Into The Dark Treehouse recap: Not everything has to be so grim after all

Treehouse, the latest installment of Blumhouse’s Into The Dark series, recently debuted on Hulu. Check out our breakdown and recap of the feature below.

In comparison to the previous entries in Blumhouse’s Into The Dark series, Treehouse didn’t have such a dark ending. Each of the prior installments concluded with at least one person meeting a horrific death whereas Treehouse diverted from the murder route. It actually builds up to a moment of excruciating anticipation but then flips to a slightly more upbeat perspective of things, revealing the true plot at hand. Let’s recap quickly for anyone who hasn’t seen the feature.

Warning! Spoilers for all episodes of Into The Dark follow. You’ve been warned.

Towards the midway point of Hulu’s Treehouse, the audience gets a sense that everything is building towards Peter Rake’s comeuppance. Because Peter (Jimmi Simpson) used his celebrity clout to prey on women on multiple occasions, the time was coming for him to pay for his sins. And a coven of witches were ideal for rectifying said wrongs.

Led by Kara Wheeler (Julianna Guill), an old face from Peter’s past, the witches use their charms to convince the celebrity chef into partying with them. While they’re all supposedly having a good time, they drug Peter and chain him to a bed.

When Peter wakes up, they layout the horrific torture that they intend to inflict upon him for his past transgressions and then presume to make the once confident macho-man beg for his life.

Peter tries everything to persuade to let him go but they don’t listen. When Kara and the others refuse to free him, Peter breaks himself out and escapes from the house. He manages to get outside but he’s in the middle of nowhere so he runs.

Still dressed in women’s clothing and makeup, Peter runs out onto a nearby road and miraculously finds his sister driving up. Gwen (Amanda Walsh) is shocked to see her brother in such a condition but drives them away shortly after.

Gwen and Peter appear to be safe when the witches return. They block the car, preventing either Gwen or Peter from escaping the horror. Seconds later, they attack the vehicle and pull Peter from it. He’s dragged away only to be knocked unconscious again. Peter awakes a short time later expecting to be chained up—or castrated—but he’s back in his bed as if nothing ever happened.

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Before taking a moment to relax, Peter searches the entire house for signs of the witches. He finds nothing and begins to assume that it was all just a nightmare, but then, he gets a phone call.

On the other end of the line, it’s Kara. She reassures Peter that the previous night’s events did happen and that they can happen again—they just won’t end as tastefully if he continues preying on women. A fiery stove pilot drives the point across further. The fear instilled in Peter at this point is clear and he heeds Kara’s warning.

Immediately following the phone call, Peter leaves his family’s old home to see his daughter whom he’d neglected for far too long. He goes to her and promises to be a better father, asking for forgiveness. Peter had been making false promises to his daughter constantly but his near-death experience gave him a well-needed nudge to make good on them.

Meanwhile back at the Rake family estate, Gwen celebrates with the witches. They’re not actually witches, just friends of Gwen’s who wanted to help with the Peter situation.

The big reveal doesn’t come until the very end but it shows that the witchcraft they used on Peter was just a ruse. Gwen had Lillith (Mary McCormack), Elena (Stephanie Beatriz), Morgan (Sophia Del Rizzo), and Marie (Shaunette Renée Wilson) pretend to perform a witch ritual on him so he’d believe his life would be forfeit.

The ruse worked and Peter left his family’s estate with a newfound sense of right and wrong. But had it not been for Gwen’s intervention, she and her witch-friends might have never ended the cycle of female victimization Peter was a part of.

What’s great about this approach to predatory individuals like him is that the experience transformed Peter into a better person. Rather than making another victim out of him, Gwen and her witch friends turned Peter into someone worth redeeming.

Peter could just as easily go back to his old ways one day but his final confession to his daughter gives us the impression that he’s going to make a difference now—all thanks to Gwen and her radical treatment.

And if Peter is set on rectifying the wrongs he’s committed, he’ll likely fight to stop other men from victimizing women too. That makes a bigger difference in the overall scheme of things, especially when the alternative is Lillith’s clutch of empowered women castrating every man they suspect of similar wrongdoings.

What did you think of Into The Dark: Treehouse? Let us know in the comments section below.

Into The Dark: Treehouse is currently streaming on Hulu. For more on Blumhouse’s Into The Dark series, follow us on the Hulu Watcher Twitter Account @HuluWatcherFS or on the Hulu Watcher Facebook Page.