Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver The Terror: Devil in Silver Asks What Lurks Behind the Door in “Che Guevara” The devil? A monster? A man? Perhaps we’ll find out… By Alex Brown | Published on May 21, 2026 Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC We’re at the halfway mark for The Terror: Devil in Silver, and things are heating up. The fourth episode brings a pizza party, a lost son, and an all-consuming void. We open the day after Pepper was attacked by what was either a buffalo monster or another patient (both?). Of course the staff won’t admit what really happened. The story is Pepper was caught harming himself after stealing Josephine’s keys, and the staff had to restrain him. Loochie thinks whatever is behind the silver door is a manifestation of her nightmares, Coffee thinks it’s the devil, Dorry thinks it’s a man, Pepper thinks it’s a buffalo monster. Whatever is going on, the only way to stay alive is to resign yourself to New Hyde. Loochie is a self-described “lifer,” so she’s interesting enough to haunt but not tempting enough to hurt. It only attacks patients like Pepper who try to get out and kills those like Badger and Louie who have enough power to bring attention to Northwest. How Dr. Walter could be involved is as yet undetermined; the guy must be ancient if he’s still alive.  Badger is back and still more concerned with posturing in front of a captive audience than helping patients. He doesn’t ask Pepper if he’s okay or what has him frustrated, just threatens non-compliance. He also does that thing that a lot of wheelchair users hate where he pushes Pepper around without permission. He doesn’t stand up to Anand or ask to see Pepper later for a private consultation. He simply gestures apologetically and gets back to Jaws. When at last he’s roused to act in defense of the patients (i.e. composing a strongly worded email), he suffers the same fate as Officer Louie.   The first of two surprising arrivals comes from Louie, the cop who died by suicide (sorta) in the first episode. Here he is, somehow, chatting it up with Pepper about devils and deals. This time Pepper is clear-headed; we can’t blame this experience on drugs or brush it off as a rat in the ceiling tiles. Pepper doesn’t know Louie is dead. Ahriman was apparently an evil spirit in Zoroastrianism. If this is all in Pepper’s head, he is much more knowledgeable than I thought. Pepper makes the unwise decision to make a deal with the devil. He’ll do anything to get out? Louie will hold him to that, I’m certain. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Pepper’s second visitor is his son, Anthony (Hayward Leach). First the phone call and then the in-person conversation, both moments that were genuine for Pepper in terms of emotion and the yearning for connection while also motivated by self-interest. He tells Coffee he can call someone who will help, but he doesn’t ask for Anthony help for the other patients. He asks for help getting out, even tries to pull the family card, and in doing so he knowingly breaks his son’s heart. Once again he has the choice between helping someone in a way that will help him in the long-run but hurt in the short-term or doing the selfish thing that benefits him right now at the expense of someone else. And once again he chooses instant relief. As someone who has been in Anthony’s shoes—I was about his age when I confronted my own deadbeat dad, and it went about as well for me as it did him—that scene hit me hard. I know he went into that meeting hoping for the best while knowing that hope was foolish. He was prepared for the worst and got exactly what he expected and it still hurt more than he thought it would. I don’t know if this is the last we’ll see of him (he doesn’t exist in the book), but if he’s anything like me, this meeting will be the thing that lets him finally move on from his father.  Pepper’s doomed romance with Antoinette is mirrored in his relationship with the New Hyde patients. He didn’t cause her mental health struggles anymore than he caused the patients to have their outburst at Sal’s. However, his negligence and self-interest certainly made things worse. Pepper is at his best when he’s using his fists to defend people he cares about from patriarchal violence, but even that is more about his twisted sense of masculinity and chivalry than about the victims. I was as delighted to see Scotch Tape entering the fray at Sal’s to defend Loochie as I was horrified that anyone would dare harm CCH Pounder. Anand views the brawl as inexplicable noncompliance without ever trying to understand why the patients went off meds in the first place. Doesn’t even occur to him. Why would it? You don’t run a place like New Hyde for fifteen years if you want anything more than compliance.  We get a little of Coffee’s backstory this week. His comment that he felt like “blue skies” when he was off his meds in 2009 and now doesn’t experience any emotions is devastating. I wish the show spent more time on this conversation instead of cutting away just when it got interesting. Tell us more about Coffee and his life before. Shed some light onto the young woman in the photograph. We don’t need a full accounting, but it would help to get enough to put his no-meds behavior into perspective.  Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Something I wish the show (and the book) would explore more is how treatment for mental health issues can also be beneficial. It would be nice to see the contrast between what New Hyde is and what New Hyde could be. The show only presents two options: “crazy” and drugged up. But what about a third option of properly administered medications that actually help. I know this is a horror story about the system crushing people, but it feels unhelpful to set up a false binary. Without intending to, it plays into MAHA disinformation about psychiatric medications and perpetuates harmful stereotypes about the mentally ill. When Anand says “You people, you need your meds. This is why we prescribe them,” he’s partly true. Trouble is, he isn’t only prescribing them because they need them but because the staff needs the patients on them. He is intentionally overmedicating them for no other reason than it makes them docile, it makes them “compliant.”  I also wish the show talked about how Western society insists on hiding disabled people away. From ugly laws to insane asylums to being homeless on the streets to RFK’s “wellness farms.” After Reagan’s deinstitutionalization, instead of providing caretakers and communities with resources to care for people at home, we pushed them onto the street or into prisons where we could keep ignoring them. The customers at Sal’s could have treated the patients with respect and patience rather than spew slurs and physically attack them. It’s not only that New Hyde is the last place left to “help” the mentally ill, but that the outside world doesn’t want to help them.  This episode is about the stories we tell ourselves. The patients argue over the nature of the entity behind the silver door, because to some a monster is worse than a man and to others a man is worse than a monster. Josephine repeats the story of how Pepper was hurt despite not believing it. The customers at Sal’s tell themselves the patients are worthless and barely human so they don’t have to confront the horrors of the system. Dorry tells herself lorazepam and pizza are treats, not tools of control. Coffee only remembers the blue skies from being off his meds, not the manic-depressive episodes. Loochie puffs herself up in recounting her encounters with the devil, but we see her shivering in terror. Badger acts like the guy in charge, but he dies without ever having truly seen the patients as people. Anand acts like everything is fine because if he doesn’t he’ll lose his job. Anthony says of his mother’s death, “She fell. A long way down.” Pepper tells himself he’s a good person being victimized by outside forces, but he hurts people for selfish reasons, too. He acts like what he thinks a cool dad is like with Marisol’s daughter, but he wilts when Anthony asks him to rise to the occasion just once. Jaws is all about mythmaking, from the war stories the men tell each other to turning an animal doing what its nature compels it to into a great and terrible monster. We don’t know what at New Hyde is real and what is fiction. Hell, not even the patients or staff know. Another strong episode with some shocking moments of horror. The worst is yet to come, I fear. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Quotes “A malevolent presence resides in this hospital. It lives behind that door…It will keep hurting you until you comply or die.” “There’s a shark in the water, and nobody’s doing a damn thing about it.” “Sharks’ gotta eat. You might as well feed it people nobody cares about.” “There’s blood in the water again.” This script isn’t subtle, that’s for sure.  “I am not okay! None of this is okay!” “We are gonna kill that shark.” Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Final Thoughts Big fan of Coffee’s cardigan. I gotta learn to knit so I can make my own.  Begging Badger to bring in one book, one single book, not written by and starring cisallohet white dudes and written this freaking century. My god, man.  Once again, Badger talks to the patients like they’re toddlers. Who the hell doesn’t know what Jaws is about?  Most people call the entity behind the silver door “it,” but Mr. Mack uses “he.”  Welp, Stephen Root, it was nice having you and your socks with sandals around. I am such a sucker for the horror trope of something enveloped in shadows save two pinprick spots of light where its eyes should be. Coffee said he went off his meds in January 2009. Earlier he indicated he’d been in New Hyde for about 7 years. So it has to be in the mid 2010s, during Obama’s second term. This explains why he’s so concerned with reaching the president. No way he’d be calling the guys in the Oval Office before or after him. Very charmed by Louie’s very weird pronunciations of devil in other languages.  So, was Dorry the voice behind the woman crying in the walls? And what the hell happened to Badger’s body?  I think even if Pepper hadn’t wasted his (and Marisol’s) money on that drum kit, he still wouldn’t have offered it to Anthony. Pepper was wearing a Rhino shirt in the first episode. Anand started at New Hyde in the early 2000s. That’s not long after there was a change in how Medicare payments to psychiatric hospitals were determined, which led to the proliferation of for-profit psychiatric hospitals. I don’t know the history of the New York state budget for psychiatric care, but my guess is that it has been slashed over the years. New Hyde didn’t end up the way it is by accident.[end-mark] The post <i>The Terror: Devil in Silver</i> Asks What Lurks Behind the Door in “Che Guevara” appeared first on Reactor.