In Locke & Key “The Black Door,” Kinsey is still fearless and reckless and Tyler is done trying to reign her in for her own good and the good of the rest of his family. Bode is trying to sort out ways to stop Lady Dodge from getting the rest of the keys now that he’s realized she can’t just take them from him. Sam is out of prison, all fired up and headed to the Key House to wreak havoc and be the bestest sidekick Lady Dodge could ask for. Kinsey tricks the film crew into going into the caves with her to film their movie’s final scenes, as a rouse to explore the black door since Tyler isn’t willing to go along with her ill-thought-out plan. Nina is still trying to sort out what Joe Ridgeway wanted to tell her the night he was murdered and thanks to some memory jars hidden in the backyard, the kids learn that their dad may or may not have been a murderer.

WHAT WORKED: The sibling dynamic, Kinsey wants to be treated as an adult, Tyler is tired of being the adult and finally decides to let go and Bode IS the only actual adult. Kinsey and Tyler are stealing dealing with the residual effects of their trauma and are acting accordingly but, throw the impending doom and teenage angst into the mix and it creates a tasty cocktail of realism. The writing in “The Black Door” is just as consistent and story progressing as the rest of the season and I like that it’s not trying to throw everything at you at once. There’s something to be said about a story that unfolds in a way where you can keep the focus on the central story and enjoy the side stories as they unravel. At its core I find that Locke & Key is a great story about a family, first and foremost, they’re just dealing with some supernatural dark stuff on top of it all and it gives what could be just another piece of teenage, supernatural fluff a real heart.

WHAT DIDN’T: I can forgive a lot of the bad choices that the Locke kids make in this show, they’re kids and kids do dumb stuff because they’re learning. Some of the adult’s actions in this show seem a little silly and off even if they can’t remember the keys. I know that in shows where kids take center stage, there is often a sense of making the adults in their world bumbling, know nothing idiots but, here the adults aren’t stupid, they’re just not clear, goal-orientated or logical in their actions and often seem like an afterthought to the writers. It’s not enough to turn me off the show but, it is enough to make you pause the few times an adult shows up in the show because it’s usually not to provide guidance but, to do something that might put the kids in danger. It’s not enough to make the show unwatchable but, it is enough to be a little annoying.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Locke & Key seems to be the master of the slow burn, you can tell that the creative team really wants to make the decade long wait for this show something the OG comic fans can really enjoy. This was not a show made to watch, walk away and come back to, it’s a show that is specifically crafted for the binge. Individually each episode doesn’t hold it’s own because it’s meant to be consumed as a whole but, when you get to this episode and you start to see that all the pieces do fit together and the creators have made a carefully crafted and beautiful dark world, it’s easy to push through from this episode until the finale to see how it all falls into place. I really like the pacing of the series as a whole because this show was tailored to the medium that it was made for.

OVERALL: 9.0