Witch Creek Road S3 E19 Explained (Spoilers)
Episode 19 (aka What the Old Man Said, Part 2)
We now see Grace's true form: a dark version of herself that is neither curve nor angle. And we learn the reason for the old man (Richard) summoning Grace in his dying moments: he needs to find out what happened on May 17th, 1973.
Grace tells him she can't help, and the old man says she can. “You're not a Wolf," he tells her. "You're not human. You're something in between. Both angle and curve. You don't need a door.” He's referring to the fact that Wolves need a "door" in order to visit this world, whereas Grace should be able to move through this world (and through time) without any assistance.
Grace replies that it's not that simple. “A date is meaningless. I need a focal point.”
“Then forget the date,” the old man replies. “Just find me. Focus on me.” Grace reluctantly agrees.
Here we discover that it was Grace who watched Richard as he slept in his hotel room (see Season 3 episode 4). And again, Grace who watched Richard and Charlotte when they met in the coffee shop (see Season 3 Episode 5). And again, Grace who watched Richard and Charlotte as they sat in the park (see Season 3 Episode 9).
None of these occasions are what the old man is looking for, and he tells Grace to keep moving forward. Grace says no and explains, “If you want me to help, tell me what I should be looking for. Describe the scene.” And so Richard begins to describe the scene. Charlotte's parents had called the night before and expressed an interest in meeting their grandchild. “It had been two years since Charlotte had seen them last. She said they sounded sincere, and she hoped whatever effect the angles had previously had on her parents had since worked its way out of their system.” But Richard had been running behind, and arrived late to the hotel. When he arrives, the front entrance of the hotel is locked, and there's a sign on the door that says 'Closed'. He goes around to the back and enters the hotel through the kitchen.
“The hotel is too quiet. I see the stroller before I see Charlotte and her father. The stroller is empty, but there's something that looks like blood on the sides. As I turn into the room, I see Charlotte on the ground, and her father crouched above her. In his hands, he holds her heart. He looks up at me, and smiles.”
“You see?!" the father says, holding out the heart. “It still beats! My little Charlotte is dead, and this heart still beats!”
It's here that Grace finds Richard, and the old man says, “Our child was never found. I need to know what happened.”
Now that Grace has located that moment, she moves backward in time about thirty minutes. It's the point that the father has killed Charlotte. “The father walks toward the stroller," Grace tells him. "The child is an abomination. I can hear him muttering this as he walks. He wants to kill the abomination. Only... when he looks into the stroller, the child is gone.”
Grace explains that another version of herself has already taken the child - a version a few minutes in the future, because the old man will ask her to save the child. And so Grace steals him away and puts him somewhere no one will find him. “He will be adopted by a couple who will love him tremendously. They will name him Frank.”
The old man asks if the angles are within his boy, and Grace replies, “Yes. And the angles are within his daughters, too.” At this point, the old man realizes he's a grandfather, and asks if their lives have been difficult. “At times,” Grace says, “The angles have a way of attracting monsters.”
The old man makes one final request: he wants Grace to take the gun from his desk and give it to his son, to protect himself against the various hardships and monsters he might encounter. He tells Grace, “You'll know [the gun] because it's very similar to the gun Hailey possesses.”
Grace replies, “The gun is not similar. The gun is the same. I've already taken the gun from your desk. I've already influenced events so that it comes into the possession of your son. Only your son never needed it. So it moves to your granddaughter.”
The granddaughter, of course, is Hailey.
The old man asks why Grace never told him Hailey was his granddaughter. She asks if it would have made a difference, and he admits that it probably wouldn't have.
The old man thanks Grace, and goes to shake her hand. Instead, she drops him back into the curves. Time resumes, and the old man dies.
THE PHOTO: One reader pointed out that the family photo that appeared in this episode also appeared in the background of Season 2 Episode 18:
Though the photo can't be fully seen in Episode 18, here's a wider version of the panel:
A WOLF, BUT NOT A WOLF: In Season 3 Episode 9, Charlotte describes the being that's watching them as, "A wolf, but not a wolf." The old man mirrors this when he tells Grace, "You're not a Wolf. You're not human. You're something in between."