We’re halfway through the second season of The Afterparty, and it’s still not giving us the same excitement as season 1. There’s something dull about how things are moving forward this time around, and we’re a little bit disappointed. In episode 4, Hannah pointed fingers at Sebastian, Edgar’s best friend and best man, for looking oddly suspicious. To be fair, he is the only non-family member that is so close to Edgar, so we can imagine there’s something there for sure. On the other hand, Aniq and Zoe are on different paths to finding the answer because Zoe’s family is involved, whereas Aniq is pushed by Danner to go after the real truth and not be distracted by personal feelings. It’s true that Aniq is only doing this because he wants to get into the good books of Zoe’s family, but in his heart, he just wants to solve the case.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the episode?
Episode 4 ended with Sebastian talking on the phone with Edgar’s clients and pretending to still be his partner when everyone knows now that he’s been fired. Now Hannah has given Aniq and Danner the perfect excuse to suspect him next. On the other hand, Isabelle is convinced that Grace and her entire family orchestrated the whole thing to take all of their money. Zoe announces to the room that it was, in fact, the “devil’s trumpet,” which was a part of Hannah’s centerpieces, that was used to kill Edgar, and we see her parents act a little strange when they hear this. It turns out Zoe’s mother’s a bit of a hoarder and doesn’t like to waste anything, so she’s taken all the centerpieces to reuse them (how conscious of her!). But Isabelle is still unsure about the family. Grace finds that the flower is actually missing from one of her centerpieces, proving Zoe’s theory. Sebastian, who thinks he’s in a Bond film, isn’t ready to answer Aniq and Danner and would rather wait for the police. But Danner makes sure he knows that they know about Edgar having fired him secretly. At the same time, it appears Aniq and Zoe’s theories are diverging from each other as time passes.
The first truth we learn from Sebastian is that he’s actually not English but from Southern California. He and Edgar had been thick as thieves since childhood. Sebastian started off as a child who committed petty crimes with his cousins and then made his way to boarding school, where he met Edgar. He tried to convince Edgar that he was English so that he could mooch off the richest kid in the building, but Edgar was quick to call him out. They had played a game of Connect Four for a misprinted rookie card of baseball player Justin Tunder. But, even with the poor man’s chess, Edgar won and took the card. That’s when Sebastian decided to team up with Edgar and become partners. In college, they did some small stuff, but after that, they started a hedge fund with some (loads of) money borrowed from Edgar’s dad. Although, through all those years, Edgar still never managed to trust Sebastian and kept his crypto in a safe that Sebastian had no access to.
Edgar was mad at Sebastian because he held back 20% of their capital from the crypto investment, which is why he decided to fire him. Edgar used the Tunder card as an example for showing Sebastian how he didn’t respect the value of Edgar’s ideas. But, business aside, Edgar still wanted Sebastian to be his best man, which made poor old Seb even more vengeful. That’s when he made an elaborate plan to take revenge on his best friend, using the wedding as a distraction. He wanted to break into his safe and steal from it. It was time to return to the OG team, the cousins he left behind to be cool with Edgar.
When he meets them in prison, we get a cameo from last season’s murderer, Yasper. Following is a sequence of Sebastian explaining his great plan to his cousins to distract Edgar during the wedding so he can get into the safe and take back what is his. One of them is going to be the DJ, and the other is going to join the waiters. There was one problem, though. Sebastian didn’t know the code to the last lock in the safe with steel doors. He realized that it could be the name of Edgar’s dad’s horse. After the rehearsal dinner, he visited Hannah, as we all know, but what we didn’t know was that it was to find out the name of the horse. Hannah was uninterested, so he decided to go to their mother Isabelle instead (ew). With all his clothes off, he decided to ask Isabelle about the horse (we did not need to imagine that scenario). Strangely, she got furious and threw him out with no clothes on, and that’s when he passed by Aniq in the bushes and ruined his image in front of all of Zoe’s family.
During the wedding, Isabelle cryptically tells Sebastian that he should tell Edgar that she remembers “everything,” including the horse’s name, which is “nutmeg.” Sebastian gets his answer, and during the first dance, which he puts into Grace’s head so he can have time to enter the safe, he goes on his big mission. Roxanne’s retinal scan also set off an alarm, which is why Edgar left in the middle of the dance and found Sebastian in the safe. He only wanted to take back the Tunder card, and Edgar challenges him yet again to a game of Connect 4. Of course, Sebastian loses again, and to teach him a lesson, Edgar says he’s going to keep 20% of the card. Only Sebastian already knew he’d do something like that, so he ended up switching the cards. What Travis thought was code had just been Edgar and Sebastian’s scorecard from years ago.
At the end of the episode, Danner admits that she may have done some stuff she’s not proud of when she left the force. Elsewhere, Zoe sees Grace and Hannah acting all lovey-dovey near the pool. What she doesn’t know is that Hannah is telling Grace that she didn’t tell Aniq and Danner everything about them. What could Grace be hiding?
Final thoughts:
This The Afterparty episode was definitely the least funny of the entire season thus far. It’s bleak, and while some connections are explained decently, it has no impact because this genre is so well done in mainstream media. We can only look forward to something interesting with Ulysses’ story now. Regarding the large mystery of things, everyone looks suspicious, and it is possible that Edgar just died accidentally. We’d give this episode 2.5 out of 5.
