The Sinner season 2, episode 6 recap: Mosswood’s past

The Sinner dives into Mosswood’s past in greater detail. Will it help Julian’s case at all?

The Sinner never shies away from the brutal truth and instead it tries to understand it. Julian is still in solitary and we see him digging at his forearm so much that it has been bleeding. When Vera goes to see Julian, she notices the marks on his arm, but she thinks someone else did it to him. He’s also noticeably drugged up.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone really that Harry is sticking around after he was told to go home. He’s been following Glen Fisher, who hires a prostitute to not have sex with him (Harry noticed burns on her foot). Later, he goes through some items after trying to visit Carmen Bell. He ends up finding the missing deposition video.

Harry sends Detective Novack the video and we learn that Vera introduced her. We see the same kind of burns on her foot and she was also pregnant during her time there. Vera took her to see Dr. Poole to get the problem “fixed.” However, Vera caves and says that she’ll tell Harry everything. She does seem like she wants to change and not be the same kind of leader that Lionel was, which is a step in the right direction.

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In a flashback, we see Bess with a huge gash on her leg. Even back then, you could see Vera’s concern for people. Marin is quite pregnant at this point and Vera confronts Lionel about how things have changed at Mosswood. We flash forward just enough to see Marin give birth, but she starts to hemorrhage right after. Vera is left to take care of Julian in the meantime, which explains her connection to him.

Marin is frustrated when Julian won’t breastfeed and she makes a comment about him liking Vera better. Vera is the one lactating and Bess notes that it doesn’t work that way. As Vera is taking care of Julian, Marin runs out of the barn. Lionel tells Vera that he needs to go up to the cabin to have room to think. We later see Glen show up and he’s angry when Lionel isn’t there.

Inevitably, Marin finds out that Vera is nursing Julian and Lionel finds out that Vera cancelled the work. Lionel takes Julian to stay with him since Vera is getting too attached. Vera brings him tea as an apology, which wasn’t really much of an apology at all.

Back in the present day, Vera tells Harry that she changed Mosswood for good because of Julian. She wasn’t the only member who thought things weren’t going in the right direction. She tells Harry that Lionel just left without saying anything. When Harry tells Vera that everything with Carmen happened in 2002, Vera gives Harry a look like she has an idea about what happened. It turns out that D.A. Hutchinson received contributions from Dr. Poole and Glen Fisher and was voted in as D.A. in 2003.

Detective Novack checks out the lake that Carmen mentioned in her deposition. She calls Harry out and apologizes to him for letting him be taken off the case. There’s a car in the lake and they find a woman’s body inside. Harry informs her that Julian’s case was kicked back to family court and the charges were reduced.

Vera wants her and Julian to work through things since he’s angry with her. He still believes Harry more than he believes her at this point. Meanwhile, Heather is with her dad and trying to wrap her head around what happened to Marin. We don’t even have confirmation yet that the woman is Marin, though, so there is some hope that she could still be alive.

Julian goes back to the foster home and Harry visits him there. Julian was under the impression that Bess and Adam would start over after they died. He admits that he’s guilty, which we all knew already anyway, but Harry says it’s more complicated than that. Harry tells Julian more about his mom and we see that he actually started the fire. That wasn’t a surprising revelation, but it seems like Harry sharing that helps Julian. Harry’s advice is to stare down the person in the hood so he can overcome the guilt he’s feeling.

The hooded person comes into Julian’s room and when the foster dad goes up there, the window is open and Julian is gone. My guess is that the body in the lake wasn’t Marin and that she’s the hooded figure coming around to keep tabs on Julian, and in this instance, take him. It would explain a lot, including the storage unit that was rented out in Julian’s name that looked like someone had been living in. The Sinner still has a few mysteries left to unravel in the final two episodes.

The Sinner airs on Wednesdays on USA at 10:00 PM.