Emerald City Recap – The Beast Forever

Emerald City is NBC’s new take on The Wizard of Oz. We’ll be recapping the entire series each week on Friday nights.

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The episode opens with a woman running to a farmhouse with an infant in her arms. The baby has a small mark that looks like a cluster of five stars on her hand. 20 years later, Dorothy Gale (the baby, now grown up) finds the woman living in a remote part of Lucas, Kansas but she hides in her truck instead of approaching her.

Dorothy’s a nurse at the local medical center and stealing pain pills for her Aunt Em’s back. Em wants her to actually meet her mother instead of hiding from her past, so Dorothy heads back into town despite a very nasty approaching storm.

When Dorothy arrives at her mother’s trailer, she discovers a dead cop and some weather equipment inside the trailer. Dorothy finds her mother injured in a storm shelter, but her mother begs her not to bring anyone inside. Another cop car arrives, but when Dorothy flags down the cop, he pulls his gun on her. Suddenly, a tornado approaches. Dorothy takes shelter in the police vehicle just as the tornado sweeps the cop and police vehicle away.

When the car miraculously lands on the ground, Dorothy drives it forward and almost immediately hits a woman in a long red dress. The car then hits a tree, knocking Dorothy out.

When Dorothy wakes up, she stumbles out of the car and finds the woman’s body in a land covered by snow. She can’t get use her phone or the police radio, so she grabs the police dog in the back seat of the car and explores the nearby woods.

It isn’t long until Dorothy finds a tribe of children wearing thick furs, who then lead them to her village. When Dorothy finds the woman’s body in the middle of the village, she mentions that she accidentally killed her….leading the Freeland villagers to think that she’s a witch. Turns out that the woman was the Witch of the East, who ruled over the forest. After torturing Dorothy for a bit, the village chieftain says that she should apologize to the witch’s two sisters, and also the Wizard of Oz.

We then meet the Wizard of Oz, who’s informed that a strange storm ripped a hole in the sky in the east. After examining footage from a mechanical drone monkey, he sees Dorothy’s car and is told that it is the first “true sign”, signaling the return of the Beast Forever. Oz pulls Eamonn aside and tells him to find the thing that came out of the sky and kill it.

The village chieftain informs Dorothy that he’s exiling her from their lands and will personally escort her out. As the chief leads Dorothy through his lands, he explains about the Beast Forever and how it almost wiped out Oz before the Wizard arrived and used giant mechanical warriors to build a wall around the Emerald City to protect it from the Beast’s wrath.

We meet the Witch of the West, who’s running a brothel in the Emerald City. The Wizard visits her and informs her of the “True Sign”.

Meanwhile, the chieftain leads Dorothy through a cave, which is the quickest way out of their lands. The cave is the Prison of the Abject, where the Wizard puts anyone who performs magic in Oz. The chieftain’s wife is imprisoned there, and the Witch of the East (who Dorothy killed) managed the prison for the Wizard and could be the only person who could free the prisoners.

Once they leave the cave, the chieftain tells Dorothy to follow a brick road covered with yellow poppy pollen to the Emerald City. Dorothy almost immediately gets high because of the opium and discovers a few dead bodies and a man hung on a cross on the side of the road. The man, covered in dirt and straw, begs Dorothy to help him.

Dorothy pulls the man off the cross and treats a wound on his side. The man can’t remember why he’s on the cross, or even what his name is. After cleaning the man up, she hands him a coat and sword she found on the side of the road. Since his home (a castle on top of a nearby hill) is on fire, the man decides to join Dorothy on her journey.

Eamonn arrives at the Freelands’ village, where the chieftain mentions that Dorothy’s already left. When the chieftain tries to show him the Witch of the East’s body, he discovers that it’s gone.

After finding some food, Dorothy names the man Lucas, after her hometown.

That night, the Witch of the East finds Dorothy and Lucas’s camp. The witch uses magic to trap the pair and make them think they’re in one of her prison. The witch interrogates the pair for a bit, until the Witch finds a gun in Dorothy’s bag. Dorothy convinces the Witch to point the gun at her own head and pull the trigger, killing the Witch again…and for real this time, since only a Witch can kill a Witch.

Both the Wizard and the witch of the West instantly know of the Witch of the East’s death, as does Glinda, who blames the Wizard. The episode ends with the Wizard telling the people of the Emerald City that he’ll protect them from the Beast Forever again. But when he’s alone in his room, he pulls off his wig, implying that he’s not as powerful as people might think.