'Passenger' Fails To Resolve Anything in Its Final Episodes

Friends, I’m at a loss as I write this recap. After Passenger’s sixth and final episode, I assumed series creator and writer Andrew Buchan had written it as a cliffhanger. But in a recent interview with TellyVisions, Buchan described it as a limited series (though he’d welcome a second season). So, these six episodes are meant to function as a complete story, but I struggle mightily to understand that argument. There are so many strands of plot left dangling, so many characters seemingly abandoned to uncertain fates, so many moments that make little sense that I thought I might have missed a seventh episode. 

Some elements of the story do resolve throughout Episodes 5 and 6. These include the results of Chadder Vale’s entry in the Best Kept Village contest (abysmal failure, leading Linda to trash her office in a fit of disappointed rage); Katie’s arc (seemingly no longer coughing up the black goo from her experience in the forest, she boards the bus to Manchester); Kane’s arrest (when he’s charged with Mehmet’s murder, a crime he did not actually commit, he’s relieved to be leaving Chadder Vale behind for the relative safety and normalcy of jail); and Eddie’s arc (it turns out he did not attack Jim, after all – it was boxing gym owner Tony, at the behest of Jumbo Bread Factory manager Des).

By no means do I need every storyline to be neatly sewn up – I love a good, open-ended, ambiguous ending. I wish that Passenger delivered ambiguity. What it furnishes instead is a tantalizing, vexing mess. That’s not to say it’s devoid of any value. Indeed, the final episodes include moving, scary, and funny scenes by turns. I particularly appreciated Riya’s dedication to getting the story right about the attack on Jim that Eddie did not commit. Embracing first the possibility and then certainty that she had been wrong, trying to make amends with Eddie, and exposing Tony as the actual assailant is most likely her final act as a DS in Chadder Vale, and it’s a deeply meaningful one. 

I also found Eddie’s arc, from fearsome, dangerous ex-con to the shattered victim of his own hometown, quite gripping. The apparent curse on Chadder Vale seems to include an overwhelming impulse toward mob violence as if the town itself was poisoning the minds of Eddie’s neighbors against him to sacrifice his life (and the lives of his wife and two daughters) for some still-murky purpose. Five years ago, he accepted the conventional wisdom that he had attacked Eddie because “you are who they say you are.” It furnished some echoes of “The Lottery,” and I prepared myself for a scene as chilling as the climactic scene of Shirley Jackson’s story. 

A distant cousin of that scene appears in the form of Yakub, the kindly Polish mechanic with a profound crush on Riya, enduring the beating of a lifetime after finally identifying Tony as Jim’s assailant. The motive for this beating appears to be a combination of pointing the finger at Tony (who is, after all, a lifelong resident of Chadder Vale, not some Johnny-come-lately from mainland Europe!) and telling Riya that he was told (by some shadowy, unidentified group of people) that the attack was part of something bigger and that he needed to protect the true identity of Eddie’s attacker. Fleshing out the theme of what evil lies beneath an otherwise normal-seeming town would make for a good thread in a prospective second season.

My favorite of the successful parts of Passenger’s last third is the development of Ally and Nish’s working relationship and friendship. Deciding to work together to pursue connections between Nina Carlsson and Mehmet’s experiences to complete the work Riya was committed to and obliged to leave behind is a lovely grace note. It provides the best character development of the entire series. I would gladly watch more of them collaborating successfully on the investigation and becoming better friends in the process.

• Gwen’s rage and attempts to provoke Eddie to violent revenge against his accusers as the truth comes out. I think it’s meant to tie into the theme of evil woven throughout the series, and it may also connect with the pervasive feeling of the town itself – perhaps through its land? – is both sentient and sinister.
• The housewives providing an ersatz laundry service for the Pangaea Initiative seems significant. How did that start, and just how many people are unsuccessfully playing the more intense iteration of the titular game each week? It’s got to be a massive number if it’s creating enough laundry for the Initiative to start outsourcing it.
• What justice exists for people like Mehmet, whose death we still don’t know enough about? He drowned, but how and where? Who or what is responsible for that?  

Riya says out loud that Chadder Vale doesn’t want her unanswered questions to be resolved. Fair enough, but that’s not a get-out-of-storytelling-jail-free card. Even with the maximum degree of grace extended, Passenger includes so many red herrings and underbaked elements that it’s hard to know what characters and plot developments to invest in emotionally. 

It’s a trick that can be played, and in a mysterious show, we expect to get snowed once or twice along the way, but Passenger attempts to be the Lucy to our Charlie Brown several times too many. The degree to which it breaks faith with the audience is a deal-breaker for me as a viewer. 

All episodes of Passenger, such as they are, are streaming on BritBox.

• What’s up with the Tree of Good Hope? Is it part of the curse of Chadder Vale? What are we to make of Jordan from California’s visit? Is this tree just a tree/benignly woo-woo international tourist attraction?
• Who is the cigarette-smoking guy? Why take the time to highlight his presence across a few episodes and then tear open a fresh new (and chilling) storyline for him with under ten minutes left in the finale? 
• What becomes of Riya’s mother-in-law Susan? Her paranoid statements seemed to have a solid connection for whatever was up with the Home Office, their scary creature, and the video game Passenger. Is she another red herring? 
• Why does Terry, the police pathologist and ex-wife of Des from the bread factory, maintain her lab in the bread factory? Why, if attempting to save his marriage was so crucial to Des, did we get countless scenes of him berating Kane, and just one, in the final episode, between him and Terry? 
• The green-coated woman from The Home Office says that the purpose of Passenger is to give anxious young gamers a sense of purpose. Still, its latest (admittedly inadvertent) recruits are two of the least anxious people in town. Indeed, Nish and Ally invest a lot of time and effort into gaining access to the more challenging, more dangerous version of the game because they’re driven to help Riya and love to play video games. They’re impressively non-neurotic and have a clear purpose. They don’t need the game at all, and yet it may kill them if smoke inhalation from the fire Des sets doesn’t get them first. 
• The Home Office of the Pangaea Initiative and its whole allegedly purpose-furnishing murder game is just a Ponzi scheme/death cult, right? Everyone who wants to play the higher-stakes version of the game pays £6,000 for the opportunity to be scared literally to death?