And the plot thickens.
I was hoping for some kind of resolution surrounding Big Sky’s core mystery, but the writers are incredibly good and complicating and twisting things into one giant, beautiful mess.
I don’t know why I was expecting anything straightforward from them—these are the same people that gave us the convoluted Ronald Pergman storyline. They thrive on the suspense.
And honestly, I’m kind of grateful for it because I want to know how far they can take it. How messy can it get?
Big Sky Season 3 Episode 10 brought all of the drama to a head, intensifying the danger for everyone involved, and then leaving us hanging for the next month or so.
It kicked off with an unexpected alliance between Paige and Sunny, and as you know, enemies become friends fairly quickly when they both have something the other needs. In this case, Paige offered to help Sunny get Walter out of jail if Sunny helped her gain access to her journal. And in order to do that, Sunny needed to rope in Tonya and Donno as she knew that they were after the money Paige stole. And while those two didn’t have the journal, they knew how to get it, and when Tonya heard that she could get a cut of $15 million, well, her eyes lit up brighter than a Christmas tree.
This is a group of shady characters that go where the wind blows, and none of them have any loyalty. Their word is as good as nothing, and yet, they all have no choice but to trust each other. Tonya and Donno agreed to Sunny’s deal, which likely wouldn’t sit well with Tony, the man that hired them to find Paige and Luke, but that’s a problem for a different day.
Right now, they were faced with a missing Paige once they arrived at Sunny’s camp. It definitely seemed as though she ran away again—a classic case of cold feet, one might say—but the truth is, she was discovered by Buck, who, as we know (but no one else does) is the Bleeding Heart Murderer. There’s no way Buck would pass up on the chance to claim his next victim, especially someone like Paige, who caused a world of headaches for their “happy-go-lucky” camp.
It’s getting increasingly harder for Buck to keep up his charade, so I’m just waiting for the day that he slips up. His true colors are beginning to show as he got super jealous and suspicious of Sunny, who kept Paige’s return a secret from her husband. He feels like he’s losing his hold over her, which isn’t ideal for a man who likes to be in control.
But now with Paige missing, Sunny’s life is on the line as Tonya and Donno didn’t take too kindly to the unexpected hiccup. My guess is that while Sunny doesn’t know about her husband’s past, she’s not overly trusting of him either. Everyone has to look out for themselves in this world, so she’ll likely figure out that something isn’t right.
Of course, Cassie has pieced together that Sunny is Walter’s mother, so she arrived at the house right as Buck had Paige tied up in the attic. In the final scene of the episode, we saw him open the door, but he’ll likely just feed Cassie whatever story he needs to so that she goes away. Cassie has always followed her gut, however, and it’s very evident that she knows something is off. I hope she keeps digging and eventually finds Paige before it’s too late.
She knows that Sunny and Buck lied about Walter, so what else are they lying about? It can’t be a coincidence that all of these murders happened near their camp.
I love that Cassie and Beau found the Walter connection by doing some actual PI work. The records didn’t pinpoint Sunny as the birth mother, but when they found the girl from the house fire that Walter claimed to “save” when he was a child, she recalled Walter’s mom having the most beautiful red hair, which gave them the final piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately, instead of going right to interrogate Sunny, Beau was pulled away by a concerning call from Carla, who was worried after Avery went rogue. Sigh. We could’ve had them… we could’ve had them. If they had visited the ranch or Sunny right after speaking with Madeline, they may have been able to prevent Paige’s kidnapping. Timing—what a funny thing.
And if there was any doubt about Sunny’s connection to Walter, Cormac confirmed that it was his half-brother. Cassie understandably has some trust issues—she dealt with Ronald, after all—but there’s no reason for her to distrust Cormac. He’s been very forthcoming with information, even if he needed a beat to process the whole “Walter is your brother” bombshell. And he made sure to underscore that no matter what happens with his parents and Cassie’s investigation, he’s his own person. Poor Cormac knows this is going to get really ugly, he just doesn’t know exactly how ugly yet.
Back to Avery—he made a huge mistake by trying to renegotiate with Tony after promising to give him the $15 million after cracking the seed phrase. I think Avery means well and assumes that he can protect his family this way, but he has no idea who he is messing with. These are skills assassins. By making the call, he angered Tony and put a target on his family’s back, not to mention, his own. However, the truth is, Tony was likely always planning on killing Avery even after he got the money, so maybe Avery is playing it smart and buying himself some more time. Either way, I don’t see this ending well for him, and I don’t know why he didn’t just seek out Beau’s help, to begin with.
Carla may be worried about him, but there’s no way she’s going to want to be with him after everything is said and done. Carla’s concerns about her husband right back into the arms of her ex-husband, Beau, who would obviously do anything to protect his family. While I don’t think there’s anything romantic going on between them, there’s a comfort level that’s hard to ignore, and it was a bummer for Jenny to witness as she just got came around to the idea of having feelings for Beau. She knows that he still loves his wife, and when she sees them together, she realizes that she can’t come between this happy family if there’s even a small chance of a reunion. Once Carla decides she no longer wants to be with Avery, will she try to make things work with Beau? Or will she push him to make a move on Jenny because she knows that they would make a good couple?
The chemistry between Beau and Jenny is undeniable. The way he moved the hair away from her face, I mean, that wasn’t nothing—you don’t do that to someone you don’t to someone unless you have feelings for them. It made my heart skip a beat. I’m sorry Carla, but I’m fully rooting for Beau and Jenny to get together by the end of the season. They make a great team, both personally and professionally. And it’s about time that Jenny found someone decent to make her heart flutter again. Lord knows she’s had terrible luck with men, but she actually found a good guy this time—a guy that made her rethink getting married again in the future. My petition for the series is to keep Beau and Cormac around for good… please don’t do us the way you did with Mark Lindor!
Speaking of weddings, Jenny was pulled into a case with Poppernak, whose off-duty wedding turned into a crime scene when the groom turned up dead. The investigation may have taken us away from what was going on in Helena, but I didn’t mind it this time because the case was exciting, even if it was a bit of a stretch that the whole murder mystery revolved around dinosaur fossils.
Poppernak likely didn’t expect to arrest his longtime family friend that day, but it turned out to be a crime of passion with the bride, Skylar, as the killer. After the groom Austin asked her to sign a prenup, she realized that he was in a romantic relationship with her friend, Natalie, who was also working with him at the dig site.
Jenny’s eventful day wasn’t over, however, because after she managed to save Natalie from death, arrested Skylar, and left Beau’s place, she came home to find her door broken and blood all over the floor. We have no idea what transpired in her living room, but she screamed out “mom,” which explains why she kept trying to reach her daughter throughout the day.
The last time we saw Jenny’s mom, she was striking up a deal with Tonya and Donno, who have spent most of the season involved in the Sunny Day Camp drama, so what happened?
The cliffhanger, along with the revelation that Buck kidnapped Paige, will keep us wondering until Big Sky: Deadly Trails resumes on January 4, 2023. See you then, Cravers!