I came here looking for clarification after seeing "Triumph" and am relieved to see others are as confused as I am!
It would be one thing if the twist had been earned, but you folks are right: this comes out of nowhere. We are given the motive for the turnaround at the end in terms of old Brother Thomas, but what about the young wife? Is she really leaving her husband for the old man?
Presumably all this was done to conceal the murder of the old woman, Mary. But the unearthing of the casket would prove in an instant that this was NOT the young missionary's wife! (Even if her face had been gashed to such a degree as to make her unrecognizable...) If you really wanted to obscure the identity of the body, you'd fare better with some sort of Indian beetle that eats away the flesh...and actually SHOW this in the episode!
The other thing is...why didn't the young missionary's wife simply call out her husband's name when she heard him and saw him shooting Brother Thomas? That would stop him in his tracks and he would drop the gun. Catastrophe averted!
This said, Begley is decent in a role he may not have been perfect for. And Jeanette Nolan is excellent as she usually is in any role she took. I thought watching it, "Why wasn't she a big movie star?" Not even Bette Davis could have done better!
A nice tense atmosphere, and complex things happening in the script with the characters...but an ending that 'capsizes the boat'. Almost literally!
It would be one thing if the twist had been earned, but you folks are right: this comes out of nowhere. We are given the motive for the turnaround at the end in terms of old Brother Thomas, but what about the young wife? Is she really leaving her husband for the old man?
Presumably all this was done to conceal the murder of the old woman, Mary. But the unearthing of the casket would prove in an instant that this was NOT the young missionary's wife! (Even if her face had been gashed to such a degree as to make her unrecognizable...) If you really wanted to obscure the identity of the body, you'd fare better with some sort of Indian beetle that eats away the flesh...and actually SHOW this in the episode!
The other thing is...why didn't the young missionary's wife simply call out her husband's name when she heard him and saw him shooting Brother Thomas? That would stop him in his tracks and he would drop the gun. Catastrophe averted!
This said, Begley is decent in a role he may not have been perfect for. And Jeanette Nolan is excellent as she usually is in any role she took. I thought watching it, "Why wasn't she a big movie star?" Not even Bette Davis could have done better!
A nice tense atmosphere, and complex things happening in the script with the characters...but an ending that 'capsizes the boat'. Almost literally!