Untamed Recap ‘Jane Doe’: The Gold Tattoo
- Cherish
- Jul 18
- 5 min read
In the second episode of Netflix’s Untamed, Vasquez identifies Jane Doe, Turner gets a young man killed, and Milch tells Vasquez the horrific tragedy that Turner and his then wife endured over five years ago.
Untamed Episode 2 Recap and Review
The Yosemite National Park, according to Turner, was the size of Rhode Island. It receives a hundred thousand visitors a week. Its vast acreage was not just home to bears that suddenly show up or a group of deers chilling in the meadows; there were squatters, drug dealers, and murderers. Just as Vasquez had finally identified Jane Doe, Turner got called in for another body, Teddy, a young man he pressured into finding information for him. And so another block of guilt was added to Turner’s already high stack.
What did Turner have to feel guilty about Sean Sanderson, a businessman who went missing in the park over five years ago? The family investigator, Esther Avalos, finally cornered Turner outside his cabin and asked him the questions she had been wanting to ask him. Turner calmly answered all her questions, including what I thought was the best one — Why did Turner head the search and not the park rangers, if he did not think a crime had happened at the time? Coolly, Turner replied that he had no case and wanted to pitch in. As soon as Turner was inside his cabin, he sank to the floor with the weight of emotion.
Elsewhere, Turner was his usual controlled self. He continued tracking Jane Doe’s trail, and found a medicine bottle with an X on the cap, one of the bottles that fell out of her backpack, as we saw in a flashback. He searched the vehicle of Teddy, a park employee and known drug user, and found weed in the glove compartment. He pointed out that they were on federal land, and the weed felt heavy enough for distribution, a clear threat. He wanted Teddy to find out about the bottle with the X mark and the gold X tattoo that was found on Jane Doe.
Teddy went to a tattoo artist and, it seemed, his supplier, and asked about the gold tattoo. Apart from the customer he was working with, there was one other guy inside the tattoo place at the time Teddy left. The tattoo artist, Linson, looked very uncomfortable as soon as Teddy mentioned the gold tattoo. He told Teddy that was not real. Teddy mentioned that the ranger took his weed but he would get it back, and Linson told him to let the ranger keep the weed. After Teddy had left, Linson texted him one more warning to lay off asking about the gold tattoo. He seemed genuinely scared and was giving a warning in good faith.
Linson was right to be scared. The unnamed man in his tattoo place messaged someone, and Teddy was strangled in his vehicle, just a young man who was overheard asking the wrong question. As soon as Turner saw his body, which floated up a stream, he knew he got the kid killed.
The other people Turner tried to lean on were harder to crack than Teddy. Turner took Vasquez to what he called a squatter village, a place in the park where a few dozen people were living illegally. Turner was looking for a man named Abuelo, and Glory, whom he seemed to know, told him he was on a ‘spiritual walkabout’. She also said that ‘De Niro’ was also looking for Abuelo the night before. Vasquez showed Jane Doe’s photo to the crowd, but except for a young woman who looked like she recognised her, the others just got increasingly hostile. Vasquez wanted to push at least the girl for information, but Turner pointed out the girl would not talk whilst amongst that crowd.
‘De Niro’ turned out to be Shane Maguire (Wilson Bethel), who worked in wildlife control and whom Turner made a point of visiting alone. There was history and a lack of trust between these two men, so much so that when Turner reached for Shane’s rifle, he handed him his handgun so that the both of them were armed at the same time. Turner fired a shot onto a tree stump and retrieved the bullet, clearly suspecting Shane as Jane Doe’s shooter. Turner also asked him why he was looking for Abuelo, and Shane merely said he had questions.
Vasquez was mad at Turner for leaving her to make her way back to his cabin on a horse she could barely ride, who ran off when they encountered a herd of deer, but at Souter and Mary’s 40th anniversary bash, she finally began to understand Turner a little after Milch told her what happened to his son Caleb. Young Caleb was part of a children’s hiking group. When he drifted off, no one worried much at first because Caleb routinely went into the woods with Turner, he knew the woods better than the counsellors. But, some sick person grabbed him and two days later, Turner found his body around Grouse Lake. This was the grief Turner constantly carried with him. As though to make up for all the unkind thoughts she has had about him, Vasquez returned to their office to continue searching the camp files for Jane Doe, just as Turner wanted. Finally, it paid off. Visually and via facial recognition, Vasquez matched Jane Doe to one Lucy Cook.
‘Jane Doe’ gave us a deeper look into the vast, thriving, at times dangerous community that was the Park. It also showed us more of Turner from the point of view of those around him. As Turner and Vasquez made progress on their Jane Doe case, the show had also begun to hint at secrets that continued their stranglehold on Turner. What did he carry, outside of his outsized, insurmountable grief?
Rating: B+
Strays
⛰️Amongst Avalos’s many questions was whether Turner was in the condition to lead the search for Sean Sanderson given that he went missing a mere few months after Turner went on leave for personal reasons (the death of his son).
⛰️On a flashback, we saw Jane Doe walking around with a backpack that split and a few of those x marked medicine bottles fell out. She placed the bag inside a hidden ice chest in the forest. Soon afterwards, she was shot in the leg.
⛰️Souter referred to Turner as Vasquez’s ‘other kid’ lol. Souter told Turner that he had a friend over at a park at Glacier who was looking for an agent to station there. This was a not at all subtle hint for Turner to leave framed as a change in scenery. Souter said that Vasquez or Milch could take over the Jane Doe case, and if needed they could bring in an ISB agent from another park. Turner figured out that his ex-wife Jill called Souter after his middle of the night phone call and was not happy.
⛰️Souter: ‘But there is a fine line between staying to hang on to something and staying to just hurt.’
⛰️Abuelo was the ‘resident squatter shaman’ and dealer.
⛰️Vasquez messaged Gael’s father back with a warning after he called her neighbour who was looking after Gael.
⛰️Lana, a receptionist at a hotel inside the Park, was Turner's lover.
Episode Title: Jane Doe
Episode Writers: Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith
Episode Director: Thomas Bezucha
Original Air Date: July 17, 2025