‘The Underground Railroad’ Episode 6 Recap: Homecoming

From the moment Arnold Ridgeway takes out a flask and begins drinking whiskey from it, you know he’s in strange territory. Not literally, not at all—he’s returned to his family home for one last attempt at rapprochement with his dying father, “rapprochement” in this case meaning “my dad owes me an apology.” The strangeness is all in his demeanor, which takes a sudden turn for the fearful, the petulant, the anxious and uncertain—a far cry from his nearly supernatural implacability up until that point. “So Arnold Ridgeway is human after all,” Cora says after finding out the nature of their visit. He’s not a good human, but yes, something like that.

This episode of The Underground Railroad (“Chapter Six: Tennessee: Proverbs”) is essentially one drawn-out drunk for Ridgeway, who is absolutely hammered by the time he witnesses his father breathe his last breath. In one particularly galling scene, he drags Cora to a nearby saloon—in chains—for a meal and a drink, though in his case “a drink” means “an entire bottle.” He waxes philosophical and patriotic about Manifest Destiny and the American spirit—”The only ‘Spirit’ worth its salt,” he says, compared to the Great Spirit that his father borrowed from indigenous religious beliefs. The American spirit, he says, is a call to the people of the Old World to come to the New civilize the land, and either “lift up, subjugate, [or] exterminate, eliminate” the other peoples they encounter. “The American Imperative,” he calls this last bit. Even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day.

And when Cora asks to relieve herself, he follows her to the outhouse, and tells her through the door that Caesar was torn to pieces by an angry mob after his arrest back in South Carolina. Ridgeway mocks the South Carolinians for their supposedly enlightened handling of race relations, which degenerate right into North Carolina–style violence when push comes to shove. Throughout the scene, Cora stifles her own sobs with her hands, trying desperately not to give Ridgeway the satisfaction of hearing her cry for Caesar.

Thuso Mbedu is mesmerizing in this role, which requires her to reverse an actor’s usual instincts and shrink into herself. Her voice is often no more than a slurred murmur, her face is perpetually downcast, her eyes dart up and to and fro as if constantly scouting for new threats. Seeing her against Joel Edgerton’s blustery Ridgeway is truly a study in contrasts.

Hope arrives for Cora in the form of a trio of armed freedmen who come to the Ridgeway home to rescue her from the bed where she lies shackled next to her passed-out captor. (For a moment it seemed as though he was going to sexually assault her, but apparently all he really wanted was to sleep next to another warm body.) When Cora insists that they return to finish the job and put an end to Ridgeway once and for all, they are stopped by Mack (Irone Singleton), now fully grown but still walking with the limp he got after jumping into a well at Arnold’s encouragement decades earlier. (An unnecessary flashback reminds us that this happened; don’t worry, it was plenty memorable.) Mack, who knows about the Underground Railroad, insists that he’ll do the job himself so that Cora can escape clean.

Of course, the moment Mack relents and agrees to share one last glass of whiskey with Ridgeway for old time’s sake, you know what’s going to happen. Neither he nor Cora and her rescuers considered the continued presence of Homer, Ridgeway’s right-hand kid, who shoots and kills Mack and rescues Ridgeway from confinement. He even shares that last glass of whiskey Mack poured. It’s a nice enough bit, though its predictability detracts from the overall effect. (It’s sort of the flipside of that redundant flashback: While the flashback ensured we remembered something we already knew, the killing of Mack by Homer counted us on conveniently forgetting.)

Cora winds up at the most luxurious Underground Railroad station we’ve yet seen—it’s like something out of Grand Central Station—and winds up drinking wine aboard a fancy dining car as she rockets away. But as she herself said earlier in the episode, as long as Ridgeway draws breath, she’ll always be running. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Ridgeway, it’s that it’s only a matter of time before the chase will be on again. The most we can hope for is that Cora is in better surroundings than she has been before when the next confrontation begins.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch The Underground Railroad Episode 6 on Amazon Prime Video