Old Gods of Appalachia Season One: Barlo, KY, and the Witch Queen
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Episode 0: Prologue
Welcome to our Appalachia, where hearts are good, hands are strong and no one wants to talk about what sleeps beneath us. First come, first served.
- Title Drop: As said by the Narrator:
"And they don’t see the shadows stir, don’t hear the lost hymns that haunt these hillsides, don’t hear the prayers that rise up in the night... prayers raised to a god on high that fall back down to feed the old gods of Appalachia that sleep below.
Episode 0.5: The Witch Queen
They say there's a witch in that valley and you'd do well to stay away from there. Join us as we journey back to the settling of the central plateau and witness the power of mountain women.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with the stag asking Dooley to come closer so they may talk, with him coveting her power for himself. It is not until later in the season that we find out what happens.
- A Deal With The Devil: Daughter Dooley is heavily implied (and in later episodes is confirmed) to make a deal with the stag shaped thing lurking outside of her woods, giving her his servitude in exchange for eternal life to guard the land from the settlers coming to Appalachia.
- Religion Is Evil: It is religious fundamentalists who run Dooley out into the woods and ultimately lead her to the black stag. What makes this worse is that her only sin was fighting back against the son of a religious leader who tried to force himself onto her.
Episode 1: Old Number Seven (Barlo, KY 1917 Part One)
Darkness comes to the tiny town of Barlo in the form of the worst mining disaster in Kentucky history. Young Sarah Avery runs.
- Badass Adorable: Sarah Avery manages to outrun the Hounds that apparently killed her mother before being confronted by the Thing That Is Not Daddy.
- Break the Cutie: In a few short days, Sarah Avery loses her mother, father, and uncle. She then has to see the corpses of her father and uncle resurrected in their last forms as they were burning to death.
- Death by Racism: The contemptuous burial of multiple scabs (who were mostly black) in a single grave is implied to have started off the chain of events that leads to Sarah's family being resurrected by an evil power.
- Nothing Is Scarier: What the Hounds look like is left to the imagination.
Episode 2: The Schoolhouse (Barlo, KY 1917 Part Two)
Ten year old Sarah Avery continues to deal with the fallout of the elders of Barlo's choices. A promise is made.
- Big Damn Heroes: A bear composed of the Green destroys the Thing That Was Not Uncle Eddie before it can hurt Sarah.
- Dying As Himself: Uncle Eddie manages to come to his senses and warn Sarah Avery to run, but is ultimately overriden by whatever is controlling it.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: By episode's end, all of Barlo has been slaughtered and resurrected by the power that caused the Old No. 7 Disaster.
- Green Aesop: It is ultimately only by promising the land back to the Green that Sarah is saved from death, promising that no more coal mining will occur there.
- Left Hanging: By this episode's end, it is left unanswered just what the power behind the dead rising in Barlo was, or what exactly has been unleashed by the Old No. 7 disaster.
Episode 2.5: Let There Be Green
An interlude in one part.
- All Just a Dream: Sarah Avery rests after the previous episode and hears a proclamation of the Witch Queen herself.
Episode 3: The Covenant (Barlo, KY 1917 Part Three)
Cletus Garvin should have died in 1910 but instead has been the pastor of The Tabernacle of the Elder Covenant for the past seven years. Debts are called to account in the shadow of the Old Number Seven Disaster.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: While the previous Barlo episodes dealt with Sarah Avery, this episode and the following Barlo episodes take place from the point of view of Cletus Garvin, the man ultimately responsible for the town's fate.
- Deal with the Devil: Cletus Garvin makes a deal with the mysterious voices in the mine to live on, so long as he preaches in their name going forward.
- Sinister Minister: Cletus becomes this for the Whisperers in exchange for good fortune and health for him and his family. It goes off without a hitch for seven years, where Cletus' bizarre and very un-Christian practices have become accepted, until Old No. 7 happens.
Episode 4: The Sacrifice (Barlo, KY 1917 Part Four)
In the wake of the Old Number Seven Disaster, the Tabernacle of the Elder Covenant does what it can to save their own. Choices are made that cannot be unmade.
- All for Nothing: Cletus has done everything the Whisperers asked, but has ultimately lost his son in the Old No. 7 disaster.
- Irony: Cletus made a deal with the Whisperers to save himself and his family, yet his son is one of the many who die in Old Number 7 just a few short years later.
- Would Hurt a Child: Compelled by the Whisperers, Cletus is compelled to seek out Sarah Avery to bring her to them. However, the Hounds and other Things will have already chased her off by the time Cletus arrives.
Episode 4.5: The Bad Death and Resurrection of Annie Messer
An Interlude.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Annie Messer has her eyes destroyed by the Hound's corrosive tongue, with her face being cooked and her neck being broken.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Hounds that attacked Sarah Avery finally get a description and it is not pretty.
Narrator: "If he had to compare it to anything he would have called it a dog, or maybe a wolf – except that its hide was hairless, its skin a pale blue and visibly soft like that of a drowned child. It had at least six legs in the tangle of limbs on its lower half, each one ending thick black claws that seemed to retract like a cat’s – well they’d have to, he thought, there’s no way it could walk otherwise, and then he looked closer at its legs. Each limb was covered in eyes. Brown with bloodshot whites, green with scarlet blobs floating around the iris, milky white and sightless orbs that seemed to pant like open mouths, and a pair scarlet that smoldered and throbbed a sick blood clot brown. Its body was thick and broad like a boar. Its head was that of a hairless wolf or something wolflike but with nightmarishly wrong tusks growing from the underside of its jaws. Its ears were wide and batlike. Its brow held three eyes. Two that looked black and empty and one like a burning golden sun at the center of its forehead. Its maw was an endless valley of blades and spires some that looked like teeth and others like cruelly sharpened stones. Its tongue hung from its limp jaws – long and black and forked – smoke or steam rising from where the viscous rope met the cooling, rotten air. Its breathing was ragged but was beginning to steady."
- Heel Realization: Cletus realizes that he has been leading people down the wrong path all along.
- Once More, with Clarity: Here it is revealed how Annie and all of Barlo was killed and resurrected, as well as how Cletus ultimately began to fall out with the Whisperers.
Episode 5: The Boy (Barlo, KY 1917 Part Five)
Who speaks for the young dead lost beneath the fair earth? The Boy comes to Barlo.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: This episode covers the field boss of Old Number 7, Earl Hammer, as he meets justice from the Boy.
- Bad Boss: Earl Hammer left a full mine of men to burn alive and suffocate in a coal explosion while he went home to eat a steak dinner, completely unbothered. This is why he is visited by the Boy.
- Creepy Child: The Boy, a spirit of vengeance for the exploited children of Appalachia, manifests as a young child in a coal workers outfit, speaking with the voice of a full grown man.
- Karmic Death: Earl Hammer has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of men and boys across Appalachia due to his cruelty and poor management of the mines he looks over. It is only fitting that the episode ends with him being immolated by the Old Number 7 explosion, just like all the employees he left behind.
Episode 6: The Witch Queen Chapter II: Doubt
"To live forever and keep this land..." was the promise made. What happens when a promise is kept but with a vile and broken spirit?
- Audience Surrogate: Tim Vanover serves as this during the opening, reintroducing us to the Witch Queen.
- The Ageless: Daughter Dooley has not aged past 19 due to her deal with the black stag.
- Empty Shell: The six grey faced men who the Black Stag sent to serve Daughter Dooley have little personality or motive outside of serving Dooley or the Stag's every whim. They also have no problem murdering a family to serve Daughter Dooley, something that puts her on edge against them.
Episode 7: Afterbirth
Before our time in Barlo moves forward towards its inevitable conclusion, we take one last look back to honor a life that might otherwise remain overshadowed and left hanging from the branches of our family tree.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Carol Anne Avery, Sarah Avery's mother. It explains much of her life and the circumstances leading up to her supposed suicide.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Carol Anne and her family, the Walker Sisters, were all these at one point in their life as it was the only way for a family of women to make money.
- Mutual Kill: Ignatius Combs manages to hang Carol Anne and plans to eat her and use her as a new suit, but is immolated by the charm she had protecting the land.
Episode 8: Homecoming
We return for a visit with the good Pastor of the Tabernacle of the Elder Covenant, as he and his family prepare to relocate.
- Character Death: Cletus Garvin and his family all meet their ends by the Whisperers in this episode, apparently due to his refusal to do their bidding and his attempt to not have his son be a part of their mass sacrifice.
- Karmic Death: While not malicious, Cletus did set up the Whisperers to take over Barlo from the beginning and now pays the ultimate price.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Apparently the Whisperers thought so, with the destruction of Barlo complete.
Episode 9: You Ready To Go Home?
In this, our penultimate episode of Season One, we examine what makes a home and the power of kinfolk as we say good-bye to young Sarah Avery.
- Big Damn Heroes: Sarah's aunts Marcy and Ellie arrive just in time to save her from Elder Henry, a cannibalistic Humanoid Abomination who is heavily indicated to be related to the Black Stag, Horned Head. Furthermore, Marcy goes out of her way to threaten Elder Henry with being bound to that form for the rest of existence unless he lets them go. Elder Henry lets them go on their way.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Sarah goes through the death of her entire immediate family as well as the deaths of everyone she ever knew while also facing eldritch horrors beyond her comprehension before finally being saved and given a chance at a happy life by her two aunts.
- Evil Old Folks: Elder Henry and the Grey Ladies who run the Home are this.
- Evil Orphanage Lady: The Grey Ladies are this, as supplicants to Elder Henry of child flesh.
- Evil Cripple: Elder Henry is this, being a disfigured old man who Sarah can clearly sense is bad news from the get go. He is later revealed to be the depowered form of the Black Stag itself.
- Foreshadowing: Upon smelling Sarah Avery, Elder Henry quickly goes into Villainous Breakdown mode and demands to know why she "smells like her." As it turns out, this is not the first time her family has menaced him.
Episode 10: The Witch Queen Chapter III: Last Harbor
Season One comes to a close as we follow Daughter Dooley to the far reaches of Last Harbor and witness what changed her and The Black Stag whose name sounds like, but is not Horn-ed Head or Hornet Head.
- Brought Down to Normal: Or as close to normal as an Eldritch Abomination can get. Dooley purposefully sets her wards to depower Horned Head just in case he goes too far, which he ultimately does come this episode.
- Cliffhanger: The season ends with the Black Stag and Dooley about to engage in a deadly battle, the outcome of which would not fully be explained until the Holiest Days of Bone and Shadow miniseries.
- The Reveal: Horned Head's plan for Dooley is ultimately revealed to be using her magic against her by slowly aging her down into ignorance so that he can raise her to use her powers for the Inner Dark. Their falling out in this episode also contextualizes why he is reduced to the form of Elder Henry seen in the last episode.
- Would Not Hurt A Child: Daughter Dooley's final push towards rejecting the Stag comes from it demanding that she sacrifice a child in its name, using it to reduce her to infancy so that she may be raised in the ways of the Dark.
