Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver The Terror: Devil in Silver Makes a Deal in “Starry Night” How do we feel about the ending that the patients of New Hyde received? By Alex Brown | Published on June 11, 2026 Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC It’s the finale of the third season of The Terror: Devil in Silver, and it’s time to bid farewell to New Hyde. The Devil is ready to make a deal, and there will be hell to pay if Pepper refuses. The finale begins not in the present but in the past. Dr. Walter is retiring, but he isn’t letting that stop his mission to lobotomize everyone he can get his hands on. This version of Dr. Walter is more confident and fired up than the one from the previous episode. The Devil is in his head now and ready to make its escape, only to be thwarted by Arnold Visserplein. So it jumps hosts. It’s clear, now, that the reason the staff were overmedicating wasn’t just that they wanted compliance or were understaffed and needed to keep them calm so they could do the rest of their jobs. The medications were a replacement for lobotomies. With Dr. Walter no longer around—and lobotomies being largely discredited by the late 1970s (although they are still done today, in special circumstances)—the culture of medically induced compliance persisted. It becomes as much a part of New Hyde as the peeling linoleum and out-of-date technology. As the Devil says, New Hyde was always doomed. If it wasn’t Pepper, it would have been someone else. What was going on at New Hyde was unsustainable. The real question is would the truth ever come out or would it slide into obscurity? If Miss Chris has her way, justice will be served. In the present, a hurricane is barrelling toward New York, Dr. Anand and Dorry’s corpses are still on the ground, and a handful of patients, staff, family, and cops are trapped in the Devil’s playground. Pepper goes after the Devil through Arnold, now a decrepit, unconscious old man in a makeshift room behind the silver door, the same room where young Arnold was locked away after his violent outburst. The parallels between Arnold and Pepper are striking. Arnold achieved what Pepper tried to: kill the Devil. But that victory was short-lived. Dorry’s warnings to Pepper were based on what she saw with Arnold. Pepper could kill the body the Devil was squatting in, but that wouldn’t stop it. Arnold probably tried to fight the Devil’s influence as well, but my guess is he was so damaged by the lobotomy (or lobotomies) and medications that he couldn’t keep it contained. The Devil consumed him, body and mind, until there was nothing left but Arnold’s rage. He went after the patients who wanted to leave because that was at the root of Arnold’s fury; why should anyone else get out when he couldn’t.  Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Anthony and Loochie go after Pepper, albeit Anthony takes some convincing. Loochie isn’t one to mince words, but it’s obvious they are talking as much about themself as they are Pepper. Both Loochie and Pepper are trying to change, and both need the people they care about to trust in that process. They can’t get better, in more ways than one, without the support of their families. Loochie makes the one mistake you never do in a horror story: they split up, leaving Anthony as prime pickings for the Devil.  As unsettling as John Benjamin Hickey is as Dr. Walter, he’s not all that scary as a Big Bad, well, not until he rips his face off. I prefer my horror of the looming dread variety, so I’ve enjoyed that aspect of the show. The downside is that the show juices the horror with too many heavily telegraphed jump scares. I am a big ol’ baby when it comes to horror. The first two seasons, there were many times in each episode I had to watch with my hands over my face, peering between my fingers. This season I don’t think I’ve even gasped once, even with the jump scares.  While the Devil is distracted terrorizing the patients holed up in the lounge, Pepper crawls back into the real world. In the wake of the massacre, Scotch Tape makes a bloody escape to get help. Which leaves Loochie and Pepper at the mercy of the Devil. Like Arnold tried with Walter, Pepper strangles Anthony. “I won’t let you have him. I’ll fucking kill you.” He abandoned his son once before. Will he do it again? Or will he set his rage aside? The show layers in flashbacks in a heavy-handed attempt to demonstrate his quandary, but the Pepper who is trying to change can’t kill his own son. So he makes a trade. He takes the Devil out of Anthony and into himself. The Devil, eager to get out, lets them all go.  An indeterminate amount of time later, Pepper is in a new hospital, one that offers him a solo room and consent-based group therapy. Loochie has a medication regimen and is drawing Van Gogh paintings in full color now. “We all got our demons, don’t we?” asks Pepper. In his case, his demon is literal. Dr. Walter chatters at him endlessly, but it’s Anthony that keeps him centered.  I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending. I think the show made a strong point about the horrors of this type of institutionalization, the kind that treats patients like Medicare ATMs. I appreciated how much Pepper’s success at containing the Devil relied on the patients working together. Loochie and Anthony going after Pepper, Josephine and Scotch Tape guiding the patients to safety, Miss Chris helping Loochie escape, Mr. Waverly using his only words to ask after Mr. Mack. Getting out of New Hyde went from Pepper’s sole prerogative to a collective goal, and they needed each other to achieve it. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC However, the hopeful ending seems at odds with the actual situation. Pepper is benefiting from therapy, that much is clear, but I cannot understand why he is still in a long-term, in-patient facility when he has no diagnosable mental illnesses; despite the Devil’s claims, “pathological selfishness” isn’t a diagnosis. If anyone should have been released during a review of the disaster at New Hyde, it should be him. It makes no sense to me logistically and in such a way that for me it ended up undermining the point. The people I actually want to see get help are the patients who need it, like Mr. Mack or Sam and Sammy. I’m glad Pepper is in a nice place, but aside from the Devil shouting at him and some anger issues, the guy is mostly fine. Fingers crossed he’s stronger than Arnold and able to resist the Devil long enough to starve it out of existence. With the Devil as a real entity instead of a metaphor for a corrupt system working as intended, it shifts the blame in an uncomfortable way. Earlier in the season, the question was asked: Did the Devil make New Hyde what it was or did it take advantage of an already corrupt system? The ending dismisses the question entirely. It doesn’t matter who was there first because the Devil is responsible for all the current problems. Remove the Devil, and things are fine. Loochie is thriving, Pepper is dealing with his issues, the new hospital is great. It bothers me to reduce what is a problem with how our system functions—how our society treats disabled people, capitalism, imperialism, racism, misogyny, medical abuse, etc—to a single malevolent entity at a single corrupt hospital. The horror is more exciting when a guy’s face is rotting off, but less powerful in terms of Saying Something About the World. The ending is satisfying in terms of the resolution of Pepper’s arc, but unsatisfying in terms of what the show seemed to be trying to say about in-patient mental hospitals.  We’ve hit the end of our journey. While I don’t think the third season came close to the high water mark of the first season, The Terror: Devil in Silver was an intense ride that I enjoyed the hell out of. Regardless, I’m just glad to have more horror on my television. I wonder what book the show will adapt for season four? Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Quotes “You gonna shoot us all, Paw Patrol?” Lol, get him, Loochie. “Lots of impossible shit going on around here.” “Nah. Fuck that.” I hear you, Scotch Tape. The Black guy isn’t willingly walking into a horror movie. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Final Thoughts If you thought Dr. Walter’s 813 lobotomies were shocking, Dr. Freeman, who Dr. Walter is loosely inspired by, performed more than 3,500! The hurricane is unnecessary, in my opinion. The patients escape before it makes landfall, and we never see or hear the results of the damage.  Where the hell are all those other patients? Now we’re down to the core few, but two weeks ago there were several new faces. You mean to tell me after all these weeks Pepper still has his apartment? He has enough money to pay rent on a place he hasn’t lived in for at least two months?  If you’re thinking about trying Victor LaValle’s book next, do it! Fair warning, the book isn’t the same as the show. The bone structure is the same, but everything else, including Pepper, is pretty different.[end-mark] The post <i>The Terror: Devil in Silver</i> Makes a Deal in “Starry Night” appeared first on Reactor.