Swamp Thing – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

The Walking Plague

Swamp Thing returns this week with drama off-screen almost as exciting as what’s happening in the show. With the show creators cagey and refusing to give much away around why this one was cancelled, save for a pretty vague but definitive statement, the previously mentioned creative differences may well be the catalyst for this one being thrown on the chopping block. Still, there’s enough drama and excitement here to look past that and take to DC’s newest offering as it delivers another thrilling episode this week.

We begin with a flashback of Alec talking to the man he killed in the swamp. As we cut back to present day, we see him realizing what hes done and throwing his head to the sky and roaring.

As Abby ponders what to do next, the new CDC team arrive. They tell her that Jason is in the basement examining the corpse of Eddy, prompting her to pay him a visit. With the viney corpse between them, she asks if him and Avery are friends which he scoffs at. Instead, he steers the conversation back to the corpse and tells her the plants are fighting back and right now the score is 1-0 to mother nature. After a pretty fiery chat, Abby goes and sees Harlan but he’s ill, collapsing on the floor when she enters the room and spewing green liquid.

Determined to get to the bottom of what’s happening, Abby decides to head back to Alec’s lab and try to piece together any scraps of clues she may find.

Back home, we learn Jason’s wife has dementia but Avery has the worse deal of the two. His wife tells him she doesn’t love him anymore and as he begins to stew over what she’s said, someone from the bank arrives, refusing to give him any more personal loans, demanding he pay back the money in 24 hours. After sweet talking Maria into giving him more money fails, especially given his wife has problems of her own through seeing apparitions of her daughter, Avery becomes desperate.

Out in the swamp, we learn the swamp creature isn’t the only bad thing out there. The man Alec killed last week has managed to stitch himself back together courtesy of millions of insects and is now a walking plague. It shows up at Alec’s lab while Abby is sifting through paperwork but she manages to grabs a flare and keep him away for now. However, Swamp Thing appears and tells the plague to leave Abby alone before she plunges an axe into its back. As the creature falls to the ground, the Swamp Creature tells the insects to release him.

As things quieten down for now, Abby asks whether the creature is really Alec and they talk. He tells her the plants are fighting back which gives her an idea on how to stop the spread of infection. She races back to the hospital to try a different tactic to beat the infection and for now, it appears to have worked. Susie tells her that Swampy feels alone and afraid but as Abby heads off to the bar, Daniel is paid a visit by Madame Xanadu who winds up reading his fortune. It’s the same cards he usually receives only this time they’re reversed. Big changes are coming, Xanadu promises, and this prompts Daniel to believe Abby is the catalyst for this.

The episode then ends with Avery paying the banker from earlier a visit and beating him with a golf club, eventually killing him before contemplating his next move.

Seeing the Swamp Thing and the walking plague square off was a great moment in a show that continues to develop the characters and present Avery as an unstable individual. The dynamic between Abby and Alec as the Swamp creature is really nicely written too and there’s enough lulls in the action here to keep things ticking by at a decent pace. While it’s still unclear quite what direction the show will go, there’s enough here to do justice to these DC characters but whether Swamp Thing can keep this up throughout the season remains to be seen.