Witch Creek Road S3 E7 Explained (Spoilers)

Episode 7 (aka Heart in a Jar, Part 4)

We begin with Charlotte's story, and the words, “In the beginning, there were no curves and no angles.”

Though the man and woman are never identified by name, they are Adam and the Scarred Woman (before her scars).

(Within the context of this story, the Scarred Woman is a LILITH character. Lilith is ascribed in some texts as being the original wife to Adam. She was created at the same time as Adam, and from the same clay. This created problems, as Lilith considered herself Adam's equal, and left after refusing to be subservient to him. It should be noted, however, that the Scarred Woman never refers to herself at Lilith, though the Serpent refers to her as Lilith in Episode 22.)

The story continues. “The world was whole, and time didn't exist. [...] It was simply one long, unending day. I want to say we were happy, but it's hard to know happiness when you have nothing to measure it against. Instead, I would say we were content.”

“At the center of the garden was a tree. It was old... which was a difficult concept to understand in a world without time.” This, of course, is an allusion to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Upon the tree grew Pomegranates. (There are some people who believe that the forbidden fruit from the bible, though often depicted as an apple, was, in fact, a pomegranate. Pomegranates are also featured in Greek mythology. In the story of Persephone, for example, she is stolen by Hades and taken to the underworld. While there, she eats six pomegranate seeds, and thus is forced to spend six months of the year in the underworld.)

The pomegranates were forbidden eat, but the Scarred Woman gives into temptation and eats one. “And there, contained with this small, round fruit, was the knowledge of the angles.” (Note that the “small round fruit” can also be a metaphor for the world; when she breaks it open, it also symbolizes the breaking of the world.)

“Time exploded into the world. It was no longer just the present. Time travelled forward and created the future. And it travelled back and created the past. An entire narrative was written. An Ice Age. A meteor. Dinosaurs. A big bang. All of this came into being, and ceased to exist, in a single moment. And the world, which had, up until then, been so young and new, became so very old.”

This is where things can get a bit confusing. Up until this point, the world was newly created. When the Scarred Woman ate from the forbidden fruit, it introduced time into the world – but time flows in every direction, so the past and future were created in that moment, and where they met became the present. But it wasn't just time that came into existence. Within the garden, both Eve and the Serpent were created. The Serpent even alluded to this in Episode 3 with the words, “I've existed since the beginning of time...” He was being quite literal. And, because some religions removed Lilith from the Bible, poor Eve ended up being blamed for the fall of man.

Meanwhile, outside the garden, there have been billions of years of history and evolution, so when the Scarred Woman was expelled from the garden, she found entire civilizations. She ends up “[wandering] the world for many years, less susceptible to time than others.” But she was obsessed with the angles and, “In the stars, [she] began to learn the language of the void.”

It's around this point that we learn the Scarred Woman's true identity, when she mentions, “They say I opened a box, but it wasn't a literal box. It was a metaphorical box.” She is Pandora.

(PANDORA is a prominent figure in Greek mythology. She was the first mortal woman, and was both beautiful and devious. Pandora and Lilith share some connections: both were the first woman, and both were made from clay. However, in Pandora's case, she was also given a jar (often referred to as a box) that contained all the evils and diseases of the world – and one day, she opened the jar out of curiousity, thus releasing monsters into the world.)

The episode ends with Pandora opening a door to the angles, which releases monsters into the world – and the words, “And as I looked into the void, the void opened its eyes and looked back.”

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: The final line is a definite nod to the quote, “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

LILITH'S LONG LIFE: According to the Bible, Adam lived to be approximately 930 years old, with each progressive generation of man having a shorter lifespan. And, like Adam, Lilith (aka Pandora) would have also been “blessed” with a long life.