Untamed Episode 5 Recap: Did Shane Kill Lucy?

The previous episode of Untamed revealed a lot about ghosts from pasts—but the one that haunts Kyle Turner and Jill has not been explored yet. This ghost is a sense of grief—a circle of pain that binds the both, as stated by Jill’s husband, Scott. They cannot escape it. However, is it just pain—or is it a weave of guilt that binds the two? With their touchy territory around Caleb’s death and the silent secrecy about the Sanderson’s disappearance, the past has not faded. It will come back to haunt Kyle Turner in this episode, taking him down.

Spoilers Ahead

Episode 5, titled “Terces”—which is “secret” read backwards—pulls at close strings for both Kyle and Naya. While the investigation is happening in parallel, it looks like our investigators are overwhelmed by pasts they have been running away from. While the team is investigating around the caves, Shane pops in, and Kyle turns him away, asking the men to arrest him if he does not abide by instructions. At the station, Kyle interrogates Simon, the drug kingpin, and the guy with the black patch on the hand who had killed Teddy. Simon is shocked to see that Lucy is dead and denies knowing anything about the death. Tricking the other guy does not work—he seems equally confused about Lucy’s death. Kyle’s observation is that the men are not lying since Simon flinched at the image, looking surprised, but Naya surmises that it may be because of an existing romantic connection between the two that he was taken by shock.While the duo is at work, Jill is happily babysitting Gael until Gael’s father ambushes them. Jill tries to ward him off intelligently, but it does not last. He attacks Jill, wanting to take Gael away—thankfully, Kyle and Naya arrive just in time to protect them. As Naya is relieved to embrace Gael, Jill tells Kyle that she feels jealous that Naya gets to do this but she cannot. It seems like Caleb is a sore spot that the two keep circling back to whenever they are together. 

The same night, Kyle receives a call about Jill being in the hospital. It seems like she had attempted suicide by overdosing on pills. Kyle’s suspicion shoots at Shane immediately, and he beats him up, asking him to stay away from Jill. When Shane speaks back, Kyle takes his gun out and threatens to shoot Shane. This leads to Kyle’s suspension from the case, and it is now assigned to other federal agents filling in for him. Bill and his assistant come to collect the evidence from Kyle, and he hands over all the evidence, except for Lucy’s backpack. He finds Lucy’s phone inside it, goes to the forensic lab, unlocks it by a face match from the corpse, and looks through the videos. We see Lucy recording herself—mostly cheery, but a shadow of worry darkening her face right after. While Kyle looks through, he sees Shane in one of the videos—confirming that Shane is the secret ‘Terces’ lover that Lucy had. Kyle calls Jill, informing her that he is going to investigate Shane, but Shane would take them down, revealing what he knew about the Sanderson case. Kyle instructs Naya to find the phone in his glove box if he does not return.Kyle goes to the spot where Shane camps, but he is not there. Kyle finds a bag that makes a rattling noise, and a pill bottle falls off. As he is about to move, he is shot in his stomach, and he falls down to the ground. The ghost of little Caleb whispers to him, “He is coming.” But is he coming to save him or take him down further?

To say Kyle is having a rough time in this episode would be an understatement. The correct statement would be that Kyle has been having a rough time all along, but he is skilled at hiding it. He is haunted by Caleb’s memories, chased by the assumed guilt of murders he probably could not have done anything to prevent, and the Sanderson disappearance in which he and Jill definitely had some stakes. No matter how skillful one is in bottling up their secrets and past, at one point they are bound to surface. The more violent your attempts are in shoving them back in the bottle, the more they explode. Untamed episode 5 is the explosion of the repressed grief and rage that has pushed Jill to the brink of death, and Kyle dangerously close to it. Jill, trying to move on with her life, is vehemently triggered witnessing Naya and Gael’s dynamic. In addition, Kyle is a constant reminder of their parenthood to now-dead Caleb. As much as she tried to get her life back in shape, the palpable grief oozed out, leading her to reach for something that would numb her pain: the pills. 

With Jill’s familiarity with Kyle’s colleague, we can assume that she went to Shane looking for the pills, and Shane gave her those without being conscientious. Shane is not exactly to blame in this particular incident except for the fact that he was dealing drugs—but he may be culpable for graver crimes. Kyle mentions not liking Shane—and it is a gut feeling that may turn out to be true. Assaulting Shane results in Kyle’s suspension, yet he cannot keep off his hunch. With the confirmation of Lucy’s video footage, he digs into Shane’s stuff and is shot. Shane brings him down by causing his suspension passively and also actively—assuming it is Shane who shoots him. The shooter’s identity is yet to be confirmed, but Shane is our best bet. 

Lucy functioned as the ‘mule’ to the drug trades, but it seems like she did not deal with the producer bosses directly. She went through Abuelo, and Abuelo betrayed the bosses. He may have been trying to forge an individual trade path in conflict with the bosses—as Pakuna mentions that he is not like Abuelo betraying the bosses. There is a strange connection between Pakuna, Lucy, and Shane. Shane is the one who keeps a close eye on the deer. Pakuna—whose real name is Gary—says that Pakuna means deer running off the cliff, and in Lucy’s phone we find a video where she is beside a deer calling herself ‘a deer whisperer.’ With the deer motif appearing in all three individuals, and Lucy driving herself off the cliff, it seems like the three of them may be connected. 

Shane looks like a charming individual—just the right bit of arrogance with charm that would make an adolescent like Lucy fall for him. Lucy mentioned Shane as “terces” to her friend Summer, and she mentioned that Lucy was gone most nights with Shane. Shane refuses to admit that he was involved in any of the drug deals, yet Kyle finds a bag full of pills at his tent. He could be the one running the operations, or it may be that it is Lucy’s leftover stash that he is dealing now for easy cash. In any case, there is a lot more to be revealed about Shane’s past with Lucy. However, with Shane having leverage over Kyle regarding the Sanderson disappearance, the confrontations would be difficult. It looks like both parties have their secrets to protect—but while Shane would fight to protect his, Kyle would risk himself to ‘do right by Lucy,’ even if it means he is going down.

Episode 5 of Untamed, peels back layers of secrecy and pain, revealing just how deeply entangled personal grief and buried guilt are in this investigation. Lucy’s death, once seen as a tragic anomaly, now holds the thread unraveling a much larger web.