Cross Season 2 Episode 7’s Bloodbath Proves You Don’t Need Enemies When You Have Shady Friends

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

Let me just take a moment to pour one out for my favorite faithful, psychopathic soldier. I’m going to miss you, Donnie.

Cross Season 2 Episode 7 comes gun blazing, quite literally, as the hour sets up what shall be a pretty intense season finale.

And yes, the penultimate episode of the season dropped more bodies, including Donnie.

If there were ever any doubts about how monstrous and self-serving Lance is, we got it on full display when he murdered his supposed friend Griffith in hopes of securing incriminating footage or audio of their misdeeds.

Lance and his God complex never cease to make me roll my eyes, but the problem, you see, is that Matthew Lillard is so damn captivating to watch that even when Lance is being a slimy demon, I can’t look away.

Boo! Hiss. Somewhere, I know Lillard is eating it up. After our interview, I’m certain he knows the hold he has on people!

But what happens when you have someone backed into a corner is that they’ll go feral trying to fight their way out instead of just accepting their damn fate.

Luz has them in a vice grip, whether they want to acknowledge that or not. She’s murdered most of Lance’s cronies, and there aren’t too many people remaining for her to complete her mission.

Unless Cross can succeed in capturing Luz and running interference, Lance is as good as dead. The fight he’s putting up is just making the game more fun.

Luz meant business when it came to threatening cronies, and they gathered at that location, scared out of their minds over what they wanted to do next. And, of course, they had Lance in their ear, trying to undermine deals.

The one who suffered in the most shocking of ways was Nuri. The pacemaker death was jarring and genuinely alarming.

It’s clear that Lance calls the shots, and he lured some of these people into things that they deeply regretted. I was actually thrilled to see Griffith strike his deal with Luz, turn over the money, and hope to put Lance in his place.

It wasn’t surprising that he had an insurance policy and that he wasn’t afraid to use it. When you do dirt, it’s just covering your bases. Again, this season and its prescience stand out because, of course, there was blackmail evidence that allowed people to keep doing unthinkable things.

Lance going feral and beating Griffith to death was shocking, and you can tell even Lance didn’t think that through. After all, he didn’t find all the information he needed to secure that footage.

But Luz and Donnie did.

And that’s where the suspicions that have been lingering for some time came to fruition. Luz’s aunt is in on all of this and knows so much more than she lets on.

She’s been calling the shots or often trying to manipulate Luz into doing things that she’d prefer. Even Luz has mentioned feeling more like she was shaped to be a weapon.

Every time it seems like Luz has gone off course, there’s her aunt trying to redirect her or shift things back to where she prefers.

She was adamant that they hadn’t secured that footage, when in actuality, it made more sense that they’d have it. It would tell them the truth about everything.

The only reason you wouldn’t want that footage is if you wanted to bury the truth, which leaves me wondering how Luz’s aunt factors into all of this.

Donnie was such a dutiful soldier for the cause, tracking Griffith’s brother down and even killing to get to that recording device.

I’m fascinated by how Cross Season 2 has gone out of its way to portray the bloodbath that Luz and Donnie unleash on innocents, sacrificing them, making them expendable and disposable collateral damage to their cause.

It’s likely the only thing that ever keeps people from fully supporting their vigilantism.

Luz and Donnie took out so many innocents during Cross Season 2 Episode 6, and this time around, Luz killed the young woman she went to visit when she really didn’t have to, and Donnie took out that elderly man when he could’ve just kept it moving.

Hell, he almost took out Two John, too.

At some point, it’s clear that they’ve got so wrapped up in a singular mission that they’ve lost sight of what they were advocating for in the first place. If you’re spilling the blood of so many innocents, don’t you start looking like your enemy?

Nevertheless, even with his brutality and the way he came after characters I love, it still broke my heart seeing his execution. He barely even saw it coming because you never expect someone you care about to take you out.

She even thanked him for being such a good friend to Luz and being so loyal when she pulled the trigger. I’m going to miss Wes Chatham’s stint on Cross. Donnie was a man of few words but all about that action, and as loyal as it gets, and I respect that.

But at what point does Luz put things together? Her aunt has been moving shady for a while now. I’m curious to see what their standoff will be like if she finally figures everything out.

Clare now has Luz trained on Cross after lying about him killing Donnie, so Luz’s thirst for vengeance may still cloud her judgment.

I lost one of my loyal psycho killers, but at least I still have Bobby Trey, and it seems he’s taking care of that Felecia problem. He was eager to do something, so I’m glad Kayla threw him a bone.

And to be fair, it was self-preservation on her part. Bobby Trey has a lovely way of rolling in for a scene or two and completely stealing the show, and I love that for me.

But after speaking with Roy and his slip-up, Kayla pieced together that Maggie was Mastermind, and she didn’t blow her brains out after all. Well, that’s nice, I guess.

I can definitely understand why Kayla doesn’t want any parts with these people. Who does that?

They didn’t exactly treat this storyline as the B-story it’s been. And I was also okay with Sampson having a more prominent role in this investigation during the hour.

But the thing with LaDonna was still irksome. He bonded with her, looked into the murder case, and found out who the real killer was.

And none of that mattered because now LaDonna wants to protect her man. Spare me while I go scream into a pillow in frustration.

Nana Mama said LaDonna would break his heart and disappoint him, and she wasn’t lying.

But she still should’ve been honest with him, and as much as I welcomed her and John having a long-awaited talk, it was annoying that she also acted like she didn’t know where he was coming from.

There had to be a better way of protecting John without telling him that his mother was dead. It caused him such heartbreak, but in addition to that, he felt the pressure of being a foster kid, where he kept feeling as if he had to be perfect to secure a home.

So much undue pressure and pain could have been alleviated if they had had conversations at any point, and the Cross family handled this with some transparency.

But something tells me we won’t dig into this too much. We only have one episode to wrap up all the story arcs, and some things will have to take a back seat to do that.

Over to you, Cross Fanatics.

How do you feel about those deaths? Let’s discuss everything below!

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