Episode 3 of The Outsider took a bad guy introduced in the second episode and made him worse by hinting he may just be the next killer in the series.
Detective Jack Hoskins arrived on the scene in the second half of The Outsider premiere to replace Ralph Anderson on the Frankie Peterson murder case after Ralph is placed on psych leave for shooting Ollie Peterson at the courthouse. Right away, Jack is positioned as an antagonist because he displays disinterest in the case and is shown to be an angry drunk that starts bar fights for his own amusement. The third episode of The Outsider throws a curveball when Jack goes from possible secondary bad guy to being linked very closely to the shape-shifting monster that appears to be the culprit in the killings.
All of this information, and more, points to Jack being potentially set up as the next killer in The Outsider series. Here's what we know to the theory so far.
The Outsider Seems To Set Jack Up As The Next Killer
There are three main pieces of evidence presented in episode 3 of The Outsider that hints toward the fact that a duplicate of Jack or Jack himself is going to be the next killer in the series. The beginning of the episode picks up where the last one left off: the clothes that Terry's clone was wearing are found in a barn covered in a mysterious ooze. Jack shows up to the crime scene hours after it’s been cleaned up because he’s drunk. He decides to go into the barn himself in the middle of the night, and he’s attacked by something offscreen that leaves a rash-like wound on the back of his neck. This brings to mind how Terry got cut at the hospital which is where it’s implied the shapeshifter got his DNA.
The second piece of evidence is a discussion between Terry’s daughter, Jessa, and Ralph’s wife, Jeannie, where Jessa tells her about the man who comes to visit her at night. At first, he looked like her father, then like he was melted wax, and then like someone else more muscular. The melted wax fits the description of the mysterious figure in the hoodie that’s been lurking around town. The new, muscular form she doesn’t recognize could very well be Jack, who she has never seen before.
The third piece of evidence is what happens in the final moments of the episode. Jack is drunk at the strip bar again, when he collapses to the ground in agony, screaming about the wound on the back of his neck. The show cuts to Jack sitting up in bed. He appears to be talking to himself, though the camera lingers on his neck. He pleads out loud to someone to make it stop, and that he’ll do anything they say. This is the part that implies Jack himself could end up being involved. Terry didn’t have that kind of reaction to his injury. It was just a cut. Maybe what attacked him isn’t cloning him, but rather taking him over. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, which The Outsider has wisely decided to stick to so far, making the series a tense and addictive watch.
