‘Black Snow’ Season 2 Episodes 3-4 Recap: How Does Sean Turn Into A Suspect?

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The quest to find Zoe Jacobs continues, with more evidence and mysteries piling up. Detective James Cormack continues to juggle the case of Zoe’s disappearance with his father’s plea to help him find his brother Richie. In the third episode, Sam is puzzled to see the word ‘Sapphire’ scribbled atop one of the flyers for Mont Vista Estate. This flyer had been recovered from Zoe’s backpack. It makes Sam think of Sapphire Beach, where they had gone on holiday in their childhood. Sam feels the need to recreate Zoe’s appearance as an adult with the help of a sketch artist and then sends it to the Sapphire Beach Police to check if they have any luck in finding her. Brad, on the other hand, declines  being involved in Zoe’s disappearance. He claims that he had seen Zoe and Sean at a liquor store before Zoe disappeared. 

Meanwhile, Sean’s mother, Julie Cosgrove, tries to gain information regarding the proceedings from Gita. From the CCTV footage of the gas station, from the night of Zoe’s disappearance, Detective James Cormack makes a guess that she must have turned to the left, due to the blinking left turn indicator caught by the camera. The left turn takes one to the State Forest, where ‘Xanadu’ is located. James is certain that Zoe came here to meet Joseph on the night she went missing. Since Joseph’s lawyer is causing a hindrance, James decides to interrogate Melody Forster.

Spoilers Ahead


What happens after the party thrown by Leo?

In a flashback, we see that Leo had thrown a success party, marking the launch of the Mont Vista Estate. Leo expressed his gratitude toward everyone—including his manager Gita and the then mayor, Julie Cosgrove—but left out Will and Nadja. Zoe was aghast at the sight of this celebration, as no one seemed to care that Mont Vista would be set up over the same ground where Cody killed himself. A little after this harrowing incident, Zoe and Joseph had sex in the radio station office. At night, Zoe promised to cover for Samara when she left with a guy for a first date. After Sam left, Brad charged her with torching his car and threatened her. After being confronted by Brad, she arrived at ‘Xanadu.’ She peeked inside the glass door of the villa and found Joseph and Melody having sex. This broke Zoe’s heart, and when she chanced upon Sean at the local bottle shop, she left for Sean’s house. 


What does James find out from Melody?

‘Xanadu’ was left out of the search radar of the police in 2003 due to Melody’s intervention. In addition, there was nothing substantial that could raise concern over what hides in the protected area. James arrives at Melody’s chic Brisbane house. Melody seems to be already aware of the case having been reopened, thanks to Joseph. She claims that she is the godmother to Joseph’s children. According to Melody’s statement, Melody and Joseph were together on Zoe’s birthday night. Melody insists that Joseph and Zoe indulged in a sexual fling but never wanted anything serious out of it. James points out that Joseph has been denying ever having had a  sexual relationship with Zoe. To go by Melody’s words, on the night Zoe vanished, Joseph and she had slept together. However, when she woke up, she found him gone. Upon returning, Joseph said that he had been swimming in the dam. 

James asks Melody to grant him a search warrant to go digging for evidence in Xanadu. In reply, Melody says that she had sold it to someone years ago. She promises to ask her accountant to send the contact details of the buyer. A thorough search of ‘Xanadu’ becomes urgent when the forensic reports of the ecstasy bag found in the backpack point to Joseph. 


What happens after Zoe wakes up at Sean’s house?

Zoe was baffled when she woke up to the embarrassing sight of Sean photographing her in the nude while she was asleep. She could also connect the dots between Sean’s creepy behavior, the anonymous phone calls, and the rose inside her car. Sean had been following her all along. In the midst of all this, Zoe forgot to act as a cover for Sam, as she had promised. Sam was upset when she was caught by her mother. All these events had angered Zoe so much that she ran to take a dip in the waterbody inside ‘Xanadu.’


What other details emerge from the episode?

We know that James is still in pursuit of his missing brother, Richie. He self-flagellates, trying to numb his emotional pain by constantly inflicting pain on his body. His father still expects James to accompany him on his quest to find Richie. Towards the end of the episode, James seems to have found a file on Richard Vogel’s time at Harborne House, the youth detention center. Seb, Zoe’s brother, remains an unexplored character who might prove to be essential to the plot in the coming episodes. One of the major reasons for Leo and Nadja’s divorce can be assumed to be Nadja’s fixation on Zoe’s disappearance to the point where Seb felt neglected. Seb holds it against his mother for leaving him. For a while, he allowed Nadja to have shared custody over him with Leo. However, eventually, he opted to stay with Leo and Gita. We see bits of Seb throughout the episode, and his actions reek of a foreboding smell. First, we see him watch a video of his family appearing before the media after Zoe went missing. Then, we see him using the web to do his research on the topic of financial abuse. 

Unrelated to either of the cases, James seems to be taking an interest in Nina, his therapist. On the other hand, Samara Kahlil receives a lead from the Sapphire Beach Police on a woman with a tattoo on the nape of her neck. The Moorevale Police search team finds a car, perhaps that of Zoe, submerged under the dam water in ‘Xanadu.’ There is something in the trunk that disturbs Samara. 


What has been found in the trunk of the car?

The car that is seen getting pulled out of the water in the previous episode is Zoe’s car. The police assume that the body found in the truck is that of Zoe. The fourth episode begins with Samara’s guilt-ridden proclamation that she misunderstood Zoe. She confesses to James that she had been living with this false belief that Zoe left her for good to find a future out of the town. The truth is, she had been here all along. Samara is tasked with breaking the news to Leo and Will. Leo breaks down and starts howling upon receiving the news. 


What happened when Zoe met with Joseph again?

Zoe eventually turned cold towards Joseph after she spotted him with Melody. Joseph, however, never stopped pursuing her. She tried to keep Joseph at bay, but Joseph seemed to have invited himself to her 21st birthday party. It was Joseph who proposed the idea of selling her some drugs. He understood that Zoe had the inheritance money. Leo spotted the two talking together. At the office, Gita took Zoe’s help to sort out the list of VIPs who were about to arrive for the event to mark Mont Vista breaking ground. One guest in particular caught Zoe’s attention, the CEO of LGV Developments. According to Zoe, this company was behind the eviction of Cody and his family. Gita, however, dismissed her assumption and threw light on the real culprit who owned the land of Cody’s house. It was owned by an investment firm called Sapphire Futures. Zoe had scribbled this name on one of the flyers, which was eventually found in her bag. The next morning, Zoe found her photo, all naked in the dam water, stuck in her windscreen wiper. 


What does Joseph have to say now?

Joseph denies having met Zoe on the night of the birthday but claims he had seen her the previous day. He keeps arguing that he was with Melody at the time Zoe disappeared. Joseph also rejects the claims that he sold drugs to Zoe. When Cormack informs him of the remains of Zoe recovered from the dam, Joseph remains calm but emotionally declares that he is being set up again by the police. He asks Cormack to go after Sean. Cormack has good reason to believe that Joseph might be speaking the truth. Leo grows hostile when he sees Joseph walking out of the police station. 


What is Nadja seen doing in the fourth episode?

After her divorce from Leo, Nadja found a place at the caravan park at Moorevale. She lives here with her friend, Val, and is seen caring for the pregnant girl, Daisy, who we found stuck in the abandoned radio station building in the first episode. Nadja warns Daisy not to go back to her abused husband and promises that she will find her a safe place to live. When James brings in the news of the remains of Zoe having been found, Nadja refuses to believe that it might be Zoe. She remains hopeful that it is not Zoe till the forensics perform the DNA test. Nadja goes to Will and asks for the investment property, which he offered to give her earlier as a flat. She wants it for her friend, Daisy. Seb catches a glimpse of Nadja, and Nadja too is surprised to see Seb. Earlier, she had spotted Seb at the caravan park, but he’d left without meeting her. This time the two awkwardly try to initiate conversation. However, they are interrupted by Val’s call to Nadja, asking her to return to the caravan park urgently. Although Nadja promises to make it up to him later, Seb does not get a chance to bare his heart out to his mother. Val tells Nadja that Daisy’s husband forcefully took her away with him. 


How Does Sean Turn Into A Suspect?

The search team recovers Zoe’s cash from the car’s jack compartment. However, the cash does not amount to even 15,000. Among the other items, Samara spots a camera and identifies it as one that belonged to Sean Cosgrove. Samara also believed that the photo of Zoe in the dam was printed using a home printer. Not too many people owned a home printer or a digital camera back in the day in Moorevale. Samara suspects that Sean, unable to face rejection from Zoe, followed her after the party. When he saw her going towards ‘Xanadu,’ he killed her and dumped the car in the water to implicate Joseph. In another flashback, the story gave us a moment to revisit Zoe’s past when Sean started harassing her. Zoe was visibly shaken after she found her nude photos stuck to her car. Zoe had revealed to Nadja that she regretted having sex with Sean due to his perverted behavior. 

Julie Cosgrove, on the other hand, dismissed Zoe’s claims of Sean’s creepy conduct at that time. She indulged in victim blaming and even pointed out the ways Leo’s business could be disrupted if such an allegation was levied against Sean. Zoe had sneaked into the Cosgrove house at night to gather evidence. On her way out with Sean’s camera, she spotted a car rolling in. She watched a man drop Julie at the house. Julie, in turn, presented him with an envelope. The man was seen thanking Julie and assuring her that he would always be at the disposal of Sapphire Futures. The envelope held bundles of cash. 

In the present time, Sean is anxious upon learning that he will soon be pursued as a suspect. Julie assures him that she will exploit the vulnerabilities of Cormack to their benefit. On the other hand, when Samara goes to Nadja with the photo, she is surprised to find that Nadja knows about its existence. At a private party hosted by Julie, Kahlil arrives and confronts Sean. Samara’s violent outburst goes viral, which causes her to be pushed to the verge of a removal from the case. 


What would James and Samara find in Sean’s house?

James manages to secure a search warrant for Samara to raid Sean’s place. From Sean’s house, they confiscate his laptop. James gets a mail from Melody’s accountant detailing the sale of ‘Xanadu.’ Turns out that ‘Xanadu’ was bought by an investment firm named Sapphire Futures. In fact, the firm owned the land Mont Vista was built on. They went on to buy ‘Xanadu’ four months after Zoe’s death in its waters. Sean spots the two getting out of his house and speeds away with his car. 


Damayanti Ghosh
Damayanti Ghoshhttps://letterboxd.com/deemem/
Damayanti is a Master of Arts in Film Studies from Jadavpur University. An inveterate admirer of the Hindi popular cinema, she takes equal pleasure in unearthing obscure animation and horror but does not let on much about it. Her favorite book is 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. Her favorite film is 'Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa'.


 

 

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