Spoilers for “A Good Boy,” Episode 3 of Crave’s YAGA.
Baba Yaga returns to a story about a man who arrived at her home looking for shelter. He slept beside her fire, then came to her bed claiming he needed warmth, although she says he wanted something else. Back in Whittock, Charlie Rapp (Noah Reid) is confronting a much more immediate problem: the body found after Henry Park’s Dark Solstice party belongs to Henry’s roommate, Logan Casey. Both men are played by Hudson Williams, and Charlie initially thinks the victim is Henry.
The police confirm Logan’s identity, while Henry remains missing. Sergeant Carson (Clark Backo) needs an account of what happened at the party, and Charlie is still struggling with the resemblance. His search for Henry is now entangled with Logan’s murder.
Logan's death changes the investigation
Charlie describes seeing Logan having sex in Henry’s bed with a woman wearing a bird mask and wings. He chased Logan through the party, was shoved aside and followed him into his bedroom, only to find that he had somehow disappeared. They discovered his body hours later. Officer Billy Granger (Sam Krochmal) reports an open second-floor window and a large amount of blood on the carpet. Billy knew Logan from school, and the scene visibly unsettles him.
Charlie also mentions seeing Katherine Hargrove, the professor he and Carson interviewed earlier, near the trees, along with something that looked like a bird on fire. The problem is that he was high. He cannot confidently say which parts of the night were real, and the police send him back to his accommodation while they question the remaining guests.
Henry’s parents are flying home from Japan, and his mother is furious that Charlie knew nothing about Logan living with her son. Charlie shows Carson an old photograph of himself with the Park family and his father, who also worked for them. He describes his father as vicious, despite the kindly grandfatherly appearance in the picture, and says the man loved Henry like a son.
Charlie tells Carson that he initially believed Henry was dead. Carson reminds him that someone has still been killed and that Logan’s mother has already suffered enough. She is grieving for the town as well: murders are unusual in Whittock, and she knew Logan as a good kid. Charlie’s attempt to cheer her up with an appalling joke about the possibility of suicide goes over exactly as badly as it should.
Their conversation edges towards a kiss, followed by an awkward exchange about taking advantage of one another and whether anyone was joking. Charlie says he wants them to work together. I really like Backo’s Sergeant Carson. She challenges Charlie’s assumptions and has little patience for his jokes, though their flirtation keeps getting in the way of their arguments. By morning, she has spent the night in a chair rather than sharing his bed.
Charlie has a disturbing dream or vision in which another figure pulls a feather from his mouth. When he wakes in his room, the towel swan on his bed appears undisturbed, just as it did before the vision.
A forensic report and a very unusual knife
Vancouver police forensic specialist Jaqueline “Jake” Conrad joins the investigation and gives everyone a blunt account of Logan’s injuries. He died from an abdominal stab wound that damaged his liver, probably between 3 and 4 a.m. His neck was broken, likely in a fall, and his genitals were mutilated before he died. Testing found traces of hallucinogens, along with unidentified human DNA beneath his fingernails.
Investigators believe Logan was stabbed and mutilated in his room, pushed through the window and dragged toward the water. Given his size and the movement of the body, they consider the possibility that two people were involved. Charlie still cannot explain why Logan ran into a bedroom with no obvious exit. Suggestions range from someone mistaking him for Henry to the murder being a warning directed at Henry or his father. Someone also raises the possibility that Henry killed Logan, which Charlie finds difficult to accept.
Jake also recovered part of a weapon from Logan’s body. It combines obsidian with what she identifies as human bone, and its markings require someone with different expertise. The police ask university anthropologist Dr. Katherine Hargrove (Carrie-Anne Moss) to examine it.
Katherine says the fragment looks Aztec, possibly dating from the 14th to early 16th century, and offers a tentative identification as a ceremonial midwife’s sacrificial knife. She connects the markings to sexuality and fertility, then explains her understanding of the status of midwives and women who died in childbirth. It is her assessment of an unidentified object; the police have yet to establish where the knife came from or who used it.
Charlie wonders whether the weapon might be what Henry purchased on his mysterious trip to the mainland, when he also withdrew $15,000. Katherine has never heard Henry express an interest in Aztec artifacts, although she concedes it could be possible. Carson is unimpressed with both her certainty on some subjects and her flirting with Charlie. Katherine and Carson trade pointed remarks, while Charlie is entirely willing to walk the professor out.
He asks Katherine about the podcast she recorded with Henry. She says it had no name and covered eating bones and Baba Yaga, yet Charlie cannot find it online under either of their names. He recognizes Baba Yaga from John Wick, a film Katherine has apparently never heard of, and then mispronounces “pestle” while reading a folklore description aloud. The exchange gives them a moment of comedy after the discussion of Logan’s injuries.
I keep noticing how fast these half-hour episodes go. I’m used to dramas running closer to 45 minutes, and YAGA seems to fit a lot into a much shorter running time. Sandler told FilmSpeak that she initially thought the adaptation needed hour-long episodes but eventually came to favour eight half-hours. I’ve become a fan of six- to ten-episode seasons, and this one has a pace that suits the mystery.
Logan's mother has questions about the Parks
Carson visits Logan’s mother, Alice, at church. Alice believes her son changed after he moved into Henry’s mansion. He started styling his hair like Henry, working out constantly, travelling on weekends and visiting home less often. She says he had also resumed spending time with Pam Russell, despite what Alice believes Pam had put him through. When Carson asks what Pam pressured him to do, Alice avoids answering.
Alice resents the Park family, particularly Henry’s mother, Dora, whom she says she knew when she was called Doreen. Alice calls Dora a gold-digging snake. She also recalls Geena Sandeson telling her that Henry and Logan paid $100 for one of Geena’s laying hens and joked that they intended to sacrifice it. Alice interprets Logan’s changes through her religious beliefs, fearing that he was moving away from God and towards the devil.
When Alice says that something runs in the family, Carson asks what happened to Logan’s father and whether Mr. Park was the father. Alice never answers, turning instead to her guilt about what happened to her son. She says boys and men need protection from their own “base nature.” Coming after her remarks about Pam, the line leaves several questions unanswered about what Alice knew and what she feared.
Meanwhile, Charlie runs along the beach and appears to see three dark-clad figures ahead of him. A piece of driftwood briefly resembles a carved face, then looks ordinary again. Pam turns up and teases him about his running. As with the burning bird at the party, Charlie’s perception is becoming difficult to trust, and he has already admitted that he was high at the party.
When Charlie and Carson reconnect, he starts speculating about Logan and Henry’s relationship. Carson assumes he means the two might have been gay. Charlie then turns the conversation to Carson’s sexuality, claiming to know something about her and Jake and making crude guesses about whom Carson wants to sleep with. She refuses to discuss her sex life and insists they return to Logan’s room.
A secret room and Logan's recordings
The Park mansion feels abandoned when Charlie and Carson return. The power is out, and Carson blames herself for losing hold of Logan during the chase. Charlie points out that they still need to work out how he vanished from a room with no apparent escape.
Inside, they find a photograph of Henry’s mother, pictures of men and a powder in Logan’s medicine cabinet resembling material discovered in Henry’s bedroom. They compare the powder with something offered at the party and consider whether Logan could have been drugging Henry. Charlie then goes considerably further, suggesting the Dark Solstice ritual might have been an attempt to steal Henry’s soul or take over his life. Carson is willing to entertain the evidence, though she is understandably less enthusiastic about the supernatural theory.
Logan should not have been able to escape through the window without seriously injuring himself. When Charlie and Carson notice scratches near a wall, they discover a concealed space full of recording equipment. Charlie jokes that rich people love spying, but the room raises more serious questions about what Logan was doing there.
A recording from the party captures Logan with the woman in wings. He insists that she address him as Henry, correcting her when she slips and telling her to leave the wings on. What looked at the party like an encounter with an unidentified woman takes a different turn when Logan calls her Pam. Carson realizes that Logan was having sex with Henry’s former girlfriend while demanding that she treat him as Henry.
Charlie goes to check Henry’s bedroom and discovers a microphone near the bed. His voice activates a recording, suggesting Logan had been listening to or collecting sounds from Henry’s private life. Carson tells Charlie to keep the recording playing, and the investigators now have reason to bring Pam in for questioning. The hidden room makes Logan’s wish to resemble Henry much more disturbing, though it still leaves plenty unanswered about what happened to both men.
The episode ends with Charlie moving Henry’s bed and finding a strange three-part symbol beneath it, formed from triangular points that extend into hooked lines. Baba Yaga’s narration returns to the man who came into her bed. She says she waited until he slept, then used a hammer. He became dust for the chickens in the woods, she says, and afterward she was no longer alone. The story and the marking beneath Henry’s bed remain unexplained.
The feather pulled from Charlie’s mouth is another detail I can’t quite account for, especially when the towel swan looks undisturbed after he wakes. The three figures on the beach and the face that seems to turn back into ordinary driftwood leave me wondering how much of what Charlie sees is real, and whether his night at the party has anything to do with it.
I’m also curious about Pam. We now know she was the woman wearing wings, and that Logan wanted her to call him Henry, but I can’t tell how much she understood about his apparent fixation on Henry’s life. And I’m keeping that symbol under Henry’s bed in mind, since it resembles one we’ve seen before.
