WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Chapelwaite Season 1, Episode 3, “Legacy of Madness,” airing now on EPIX.
Throughout Chapelwaite, supernatural elements continue to surround Charles Boone and his children Honor, Loa and Tane. However, the family is still either unaware or in denial about these dangers, in part because they are distracted by the human threats from Preacher’s Corners. Throughout the series, Tane Boone has been ignored or not believed when he points out odd occurrences or encounters.
The two main incidences in Chapelwaite where Tane has been ignored have involved Loa’s shell necklace and a woman with an apple, who has become fixated on the Boone family. In both cases, the stranger or strange figure specifically focuses on one of the Boone children. If the family listened to Tane more, they might be much closer to uncovering and protecting themselves from the horrors closing in on them at Chapelwaite.
Loa’s Shell Necklace
After Honor, Loa and Tane’s mother Maya Boone dies in the premiere, Loa wears her mother’s shell necklace in remembrance. In “Memento Mori,” Emory Spicer destroys Loa’s necklace at school, but Loa is able to salvage the shells. When the shells disappear from their room, Loa accuses Tane of stealing them. To be fair, Honor does believe Tane when he says that he did not take them, and Rebecca offers to help Loa search for them. However, beyond this offer, no one really questions who might have taken the shells. However, the viewers do see a shadowy figure watching Loa as she sleeps and a gnarled hand brushing her hair back from her face the night before.
In “Legacy of Madness,” Loa finds the shells reassembled into her beloved necklace, and Tane asserts that this is proof that he didn’t take them. The fact that the necklace is fixed should raise some alarm bells in the family; while they might have assumed that the shells were merely misplaced before, the reassembly of the shells into a necklace shows that someone definitely took them. No one else seems to question who took the necklace, but its return is probably linked to the creepy figure who watched Loa as she slept in the previous Chapelwaite episode. Tane’s assertion that he did not take the shells shows that he at least acknowledges that someone must have taken them, but because the family does not question their return, they do not discover the creepy figure that seems to have fixated on Loa yet.
The Woman with the Apple
In “Memento Mori,” Charles Boone meets a woman with an apple on the road who tells him “the worm is calling,” seemingly referencing Charles’ hallucinations. In “Legacy of Madness,” Tane also encounters the woman with the apple. The scene begins in the family’s barn as Tane plays sea captain with an imaginary crew, obviously imitating his father from their time at sea. However, Tane begins to hear the buzzing of flies, and he finds the rotting corpses of animals in the rafters. Tane then looks down from the loft to see the woman with the apple.
The woman tells Tane that he needs to “look for the book” and that she does not have a name. When Tane asserts that everyone has a name, the woman says “we renounced ours,” alluding to a larger group that she is a part of. She tells Tane of a different, older god than the Christian god—one might say an elder god—who she describes as a worm that “squirms in the grave eating the dead.” After Tane pleads with her to stop, she angrily tells Tane to “Tell [his] father to find the book” and throws the apple at the boy. Tane discovers that the apple is infested with worms.
Later, Tane tries to tell his father about the woman, the book and the apple with the worms in it. Unfortunately, after speaking with the doctor at Frigate Island Hospital, Charles is more convinced than ever of his own madness. Charles asks the rest of the family whether they saw what Tane saw, and they all say no. Charles tells Tane that he believes him, but it is clear from Charles’ reactions that he believes that his son has inherited his hallucinations. Consequently, Charles does not investigate what Tane said any further. While Charles is experiencing hallucinations, the woman with the apple and her cult’s reverence for the worm suggests that these hallucinations might be supernatural in origin and not from a mental health disorder. Therefore, if Charles truly believed Tane and acted accordingly, he might be able to get more answers.
Although the Boone family faces danger from Preacher’s Corners, the woman with the apple, her cult and the mysterious figure who returned Loa’s necklace may ultimately bring more harm upon the Boone family. Even though Tane is trying to warn them, particularly about the woman with the apple, his warnings currently remain unheard. As the horrors inch closer and closer to home, the Boone family needs to consolidate their knowledge and start listening to all of the family members, no matter how impossible their observations may seem.
To see how the supernatural continues to affect Tane and his family, new episodes of Chapelwaite air each Sunday at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on EPIX.
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