Warning: Spoilers for tonight's premiere of The Strain are in play. If you're not current, feel free to come back when you've seen the episode.
With The Strain's Season 4 premiere comes the beginning of the end. The bloody horror drama will take its bow following the current 10-episode run, meaning a lot of big moments are going to have to happen in order to close out the series' run with any sort of satisfaction. If tonight's events are any indication, then we're going to get just that, as The Master needs to go down for good, and it sounds like the only way it'll happen is with another nuke!
During "The Worm Turns," we learn that the whole team has been scattered after the events of the season 3 finale, which have come to be known as "Illumination Day." With the human population mostly treated as cattle by the Strigoi, there's not a lot of hope on the streets. And yet, former-rat-catcher-turned-Strigoi-slayer Vasilly Fet is in pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The big reasoning is that, as we see in a dream of Fet's, only "the face of God" can kill The Master. For those of you that don't speak arcane prophecies, that's code for a nuke.
It's kind of interesting how a nuclear bomb triggered this whole mess at the end of season 3, and yet another such weapon is supposed to be the thing that's going to save everyone. But if the series is following the original blueprint of Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro's last book in The Strain series, The Night Eternal, that bomb is going to be used at the site of The Master's "birth," which is the only way to kill the vampiric bastard. Of course, if Fet does get his hands on the nuclear weapon he's on the hunt for, there's still one person that could screw all of this up: Ephraim Goodweather.
The Master, now inhabiting the body of his former lackey Eldrich Palmer, has Eph's son Zack, which is his trump card against the forces of good. So long as he possesses Eph's son, The Master will be an unstable element that could throw things off, causing the already unhinged Eph to once again betray his survivor group in the name of his family unit. Zack will be another party to watch out for, though, as he's being groomed to become the new Master, and the sweet life seems to have started to change him. You know what else changes things? Nuclear explosions.
The Strain has returned with a premiere that assures fans that the end won't be far off from where the series began. Indeed, it feels like the show is preparing to tie everything together into a satisfying end that rewards all who stuck it out for the four year run. We'll see where this path leads, as The Strain continues its countdown to the end over the next nine Sundays at 10:00 p.m. ET, only on FX. To see when other new and returning series are premiering in the coming weeks, check out our summer premiere schedule.
