Roar – Season 1 Episode 8 “The Girl Who Loved Horses” Recap & Review

The Girl Who Loved Horses

Episode 8 of Roar starts out in the wilderness. Jane is obsessed with horses and after riding out across the fields, heads home and finds herself butting heads with her father. She wants her own space but for him, he wants to try and connect with her.

Jane spends her time alone, enjoying her own company and drawing horses in her section of the house. However, when her father doesn’t return for an extended period of time, she becomes worried and heads out to investigate.

Jane rides into town, where she finds her father has been shot dead. Now, a man named Silas McCall is the culprit, and apparently he shot him because Jane’s father owed him money.

Jane mourns the loss of her father and eventually digs a grave for him. Consumed by her rage, she sets out to get her revenge. She cuts her hair, prepares her horse and even starts wearing her father’s clothes too.

Jane’s friend, Millie, encourages her not to do this but Jane simply retorts that in order to gain revenge on a man, you have to act like a man. So Beverly heads into the saloon, brandishing a shotgun and determined to find Silas. With a shotgun primed and ready to go, the barkeep hurriedly admits that Silas is out on a hunting expedition 20 miles out. He warns that Silas is a good shot and she needs to be careful.

Out in the wilderness, Millie and Jane wind up letting loose and growing closer, dancing around the campfire and completely forgetting the mission at hand. When Millie wakes up after a heady night of dancing and drinking, she finds herself alone in the middle of nowhere. Jane is gone, having pressed on ahead with her horse.

Dancing and drinking aside, Jane makes it to Silas’ hideout and bursts in the barn. It’s a tense moment, but there’s no one inside. Millie eventually shows up with a doctor, but Jane isn’t exactly happy about her trundling along and slowing her down.

Jane is definitely in the right spot, spying her father’s horse saddled up outside. While Millie and Jane talk, the doctor inexplicably drops down on the wagon. Millie wants to bury him and give him a good send-off, but Jane isn’t so sure. However, hearing voices Jane is distracted as Silas and his men appear.

The women make up a story about themselves, but Jane is overcome with anger and struggles to contain herself as they sit down and break bread together. When Jane shows up in the conversation, Silas defends himself, claiming he’s a man and this is just what he does.

He tells the pair of travellers that he’s sorry about what’s happened and just wants a bullet in his head to end the pain. Jane refuses to kill him upon hearing this, deciding to take the horse off his hands and leave him to his torment instead. With the situation done and dusted, the pair head out riding together.

The Episode Review

So Roar finishes its turbulent run with another episode that ticks all the boxes but doesn’t really do anything to extend out beyond that. The visuals are great, as is the cinematography, but the story is pretty straightforward and doesn’t really push the envelope.

The revenge tale is nice but it’s not particularly original or new. In fact, out of all the episodes it’s perhaps episode 2, the story about Nicole Kidman eating photos, that’s the one with the most amount of depth here.

This final chapter does a pretty good job with its 30 minute run-time though, delivering a story about revenge and honour, while doing well to round everything out with a neat little bow at the end.