Amazon’s Homecoming episode 7 review: What is the facility really all about?
Walter’s mother
We still haven’t seen Walter in the present timeline and the only person that seems to know what’s happened to him is his mother. Carrasco tracks her down saying that he needs to talk to Walter because he thinks that something was done to him and he wants to help. Although Walter’s mother trusts no one, she believes that Carrasco genuinely wants to help.
After speaking with Walter’s mother, Carrasco heads to Heidi’s house to talk to her again. He confirms with her that she has no memory of working with Walter or any of the men there and then pulls out a recording of her sessions with Walter. She doesn’t remember what’s on the tapes and asks where he got them from. He confirms that he got them from Walter’s mother and that Heidi sent them to her. He pushes her as hard as he can for answers, but she just can’t remember anything… but now she’s ready to get some answers and her only thread is her old boss Colin.
Colin’s double life
As we saw he’s hooked up with Heidi, but he’s also still arranging for him and his wife to go away to celebrate their 16 year wedding anniversary together. Talk about a man living a lie! After seeing Carrasco leave Heidi’s house he calls her and she’s amped up to find out what it is she can’t remember and he suggests that she doesn’t face this alone. He may not be all in with Heidi, but he needs to still make sure that she doesn’t remember anything and when she tells him that she wants to find her old boss Colin he knows he has to do something about it.
Is the medication working too well?
We now know that the medication that the men are given at the facility is supposed to delete the harmful responses to the traumatic memories, but after seeing Heidi and Walter’s latest session it seems to delete memories entirely. Walter doesn’t remember a story he told Heidi three weeks earlier and he is also having issues calling back the details of how his good friend died. Heidi is visibly concerned with Walter not remembering these stories and details, but he tries to reassure her that he remembers the people she’s talking about.
Heidi calls Colin to tell him that the medication isn’t working the way it’s supposed to and that it’s wiping out entire memories, and Colin assures her that this is a good thing, especially when he hears that Walter told Heidi that he’s feeling great. Heidi is panicked about the idea of Walter (or any of these men) losing their memories since she thought the idea was that they would remove the emotional/traumatic attachment to the memory, but not lose the memory itself.
The biggest surprise was learning that the whole purpose of this facility is to rehabilitate these men so that they can be redeployed, not go home and reintegrate into life – something that also surprised Heidi since she legitimately thought the facility was what they said it was. Heidi wants to pull Walter from being redeployed since she knows that’s not what he wants but Colin reminds her of what happened to Shrier – he did end up going home, but he was so messed up from being pulled off the medication that he had to be committed to a psychiatric ward.
Related – Check out our review for episode 8!
CarterMatt Verdict
This episode felt very reminiscent of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of our favorite movies) where traumatic memories are being erased along with all of the good ones too. We saw some moments here where Heidi was trying to stop Walter’s memories from fading into darkness and feeling helpless to help someone she truly cares for. We still haven’t seen Walter in the present day, but now we fear that he’s been redeployed somewhere and is miserable. The tone of this show doesn’t make us that confident that anyone is going to have a happy ending.
Let us know what you thought of Homecoming episode 7 in the comments section below and how do you think it’s all going to end? (Photo: Amazon)