Black Summer – Season 2 Episode 8 (Finale/Ending) Recap & Review

The Plane

Episode 8 of Black Summer Season 2 begins this finale with a battered and blooded Ray holding his gun. With one eye shut, he addresses a group of survivors and tells them they could have made the plane. Now, everybody is going to die. With a gun pointed and ready to fire, the scene cuts back in time.

The frozen tundra isn’t so frozen anymore, as these barren flats pave way for this airstrip. Rose and Anna still aren’t on talking terms but they walk right into trouble when a zombie begins chasing them down.

A slick aerial view then ensues, showing these different pockets of survivors and scraps of zombies running about. It doesn’t take long before Jase and Nat are killed, while Anna and Rose feign not having any ammo as Ray holds them up at gunpoint.

That quickly goes awry though when a handful of zombies charge at them, prompting Rose to try (and fail) to take control of the situation.

Boone meanwhile, leads yet more survivors to the airstrip. Unfortunately he’s shot dead for his efforts, leading these new survivors straight into the hangar where our grounded plane happens to be.

These survivors, as it turns out, are the same ones Sun gave the guns to out on the frozen tundra several episodes back. How’s that for a bitter taste of irony.

They certainly don’t take kindly to Ray, beating him down relentlessly. One of the men winds up with a sprained wrist for his efforts too, leading Anna to grab first aid supplies for him… and a flare gun for herself. She hands it to Rose, who hides it from view.

All hell breaks loose as a horde of zombies show up and kill this group. Ray however, survives. And now that scene at the start of the episode is given more context. Ray tells them that there’s no way they’re getting the plane now. At least, not that one anyway. Up in the sky, another plane touches down, prompting Rose to fire the flare gun and explode a propane tank.

The explosion blasts Rose across the ground, along with Sun and Anna. Rose’s leg is in a bad way and she believes she’s going to turn. Unable to cope with that, she tells the others to leave. Sun and Anna scramble to their feet and run away. Sun makes it on the plane but Anna changes her mind and decides not to join her after all.

Mance however, somehow survives. There’s a really impressive shot here too, a one-shot take that follows Mance as he twists and turns through various hangars and areas. Eventually he makes it to safety but he’s battered and bruised.

Ray somehow survives the blast too, although Anna shows up and sees the pair staring one another down. She scrambles for a car and prepares to drive, as Ray drops his gun in defeat.

As the season closes out, Sun greets the pilot who happens to be an American that can speak Korean. He tells her they’re going far away but en-route need to stop to refuel. Where could they be heading I wonder?

The Episode Review

Black Summer bows out its second season with an exciting finale, one that finally sees more than one zombie on screen as that tense action that made the first season so enthralling is captured here too.

Quite how Rose and Ray survived that blast is a little contrived, especially with Anna not even sporting any cuts or bruises across her face either. However, it seems like they’ve now come to an agreement and it remains to be seen what their journey will look like going forward – if the show is renewed of course.

Bringing back the survivors that Sun showed kindness to is a nice touch, although we never did catch any of their names (as far as I’m aware anyway) so some of this does fall flat.

This second season has been slightly different to the first, with a pace that’s been a lot more dips and peaks than flatlined mediocrity. After a relatively bumpy opening, this season has definitely been stronger late on. The single chapter involving Spears is arguably the stand-out here.

The ending certainly hints tat we’ve got a third season on the horizon, but whether Netflix actually greenlight this or not remains to be seen. For now, this second season bows out with a tantalizing glimpse of what could be, with our characters split up and ready for another leg of their journey.