The Secret Circle - Season 1 Episode 20 - Traitor - Recap

In an especially eventful episode of Secret Circle, the easter egg hunt for crystals finally nears an end, a major major character returns, and a terrifying setting trumps all, even if the ending cliffhanger is slightly annoying. So many questions, so few episodes remaining. This show must get renewed!

After last week’s crazy turn of events, Cassie is mourning the death of her grandma, Jane, but hopeful about Diana being her sister. Everyone thinks it was the witch hunters that killed her. Cassie smooches Adam in a moment of sadness, but Blackwell annoyingly interrupts. I hate how their love is always forbidden, and up until this episode it’s kid of a constant question mark as to how Adam really feels.

Diana asks her dad, Charles, about her birth and he admits that he went through a rough patch with her mother. After she was conceived, he raised her as his own and she is very much his daughter. You can read every ache and pain across Charles’ face. Gale Harold is perfection incarnate.

The rest of the circle performs a locator spell to find the other crystals with the help of Blackwell. I still don’t understand why they are all just blindly following someone who so clearly has various ulterior motives. The disappearing act that Jake and Faye pulled on her mom’s prescription drugs ends up paying off, as the bottle holds one of the crystals they have been after. Only one crystal remains, belonging to Adam’s grandfather, who Blackwell assumed must have cloaked the object. Every single time I hear Blackwell or any of the others mentioning the crystal skull, it totally feels like I’m watching some intense Indiana Jones.

Melissa and Adam are hot on the trail of the other crystal, searching through all of his grandfather’s stuff. She suggests some liquor might help loosen his thoughts and get into his grandfather’s head. In what world does that sound logical in the slightest? Somehow during Adam’s drunken blather, he comes across his grandpa’s lucky coin, framed on the wall and in very plain sight. It seems a little odd not to notice something so obvious when sober, but I’ll go with it. He cloaks the coin, but can’t seem to figure out how to uncloak it for quite some time.

After Diana tells the rest of the circle that Blackwell is her father, everything in the room starts shaking and the crystal they just retrieved is stolen… just like that. Assuming it must have been the traitor witch working with the hunters, Jake thinks that they should try talking to Isaac, but when they go to meet him, a different kid shows up instead. Ian tells them that Eben killed Isaac after he refused to kill the traitor witch, who escaped. That’s a mouthful. Thinking he killed her grandma, Cassie snaps and strangles him with dark magic, but Diana is able to stop her. After Ian gets away, they realize the traitor witch must be working alone and use the map to do another locator spell. Why didn’t they just do the locator spell in the first place to save them all the trouble?

Charles meets up with Blackwell in a crowded place and punches him out, threatening to take Diana far away from Chance Harbor where he will never see her again. Afterward, Blackwell convinces Dawn not to let Charles leave because he needs a complete circle in order to make the crystal skull, and furthermore take out both the witch hunters and the elders. Will we ever see these elders, or will they just be the topics of endless conversations?

Adam finds a simple incantation on the coin he made disappear that uncloaks everything his grandfather previously cloaked, but all that they find in the room are some naughty mags. Seems old Grandpa Conant was quite the perv. They leave and head for the crystal map, where they are able to locate its whereabouts in the high school. This is the hunt that never ends, I swear.

The hunt for the traitor witch brings Jake, Faye, Diana, and Cassie to an uber creepy abandoned amusement park. It’s even still playing creepy music out of its dilapidated speakers. Jake and Faye come across a ride filled with dead witch hunters (including Ian) next to a really terrifying-looking clown. They must have had a blast making the set in this place look outlandish and insane, because they did a superb job crafting one of the season’s creepiest locales. They split up (why would you split up after finding a group of dead bodies?) after the power goes back on, and it’s not long before Diana and Cassie come across a running person in a hoodie who they assume must be the traitor witch.  Jake and Faye come across some odd drawings and such, and Jake is shocked to find a picture of his family. Cassie uses her dark magic to launch a spear toward the running hooded man, and her and Diana run over to find him on the ground. In one of the biggest shockers of the season, the hooded man is revealed to be Nick, the original member of the circle. Somehow still alive after Charles drowned him in the beginning of the season. He gets away before we can get any answers on his kooky return.

I loved this episode! I can’t even begin to speculate what all the stuff means that was thrown out in the episode’s final moments, but I for one was completely surprised at the ending. How on earth could Nick still be alive? Is he some sort of resurrected zombie?