Unchosen Recap Episode 5: The Villain in their Midst
- May 4
- 6 min read
Updated: May 11
When Rosie got Sam to confess what happened to the two people he murdered – his teenage girlfriend Aisling and his fellow prisoner – right there in the Meeting Hall where the Fellowship worshipped as a community and celebrated the word of God, he could very well be telling the truth. Perhaps it was true that he deeply regretted killing Aisiling in a fit of rage after he found out she cheated on him, and that she wanted to leave him. Perhaps it was true that after serving his time in prison, all he wanted was out. Perhaps it was true that in a tragic turn of things, just days from being released, Aisling’s cousin recognised him and attacked him, and he killed again in self defense. Perhaps it was true that he was just a relatively young man who could not quite catch a break. When he knelt in prayer, however, and Rosie joined him, and when he claimed he felt God, it started to feel like just another one of his manipulations. Perhaps Sam did not mean to commit the two murders he did. But afterwards, he manipulated both Rosie and Adam. He killed Isaac and framed Mr. Phillips. He almost killed Mr. Phillips, interrupted only by his realisation that young Grace was there watching with her flashlight, alone because young Anthony got scared and ran off. Perhaps he did not make the decisions that landed him in legal trouble. But later, he made the decisions that ruined lives to protect himself and preserve his relatively safe and comfortable position within the Fellowship. In his mind, in his own story, Sam may be just another striver who wants peace. To those in his orbit, he brought chaos and death.
Adam himself got to see Sam’s snakelike ability as a manipulator, though he did not seem to fully realise what Sam was doing. Adam was in agony. Now that Mr. Phillips was facing legal trouble and was silenced in the community, Adam rose as the new leader of the Fellowship. Adam was a believer in the Fellowship, his faith was real, and his pain over the loss of his brother mingled with his guilt. He wondered if Isaac’s death was punishment for his sexual relations with Sam.
When Sam spoke of how he went along with it, Adam, even in his deep grief and confusion, caught the oddness of Sam’s words. It was Sam who had been physically crossing into Adam’s personal space. It was Sam who initiated the encounter that night by the fire, Sam who moved to (almost) kiss Adam, who took Adam’s hand and pushed it down his pants. Yet Sam made it seem as though Adam initiated it, that he could not say no because he relied on Adam for everything. Even as Sam messed with Adam’s head, he also encouraged him to perform his duties, to go to the meeting hall and preside over Isaac’s funeral.
It was Rosie who first tried to get Sam to leave. A girl at the electronics section of the grocery helped Rosie search for Sam Devlin online, and it was there that Rosie found out that Sam lied to her. She threatened Sam that if he did not leave, she would call the police. Sam warned her not to; she had lied to the police when they came, people went to jail and lost their kids for that, he claimed.
Rosie did not give up, she could not. She went to her husband and told Adam she made a mistake in bringing Sam into their lives. They needed to find a way to get rid of him. With Sam’s words still weighing on him, Adam did not say anything; he merely walked away from his wife.
But, he quietly did the work. He reached out to the owner of another Fellowship business and got Sam a job. He gave Sam a card and told him it was for the best. Sam pushed back, still drilling into Adam’s soul that he was the problem, but that he could overcome this temptation. Sam knew he had a very good thing going inside this particular community. He already had something over its leader and his wife. If he moved, there was no assurance that he could manipulate the new community as well. He pressed the card back to Adam and held on to his arm. Later, in the shower, Adam scrubbed the skin where Sam had touched him repeatedly and so harshly that he drew blood.
Sam had successfully pushed back against Adam’s attempt to send him away. He tapped into Rosie’s faith in the Meeting Room and perhaps, convinced her to cease her efforts to exile him, too. But Sam was not yet in the clear. There was one more living person within the Fellowship who saw him with his mask off.
Mr. Phillips was now alone in his house with Mason, after Mrs. Phillips finally had enough and left him. Sam still lived in the shed. As Mr. Phillips brought out his empty bottles of alcohol in the trash, Sam arrived home. As he walked away, Mr. Phillips turned, and in that moment, he had a flashback of the day of the crash, of Sam walking away from the wreck. Suddenly, he knew. Suddenly, he remembered. He was an old man, and though he tried to run inside his home, Sam easily followed him. They struggled inside, with Sam gaining the upper hand.
The grown-ups were unaware that Grace and Anthony were already inside Mr. Phillips’s yard. Anthony saw a shadow of Mason with headphones on, a forbidden device; the poor boy was frightened and ran off. It was Grace who remained, and Grace who witnessed Mr. Phillips tell Sam, ‘You killed Isaac’ as Sam was in the process of performing his fourth murder. With Grace’s flashlight on him, Sam got up and walked toward her.
The penultimate episode of Unchosen’s first season was an illustration of how the greatest of upheavals happened during quiet, almost mundane circumstances. Rosie went with the other Fellowship women to the grocery, and figured out a way to get the information she needed, though she has never used the Internet before and did not even know what Google was. Hannah murmured how Charley was nice, before the fury within her won and she tried to run over the woman her husband loved more than her, more than life with her, more than the closed community of faith they (likely) were both born into. Mrs. Phillips made sure her husband had a warm dinner before she left him. The suppressed class of the Fellowship found strength and unleashed rage in an episode where the male leaders, Mr. Phillips and Adam, were, for the most part, lost. This is, so far, the show’s dramatic high point, and I look forward to watching the finale soon.
Rating: A-
Strays
🏡The story Sam told Mrs. Phillips and likely everyone else was that he did drive Mr. Phillips home, but that Mr. Phillips kept trying to grab the wheel (true enough, Mr. Phillips was trying to stop Sam from running Isaac off the road). When he stopped the car, Mr. Phillips pushed him out.
🏡Sam warned Mason not to tell anyone about the phone call he overheard between Rosie and Isaac. He implied that Rosie and Isaac were having an affair, and as he washed a bit of blood off his hand, he said he did not want to get anyone in trouble. Sam was not only lying to everyone in the Fellowship, he was lying to Mason, too.
🏡Matthew, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips’s son, came to the house because the accident and Mr. Phillips’s alleged role in it made it to the papers. He said he wanted to help, and that no one else in the community needed to know. Mrs. Phillips opened the door, but she closed it again without saying anything.
🏡Isaac’s mistress Charley went to his house on the day of the funeral and gave Hannah his letters for his four children. Hannah remained calm at first, but as Sam walked Charley out, Hannah took the key to one of the vehicles and almost ran Charley over in her rage. Sam saved Charley, which gave him another hero moment in the community.
🏡Whilst Mr. Phillips was asleep, Mrs. Phillips went down to the basement and opened a box of Matthew’s things. She took out a Walkman, put on the headphones, and listened to music; it looked like she had done this many times in the past. She later packed a suitcase, made sure her husband’s meal was heated one last time, took off her headscarf, and left. Mrs. Phillips quietly became one of the most affecting characters in this show.
Episode Writer: Julie Gearey
Episode Director: Philippa Langdale
Original Release Date: April 21, 2026