Under the Dome Recap: “Curtains”

by Kelly M. Smith:

Under the Dome Recap: “Curtains”
Original Air Date (CBS): Monday September 16, 2013
Season 1 Episode 13

“She’s your monarch.” -Dale “Barbie” Barbara

The fabled “monarch” has been crowned and she might not be the person viewers expected, though fans of Stephen King’s 2009 novel may have. Let’s go back and see just how CBS ended season 1 of this killer summer show.

For two weeks the town of Chester’s Mill, Maine has been encased in a Dome. No one knows where it came from & no one knows what it wants. But in this season finale, we all get a bit of a clue.

In Ben Drake’s room, Sheriff Linda Esquivel, Carolyn Hill (Norrie’s mother), Joe McAlister and Norrie Calvert-Hill watch the monarch butterfly hatch inside the mini Dome that the kids & newspaper editor Julia Shumway find earlier in the season.

The kids try to explain their (admittedly crazy) theory to Linda that it is the main power source for the big Dome, but she doesn’t believe them.

Back at the police station, Second Selectman James “Big Jim” Rennie is angry at Barbie for daring to say in front of everythe entire town that he’s not guilty of the murders Jim is trying to pin on him (four, to be rxact, and an attempt on the life of his girlfriend Julia).

Jim’s son Junior is waiting for a sign at the edge of the Dome where the four kids had had a vision of Jim bleeding out from stab wounds.

“Tell me why you want me to kill my father!” he cries.

Wounded Julia (Jim’s “friend” and Barbie’s old employer Maxine Seagrave shot her before Big Jim killed her) tries to get up from her hospital bed so she can try to exonerate Barbie, as she is the only one who knows for sure he didn’t try to kill her. Angie McAlister, Joe’s sister, tries to stop her.

Back at Ben’s, Linda wants to take police possession of the mini Dome, but they’ve all noticed the monarch is bouncing off the dome walls in an erratic manner and leaving black splotches like ink in its wake.

It flutters to the ground, looking like it’s dying. The room starts to get darker, so Ben looks out the window and notices the same thing happening to the big Dome–its surface is going black.

Jim takes a break from threatening Barbie to go look at what’s happening outside. The splotches are slowly blacking out the Dome, turning it to night inside, though it’s early morning. The whole Dome turns pitch black, blocking out the outside world completely.

Linda radios her (limited) deputies and tells the kids in an authoritative manner that she’s impounding the mini Dome.

The mini Dome starts screeching as it did in the previous episode. Norrie and Joe suggest they try to touch it and make it stop, but Linda insists she’s the only one who can touch it now. The kids try to stop her, but she is a stubborn woman. She touches it and it zaps her across the room, knocking her out, just like Joe and Norrie expected, as it happened to Dodee Weaver already.

Junior arrives at Linda’s call & finds her knocked out. They have just a few seconds to convince him to help before his father gets there.

Julia and Angie head to the police station to get Barbie & free him.

Jim finally arrives at Ben’s and finds Linda knocked out. He wakes her & she tells him what happened. She tells him she wants to find the mini Dome as a way to get free of the big Dome, exactly what he doesn’t want.

Joe and Norrie worry how to find Angie, the fourth person they need for the mini Dome to respond to them. Junior knows she has a police radio, so Joe tries to contact her.

At the station, Barbie is stopped in his escape by Phil Bushey and a deputy. He fights them off, even with his hands tied behind his back, but Angie still has to knock the deputy out with a fire extinguisher.

Joe broadcasts a message on the police band that only his sister will understand, telling her to go where they went to hide when they broke their mom’s old mirror when they were kids.

She finds them at the abandoned cement factory. Junior draws his gun on Barbie when he sees them, but Julia explains Maxine shot her, not Barbie. It takes a minute, but he calms down.

Phil radios Linda about Barbie’s escape. Jim is enraged.

The four kids put their hands on the mini Dome. It glows pink then emits a blinding white light through the blackness. Then it completely disintegrates, leaving just the egg. But the monarch butterfly is dead. Or at least it appears that way until Norrie touches it. It flutters slowly back to life and flits around, circling Barbie.

“I knew it, you’re the monarch,” Joe says excitedly.

Jim drives through town and sees panicked townspeople pouring into the church.

A woman tells him that they think it’s the end times: the apocalypse.

Jim goes in and finds the pews packed with scared, praying people. He strolls up to the front of the church (in my opinion that was quite inappropriate) and fields questions from people worried about running out of food or freezing with no sunlight to grow crops or warm them.

He preaches faith.

Back in the cement factory, the egg glows hot white and starts quaking. Around them, the walls start shaking.

They think it’s an earthquake and everyone starts to run, but Julia calmly reaches for it.

The shaking suddenly stops and the butterfly lands on the egg in Julia’s hands.

After a moment of stunned silence Barbie says, “She’s your monarch.”

At the station, Jim asks Phil to put together a work detail of carpenters. He wants to build a gallows. Phil agrees.

Linda investigates the McAlister’s barn and sees the phrase, “The pink stars are falling in lines.”

She reads it to Jim over the walkie. He’s stunned. He hasn’t heard it in a long time, he says.

Back in the cement factory, they look to Julia for answers. When she claims that she doesn’t have any, Junior gets angry. He wants to take the egg to his dad, even after Barbie tells him Jim executed Maxine. Junior doesn’t believe it and pulls his gun on Julia, demanding the egg. She tosses it to Angie and tells her to run.

Barbie, who is still handcuffed because they couldn’t find a key, tries to tackle Junior so Julia can get away.

Jim tells Linda to meet him art his home & takes her his wife’s art studio, explaining that towards the end of her life, she kept saying “the pink stars are falling in lines” over and over again.

He shows her a painting of the egg surrounded by pink stars. That painting, earlier in the season, had been of Junior, not the egg.

Angie, Norrie, Joe and Julia meet up in the dark forest where the originally found the mini Dome. Norrie asks the egg what they should do.

She sees an image of her dead mother, Alice.

“Mom!” she says, shocked. “Sweetheart, I don’t think that’s your mother,” Julia tells her quietly.

“Forgive us, we’re still learning how to speak with you. We’ve taken on a familiar appearance to help bridge the divide,” not-Alice says in a creepily calm voice. She says the Dome was sent to protect them, and that they’ll see from what in time.

“If you want to darkness to abate, you must earn the light by protecting the egg,” Alice says.

“And if we fail, it’s the end, isn’t it? For all of us,” Julia realizes. She nods.

When Julia asks who they’re protecting it from, not-Alice disappears.

Junior brings Barbie back to the station for the pubic execution and Jim questions him about the egg.

Jim radios a broadcast for Julia’s ears, telling her to bring the egg or Barbie will pay the “ultimate price”. Junior goes to his dad, wanting to believe he’s not a murderer. They talk about Pauline’s (Jim’s wife) connection to the Dome. Jim admits he’s killed people, (“I have taken lives”) but only people who needed to be killed “for the good of the town”. Jim now thinks the Rennies are important to the town and the Dome and his late wife’s paintings were a message.

He promises no more secrets between them and hugs his son.

Meanwhile, Julia and the kids worry about how to protect Chester’s Mill and save Barbie at the same time. Julia says they shouldn’t do anything. She tells Angie and Joe to get somewhere safe. She was the monarch & she’d make the decisions.

The town gathers at the gallows. Jim announces that Barbie is sentenced to death. Junior puts the noose around his neck.

“You think you’re some kind of god to these people,” Barbie mutters to Jim, “but I think we all know what you really are.”

Out on a boat on the lake, Julia takes the egg in one hand and, holding Barbie’s dog tags in her other hand, drops the egg over the side into the dark water with tears falling from her eyes because she can’t save Barbie.

It starts to glow a bright purple from the bottom of the lake and, suddenly, pink stars start rising from the lake, in lines.

From around the gallows, the town sees the stars shoot up into the sky.

Jim announces it as a sign from God that they’re doing the right thing and prepares to carry on with his execution.

The stars coalesce at the top of the dome and shine brightly, the black falls away from the dome. It is so bright, brighter than high noon on a June day.

Jim shouts at Junior to pull the lever.

As we hear the noose clench (but don’t see it), the camera shows that, where the Dome was once black, it is now white.