The Strain - S1E13 - The Master

Previously on The Strain, ‘Last Rites’

The season finale of The Strain had elements of everything that made the show so enjoyable all season long:

• Eph being Eph - He jumps up Abraham’s ass for stepping out of bounds with Zach, but eventually realizes he can’t keep coddling his son so he sits down with Abe to show Zach how to use his very first sword. *sniff* They grow up so fast.
• Fet being Fet - Vasiliy is smart and charismatic. There is no way the group would have made it this far without him.
• Plenty of stingers and spraying vampire blood and worms.

Mr. Palmer is walking around with a new lease on life. Seriously, I thought Superfly was going to start playing when he strutted into Abraham’s shop. He instructs Fitzwilliam to have all of Abraham’s research gathered and taken to his building. Thomas is impressed that Palmer is out and about. But just in case Palmer tries to get fancy, Thomas points out that the white stuff made him healthy, but The Master didn’t give him the worm so that means he’s still a basic bitch. Palmer is outraged, but not enough to tell Thomas to go fuck himself. He’ll continue to make himself valuable to The Master. His first order of business is to murder the Secretary of Health when she insists on putting the city in quarantine. He appoints Eph’s old boss as Secretary of Health - because apparently that’s something he can just do - after he agrees to do what Palmer wants. Thankfully, Fitzwilliam quit before this went down because he is no longer ’bout this life.

Gus got acquainted with his Vampire Hit Squad captors. The leader informs him they know he’s the one who helped Palmer get the box out of the airport. They want him to work with them. Gus tries to beat him up and cuss him out about 3,289 times. He finally manages to run away only to end up in a room with three ancient vampires propped up on U-Haul dollies. I wonder if they added those furniture pads to their order. Hey, they can use them as vampire blankies. The Hit Squad leader explains that a sacred truce has been broken, and they’re here to fuck shit up and suck necks and they’re all out of… wait… actually, they might be doing both. Gus agrees to be recruited into their vampire turf war because they’re going to pay him a shitton of money and allow him to get revenge for his mother and Felix. But not his brother because fuck that guy.

After Eph and Fet go scope out the club that Bolivar owns, they figure out it must be where The Master is now residing. They head back to get the rest of the group and then go in via secret tunnels - because New York is filled with those, apparently. Once inside, everyone does a pretty decent job of kicking ass. Nora has a few moves and Fet uses some dynamite to keep a group of vamps at bay. Abraham must have just been stretching his legs these first 12 episodes because he’s fed the fuck up in this one. He’s chopping off heads and making a steady progression to where The Master is hiding.

While Nora, KeSha, and Fet fight with Bolivar, Thomas, and other assorted vamps in the club area, Eph, Abraham, and Zach take on The Master. And by take on I mean, they went all Fright Night (the original) and bashed in the windows to let in sunlight. Eph pushes The Master out into the sunlight where he writhes around in pain for a bit. This causes the vampires inside to stop what they’re doing and moonwalk out of the club, back into the tunnels. Then The Master jumps up, in the sunlight, and skidaddles down the side of the building, in the sunlight, seeking shelter from the sunlight that doesn’t seem to be all that bad.

The group is like, “Yo, I thought you said sunlight would kill him.” And Abe is like, “My bad.”

They decide to go to Fet’s to regroup, but first they have to stop at Zach’s because he’s wheezing and he doesn’t have his inhaler. It turns out, Zach was just pulling a Carl and wanted to go home for some family pictures since Eph told him they were never coming back. I mean, it’s not like they were leaving town, but whatever. Of course, being home means that they run into Kelly who is so turned by this point that she doesn’t even look like herself, but Zach still begs Eph not to shoot her. He does, but not in a place that means anything and she shuffles off, perhaps thinking, “If Eph is here, that bitch Nora can’t be far behind.” Eph has seen a lot of shit in 13 episodes, but his wife as a vampire is finally what sends him back to the bottle.

Our group rides off into the sunset, in their bread truck.