Anna Pigoen doesn’t have time to get into all the deeply personal stuff that we audiences may want to see from the series because they’re too busy dealing with dead bodies popping up all over the national park.
The personal stuff tends to be pushed off to the back burner as a secondary storyline—much to Anna’s liking, I’m sure—though hopefully, now that we’re more than halfway through the first season and barreling towards the finale, she’ll finally find the time to confront her emotions and be—dare I say it—vulnerable.
Even if she’s not doing it willingly, it seems circumstances are going to push her in that direction whether she likes it or not.
I’m talking about the cliffhanger, of course—one that could change everything in her relationship with Jesse, wherever it stands right now.
In the final moments of the episode, Jesse was down by the water getting more samples to test. After seeing a few dead fish–along with his first dead body—the almost-geologist gathered that there may be something in the water killing off the fish. He contacted his ex (he should know better than to open up that line of communication, even if they did end on good terms) to have it tested, which revealed high levels of sulfuric acid… potentially from a chemical plant or solution mining.
Of course, that raised plenty of red flags on its own, but the shot at the end almost solidified that whoever is responsible for the toxic water that’s killing the fish wants to keep it a secret. And there’s only one person who comes to mind who could be connected to this—Jeremiah.
Otherwise, why would someone go to such great lengths to stop Jesse from investigating it? Why would someone want to silence the results?
Jesse got hit in the arm, but the shot knocked him out, and the last we saw, he was carried, unconscious, by the stream.
Can Anna handle losing another person she has feelings for just years after she lost her husband? After all, that’s the biggest reason she won’t commit to something more serious with Jesse (aside from her feelings for Frederick that she’s repressing)—Anna doesn’t want to be “responsible” for anyone again, as she believes she failed to look out for Zach.
Jesse isn’t really asking her to be his mother or caretaker, and quite frankly, Anna already seems to feel a sense of responsibility for him, even without labeling their relationship.
It happened the minute she caught feelings. It might be more casual, but Anna cares. Deeply. Otherwise, she wouldn’t keep circling back around.
You’d think watching Maeve Boone’s romance play out would make Anna think twice, especially since Maeve’s reluctance to commit to Lou ultimately led him to build a secret family she didn’t know about. Is that really how Anna wants things to play out with Jesse? She has a fear of commitment, but she’s also the kind of person who wants something real; she just needs to stop being too scared to make the leap again.
Ep# 108 -“The Death Grin” – Cooper Levy as Jesse Garland in Anna Pigeon on the USA NETWORK. Photo credit: Michelle Faye/USA Network © VERSANT MEDIA 2025. All Rights Reserved
Instead, she’s found it easier to convince herself that cutting the cord is easier and will somehow spare her feelings.
But finding out that Jesse’s been shot might throw her for a loop and make her realize how much she truly cares about him. And it will either be the thing that pushes her walls down or pushes him away, thinking that she’s protecting him by getting him as far away from this forest as possible.
Maybe there’s a little bit of truth to that? There are too many people dropping dead in this forest weekly.
Before he was shot, Jesse had just been offered a job in his field, as his ex had asked him to join her as a field geologist assistant in Arizona. It felt like a turning point for Anna and Jesse.
Jesse told Anna, hoping she’d realize she was about to lose him and ask him to stay. Instead, she did the opposite, encouraging him to go, unwilling to be the reason he held himself back, especially since she’s not ready to commit to something more serious.
They keep dancing around the truth, but maybe Jesse’s shooting truly will be the wake-up call that Anna needs to stop hiding behind the traumatic thing that happened to her.
These personal developments also took up a whopping less than 5 minutes of the episode, which largely focused on the death of Maeve’s son, Buck, who collapsed in the same river where the fish were dying.
As far as whodunnit mysteries go, this one was entertaining.
When he was found, Buck had this extremely eerie smile plastered on his face, which we later learn is a hemlock death grin caused by a muscle spasm that freezes a victim’s corpse into a chilling, unnatural smile.
Buck’s case allowed us to get more insight into Frieda’s character, as she had a close connection to him through her writing class, which helped Anna piece together that this wasn’t a suicide, despite the blunt note left behind suggesting that it was.
With Frieda’s help, Anna jumped to her next suspect—Buck’s sister—who pointed the finger at her mother’s lover, Lou, who she claimed had the most to gain by eliminating Buck and taking over his shares of the will.
And honestly, Lou did look guilty, particularly after he stole Buck’s work, which we later learned was his memoir, and then admitted to having a secret family while still having a romantic relationship with Maeve.
Initially, it didn’t seem like Buck’s memoir would’ve exposed anything, so it was odd that Lou went to such lengths to get his hands on it, but tucked in between the pages was an ancestry DNA test that revealed something that Maeve would’ve killed to keep hidden—she wasn’t Buck’s birth mother.
When Anna paid Maeve another visit, this time she was in a strangely honest mood, which should’ve been a red flag almost immediately.
She told Anna the real story of Buck’s mother, her best friend, who was actually the one sent to a maternity home at 16 to give birth to her son. The conditions there were deplorable, and she died 2 days later. Maeve never intended to steal her best friend’s story and pretend to be Buck’s mother, but when he found her later in life, he was so desperate for a mother, and the press assumed it was her, so she just went with it.
And it wasn’t for pure reasons either, it was mostly selfish, as she claimed it was the only reason anyone was even interested in her work, eventually hinging her entire career—and it’s success—on the story.
She claimed it was “impossible to take it back,” and when Buck found out, he was determined to tell the truth, which would’ve destroyed everything she worked for.
She felt her life’s work slipping away, which she couldn’t let happen, so she drugged him.
I was actually a little thrown off by the revelation because I was convinced Lou had something to do with it. And well, you never want to think that a mother, or even one that’s pretended to be a mother for all these years, would do such a thing, but in retrospect, the signs were there. She only cared about Buck so much because of the impact he had on her career; her biological daughter made it clear her mother never even gave her an ounce of that love or attention.
And since she was already dying after a diagnosis of restrictive cardiomyopathy, she told Anna the truth before the drug she’d poisoned her wine with kicked in.
She died with the same creepy grin on her face, bringing the storyline full circle.
Anna’s dealt with her fair share of crazy instances that would send the average person running to a different park, but I don’t think she’s even had much time to process them, self-medicating with her wine.
Ep# 108 -“The Death Grin” – Cooper Levy as Jesse Garland and Tracy Spiridakos as Anna Pigeon in Anna Pigeon on the USA NETWORK. Photo credit: Michelle Faye/USA Network © VERSANT MEDIA 2025. All Rights Reserved
Will it all change once she nearly loses Jesse? How will Jesse’s near-death experience (because I’m hoping he doesn’t die) change the trajectory of Anna’s story and the remaining two episodes of the season? Will it bring them closer together or push them apart? And will we get any insight into Zach’s murder before the season is up?
Other Moments
- Manny resigned, but will they actually let him leave? I feel like we’re not invested enough in this character to care either way, but I imagine he needs to stick around for his wife Bethany’s trial!
- The loss of Buck pushed Frieda to live boldly, agreeing to go to dinner with Christina.
Share your thoughts in the comments!