If you’re a subscriber of Amazon Prime Video, you may recall a brief but impactful series titled The Devil’s Hour which initially premiered in October of 2022. The thrilling release, which ran only six episodes, offers some truly mind-bending storytelling, many plot twists and a few confusing but comprehensive timeline jumps that will leave you reeling after a binge session. Despite it having been two years since the episodes released, fans of The Devil’s Hour are just now receiving a second installment of the beloved sci-fi thriller. Since it’s been so long since many viewers have watched the events of The Devil’s Hour season 1, we figured we’d recap the events of the first season, and give you everything you need to go into the new episodes refreshed and ready to have your mind blown once again.

Of course, the following write-up will contain heavy spoilers for the entirety of The Devil’s Hour season 1, so if you haven’t yet seen the first six episodes of the show, be sure to bookmark this page and return later. There will also be references throughout the following recap to suicide, self-harm, sexual abuse and numerous mental health issues, so please consider this to be a formal trigger warning. For those of you still with us, let’s dive right in, and boldly examine the plot and conclusion of The Devil’s Hour season one in preparation for the shocking second season.

Who Are the Key Characters?

At the start of The Devil’s Hour, audiences are introduced to Jessica Raine’s Lucy Chambers, a Child Protective Services worker who suffers from insomnia, driven by powerful nightmares – or perhaps otherworldly visions. Every night at exactly 3:33 AM, a time known as the Devil’s Hour, Lucy wakes up from a nightmare, which depicts her living a parallel life, rife with trauma and loss. As Lucy tries to process these feelings, all while inspecting the homes of endangered children, we also see flash-forwards of her interrogating a mysterious criminal named Gideon Shepherd. Shepherd, as portrayed by Doctor Who‘s Peter Capaldi, holds seemingly impossible knowledge about Lucy’s past, present and future, offering a cryptic explanation for her twisted visions.

Early on in the series, we also meet Lucy’s emotionally distant son, Isaac, as well as a handful of supporting CPS employees who assist Lucy in tracking down a deranged child killer. Isaac attends regular therapy sessions with a child psychologist, due to his inability to express emotions, claiming that he can see people who aren’t really there. His condition is ultimately revealed to be a result of his slipping through different timelines, which allows him to voyeuristically view the lives of others. At the end of the series’ second episode, Isaac goes missing, leaving Lucy to believe that Shepherd has kidnapped him. Though Shepherd denies any involvement, Lucy comes to discover that the criminal does have a bizarre personal connection to her and her family.

Exploring Gideon Shepherd’s Timeline-Hopping Powers

By the time the first season of The Devil’s Hour comes to a close, the audience is given a great deal of insight into Gideon’s powers. Though not all of our questions are fully answered, Gideon eventually comes to reveal his abilities to Lucy in full. As he confesses in the season one finale, Gideon has been repeatedly reborn, destined to relive his life over and over again, like some kind of long-form Groundhog Day time-loop. During his first life, Gideon and his brother were murdered by their own abusive father. To circumvent this gruesome death, Gideon commits patricide on subsequent rebirths, before continuing to liberate victims of abuse by murdering their abusers. As such, Gideon spends each new rebirth slaughtering his way through more abusers each time, before eventually getting caught, going to jail, and making note of who to kill next.

Gideon’s cycle of rebirth and serial slayings explains why Lucy has bizarre visions of the future which keep turning out slightly wrong. In the first episode of the series, Lucy encounters an abusive man named Shane Fisher, who triggers a hallucination that suggests he’ll kill his own daughter in the coming days. By the end of the episode, Shane’s wife calls Lucy, terrified, and explains that Shane has kicked in the door of her home while drunk. By the time Lucy arrives at the home, she sees that paramedics are taking Shane away in a bodybag, instead of his young daughter. This occurs because Lucy is experiencing flashes of a previous timeline, where Gideon didn’t intervene. In the current timeline, however, Gideon can be seen in the crowd outside of the Fishers’ home, having surreptitiously snuck out after dispatching the abusive father.

Lucy’s Connection to Gideon Explained

So, why do Lucy and Isaac get visions of alternate timelines, despite the rest of the world moving forward none the wiser? As we come to learn over the course of The Devil’s Hour, her family lineage is inextricably tied to Gideon’s power. In the original timeline, Lucy’s mother kills herself, causing Lucy to undergo a great deal of trauma in her early years. This sets her on a path to becoming a police detective, who always catches Gideon and puts him in jail. During one of Gideon’s rebirths, he determines to prevent Lucy’s mother’s suicide, which sends Lucy on another path towards social work. Despite this change in trajectory, Lucy still winds up hot on Gideon’s trail. Their connection seems to ripple through generational trauma, growing stronger with each passing child in the family.

Lucy’s mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia and dementia due to her unexplainable visions, while Isaac’s connection to these so-called timeline echoes allows him to actually visit the alternate realities in an ethereal way. Obviously, Isaac’s tenuous grasp on reality is a major contributing factor to his inability to properly express emotions. Gideon feels a deep attachment to Isaac, partially because of the boy’s supernatural abilities, and partially because Gideon set forth the sequence of events which lead to Isaac being born, by preventing Lucy’s mother from committing suicide. As a result, Gideon tries to protect Isaac and watch after him, which leads Lucy to believe that he’s the one responsible for her son’s mysterious disappearance.

What Happens at the End of The Devil’s Hour Season One?

In the final moments of The Devil’s Hour‘s first season, Gideon demonstrates his ability to shift timelines with his rebirths to Lucy. She remains in denial at first, though ultimately storms out of the interrogation room when she learns that her home is on fire. As she races home, we learn that Isaac is back at the house, and in grave danger of dying in the blaze. The young boy leaves a voicemail for his mother, which seems to confirm that his estranged father, Mike, has been abusive to him since he was born, contributing to Isaac’s condition. Still, Isaac offers a heartfelt message of love to his mother, before Lucy rushes inside the home, and dies from smoke inhalation. As she draws her final breaths, it seems as though Isaac is nowhere to be found, suggesting he may have shifted timelines just in time to avoid certain death.

Just when it seems like the series will cut to the closing credits, we cut to another fresh timeline, where Lucy watches in horror as the home burns to the ground. In this timeline, Lucy’s neighbors, the Warrens, live in the home instead of her and Isaac. As she witnesses the home becoming engulfed in flames, she is stricken with a severe case of deja vu, leaving audiences to wonder how much of the previous timeline she has retained. Does Lucy remember Gideon’s confession? Will she assist him in his mission to save women and children from their abusers? Does Isaac even exist in this version of her life? The answers to these questions have plagued fans of The Devil’s Hour for two full years, and are sure to be delivered in season two.

The Future of the Franchise

Luckily for fans, The Devil’s Hour has been renewed for not one, but two additional seasons, and is expected to conclude with its third installment. Series creator and showrunner Tom Moran has expressed that he intends for the three seasons of The Devil’s Hour to function like a trilogy of films, creating a firm beginning, middle, and end point for the narrative. With this in mind, there are plenty of questions going in to the second season, and the trailer has whipped up tons of excitement in fans around the globe. From what we can tell, it seems like season 2 of The Devil’s Hour will hit the ground running, as Gideon once again explains his process to Lucy, and perhaps recruits her to his vigilante-style cause. For now, all we can do is speculate, and go in to the new episodes with an open mind when they arrive on Oct. 18.

The Devil's Hour

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