's most fascinating character, and the scene between him and Brock—with the latter talking the former off some kind of real tall and dark ledge—was amazingly powerful. Awesome stuff from Matt Servitto and Tom Pelphrey. That's not really a story that concluded in any fashion, so it's something to look forward to in early Seaon 4.

– It was a little weird that we didn't get another scene between Brock and Emily, wasn't it? There's definitely room to grow with the two of them, but another quick check-in might've been useful. Emily must have been off with Billy Raven and Deputy Amy watching that new Liam Neeson movie or something.

– Max! What's worse for him, that his dad died or that his mom pulled him away from Forza Motorsport 5?

– There were so many wonderful minor moments sprinkled throughout this episode: Job and Carrie's surprised reaction to Sugar knocking out the merc guard when they initially escaped; Job's smartass retort of, "You don't like the way I kill, you kill the next one"; Morales' manic exclamation of, "This is a good fucking sword!"; and Hood's big-eyed response to Gordon busting out the impressively large sniper rifle. I'm sure you all had a few of your own that I didn't mention here, so please share them in the comments.

– Given the nature of the flashbacks with Hood and the mysterious Dalton, do we think that Job ended up in that long, empty room after his capture? That might make some sense, right?

– Season 3 was fantastic across the board—definitely the show's best—but which episode was your favorite? Are we all in agreement that it's "Tribal" and then everything else? Or would you perhaps include this finale or maybe "All The Wisdom I Got Left" in the conversation?

– Thanks for reading and commenting this season. I'll be back in early 2016 for the show's fourth season. Start the countdown now.