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Actually, the groomsmen, Danny and Sully, are the least suspected. Not a single person polled picked either as the killer. Same goes with Shane.

The Holy Shea Bible




Chapter 8: Sittin on the Dock of the Bay


Everyone is wisely packing up and leaving Harper's Island. The word is out- a killer's loose and on a rampage. But the murderer will have to pull off a huge stunt to keep the scared wedding guests on the island.

"Madison! Have you seen a little girl? She's nine. Her name's Madison," Shea hurriedly walks around, asking the Candlewick staff.

Shea even walks to the kitchen with the false door passage, calling out "Madison, honey, we're leaving!" Shea takes several seconds to look back and forth to see if her daughter will pop out from behind the door. No response. Good.

Shea stares at and speaks directly to that secret door, but, due to the camera angle, we won't know this until the next episode. Obviously, Shea is well aware of where Madison resides and is testing the boundaries of her plan while putting on a false show.

"Madison's gone! I've looked everywhere! She's gone," cries Shea to the close crowd of wedding guests. The killer ropes them in.

"We will find Madison," Trish replies, the first to take up the cause.

"But the boat is leaving," Shea frets.

"Shea, it can wait. We'll help you find her," confides Henry who turns around and immediately enlists his friends to help find Madison.





At the jailhouse, JD is placed behind bars as the Sheriff's lead suspect. But JD is met with Shane who feels the goth mainlander had taken advantage of his ex-girlfriend and puts him in a strangle-hold.

"Shane, if you don't shut-up, JD is going to be the least of your problems," commands the deputy.

Main characters commit major sins. And at the end of their sin arcs, they're killed in a way that artfully renders that sin taking power and murdering the sinner. The cheating husband is stabbed in the back with a spear through his heart. The socialite who would rather look for her dog than search to release a human from a trap is herself caught in an animal trap with no one to help her and killed there. The greedy are killed around piles of money and the proud are viciously attacked at their heads.

Minor characters commit "micro-sins," meaning they're on-screen just long enough to perform some misdeed or mindlessly give the rationale for their own death. Cousin Ben is "always late." The priest has to kill all those dangling spiders because God has a bigger plan.

The deputy walks into a scene of violence, Shane strangling JD, and his response is to break up that violence by threatening violence. Thus, his only line is a deeply violent and hypocritical one. And if violence can be rationalized as permissible when a higher power exercises said violence, then he's giving the rationale for Shea and her plan, which represent the highest sacred power, to exercise extreme violence against the deputy. Which she does.

The lights turn off. "The hell," says the deputy. You just can't help yourself, can you?

A gunshot rings out. The deputy is dead. "Oh my God," pleads Shane in the dark. A second gunshot into the deputy, and the keys are strategically placed by JD's door.

"Oh my god, please don't shoot us," prays Shane, obviously saying the magic words as the lights turn on, returning the two jailbirds to the world of the living and out of "hell."

The killer DOES NOT kill Shane and JD while having complete access, ability and anonymity to do so. Shea's master plan is not about being some deranged killer trying to rack up the highest body count. Rather, she's a devout moralizer who places people in moral situations and allows their moral crimes (if they are committed) to come back and judge and kill their transgressors.

So, rather than receive a gunshot to the head, JD receives jail-cell keys and a moral dilema. Does he use the keys to release his cellmate, Shane? Or does JD betray Shane, leaving him locked up and at the mercy of a roaming killer?

Shane is violent and has been violent towards JD. And, moreover, JD just plain does not like Shane. It would be easy for JD to leave Shane behind.

But the killer's intervention has proven to Shane that JD is not the island's murderer. That fact teamed up with Shane's release could give the pair a common cause (to stay alive and get off the island) and a common enemy (the killer- the person who killed Kelly). Two people can be stronger and safer than one. And, perhaps most importantly, Shane can attest to JD's innocence, an incredible incentive considering the whole island heavily suspects JD is Harper's Island's murderer. And that murdered cop won't help matters with no one to back up his story.

JD is put to the test. He reaches the jail-cell keys and releases himself from behind bars. Shane looks on expectantly while JD weighs the matter over in his head.

"Give me the keys. Give me the keys," pleads Shane. "What are you waiting for? Give me the keys. You can't run. If you run, you're just going to look more guilty."

Sage advice. Having someone to attest to his innocence would be incredibly valuable for someone in JD's position. Unfortunately, JD ignores the wisdom of this and betrays his brother, leaving Shane locked up and completely at the murderer's mercy. JD is worse than someone merely "look[ing] guilty." He is guilty.

"Hey. You better run next time I see you. You're dead," threatens Shane. "You're dead." But Shane's presence won't kill JD, his absence will. JD has failed the moral test. As he rushes out to the dock and to his freedom, JD is more imprisoned to his fate than ever.





Continuing her fake search for Madison, Shea ventures into Richard's unused room and lets slip to Trish that Richard was trying to get custody of Madison, further suggesting Shea was eavesdropping the night her husband was 'harpooned.'

At this point, Shea needs to take several steps to prove 1.) her daughter is alive, and 2.) the anonymous killer has Madison in his or her possession.

Cal, Chloe, Trish, and Shea wonder into the incinerator room. Shea wants to leave immediately. She doesn't want Malcolm's remains found and she definitely doesn't want Malcolm's remains to be confused with her daughter's (which would ruin the hunt and send the guests back to the marina).

In a hilarious moment, Shea blows her mother-looking-for-daughter facade, turns around and says "let's get out of here" before even searching the room. And even though she turns around to leave, no one follows her!

Cal retrieves Malcolm's skull from the furnace. Things aren't going well.

"It's not her," corrects Cal, saving the day and Shea's plans. "This isn't the skull of a child." The relief on Shea's face is real.

Continuing Shea's plan, she and Booth have put Richard's corpse in a highly visible place, dispeling any notion Madison's father ran off with her. And, of course, the presentation of said corpse is in a highly artistic, symbolic fashion. Richard is tied around a large, powerful tree with, as he had claimed in an ealier episode, "the velvet rope of being a Wellington." Apparently, escape wasn't so easy.

This also explains the darkly humorous joke you no doubt missed in the prior episode, when Madison was hectoring Shea concerning Richard's health and whereabouts, and Shea tells her her father's "around."

Punctuating the drama, Abby receives a phone-call. "Abby. I'm supposed to tell you, if anyone leaves the island, I'll die."

Now Shea not only has the means to keep everyone on the island, but she's presented them all with one large moral test. Do you put Madison's life ahead of your own and stay on the island, even if it means risking personal danger? Or do you put your life ahead of the little girl's, making a quick escape to freedom and security?

And, in true Shea fashion, the moral tests carry certain risks for those who dare take the immoral way out. The boats on the dock all promise a quick escape to freedom and security, but, in truth, they are all horribly booby-trapped. Especially the boats with the keys 'mysteriously' near the engines.

Sully is the first to threaten to leave, giving Shea the opportunity to make her case: "Please don't leave. This is my daughter we're talking about."

"Why is her life more valuable than any one of ours?" asks Sully, which earns him a slap from Trish, Shea's sister.

The main boat has already left. We learn "they didn't know about Madison." Thus, weren't put to the same moral test as the others and wouldn't be punished.





Cole Harkin has subjected a number of Harper's guests to a cruel gamut of traps. He explains to the Sheriff that he "need[s] to make sure the wrong person doesn't come surprise me" while he's "hunting a maniac." But Cole Harkin is hypocrite, he's become a grotesque "monster" in his search for Wakefield's ghost and has surprised many a "wrong person."

His punishment is a reflection of Cole's misdeeds. First, hunting arrows catch Harkin by surprise, trapping him against the wall. His lamp falls, bringing back the flames of the past to finish the job Wakefield started.

Cole Harkin calls out to the Sheriff. But the Sheriff is still too badly injured from Harkin's trap to be of any help. Cole Harkin looks over to his german shepherd. Wait, no, that's Gigi, Lucy's patheticly weak dog. Harkin's german shepherd was killed when he sicked him on Mr. Wakefield. Cole Harkin, having injured or killed those in a position to help him, must die alone (in a fire, no less).





Back at the Candlewick Inn, Danny, one of the groomsmen, taps into what Harper's Island is all about.

"I feel like we're being punished, says Danny. "We should have never taken that money from the dead guy on the boat, Henry." You're right, Danny. You're being tested and judged.

"Maybe," rebuffs Henry, "I don't think the world works that way." It does on Harper's Island.

Sully leads Cal, Chloe and Beth to the marina where he 'fortuitously' finds a boat with its engine key nearby. This test could kill four guests in one swift stroke.

Cal is the first to speak up, "I can't. This is wrong." Cal takes a moral stand, confirming that he's "scared," but "if we leave and Madison dies, I don't think I can live with that." His argument is strong enough to convince all three of his compatriots to get off the boat, passing Shea's test (for the time being) and saving each one of their lives (for the time being).

At 39:09, we're confronted with a mysterious hand-written sign "BONIFACE," which is just below the "RESERVED PARKING." Is this an allusion to Saint Boniface who blew down Thor's tree (reiterating the tower and death themes) and converted Germany's paganism to Christianity? Or is this an allusion to Pope Boniface VIII who ordered the Unam sanctam, declaring all power- spiritual and temporal- belonged to the pope, not the monarchy? Does either of them have a parking space at Harper's Island marina?

Hiding behind a barrel painted red with JO- BO- (a Joel Booth reference?) is JD, pawing over the knife wounds to his stomach.

JD had betrayed his fellow man. And when he needed someone to have his back, that person was absent. With his brother approaching him with bloody hands, JD and Henry re-stage the scene of Cain and Abel, an image of fratricide and the ultimate betrayal.