Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Yaga Season 1, Episode 4. Episodes 1-4 are now streaming on AMC+ in the US and Crave in Canada, with new episodes releasing on Fridays at midnight PT.
The latest episode of Yaga pulls out all the stops to create the most incredible entry in the series so far. It’s aptly named “Dance With The Devil.”
We begin with Rapp having another vision, this time of Pam mixing together a drug or potion in a lab while wearing a white coat and the sinister mask from Episode 3 over her face. As she opens her coat, we see she’s not wearing a top and has the Triskelion symbol tattooed on her sternum. Rapp blinks and immediately is brought back to the reality of sitting on the other side of an interrogation room at the police department, while Carson is pressing Pam about her involvement with Logan the night he died.
As Pam insists she did nothing wrong, she does admit to loving Logan, and that she had an intimate relationship with him even after he started obsessing over Henry, who she deemed as being “such a fucking narcissist” for loving the attention he received from Logan.
Clark Backo utterly glows as Carson in this episode – the balance of sweet and intimidating in her intensity while interrogating Pam is mind-blowing. We really get to see her step fully into her role and it’s phenomenal.
Read IGN’s Previous Yaga Reviews
Yaga Episodes 1 & 2 Recap and ReviewYaga Episode 3 Recap and Review
While Carson is pressuring Pam to cave and give any information she’s withholding, she tricks her into admitting to having a threesome with Henry and Logan. In shots of the intimate scenes, we hear from Pam how obsessed Henry is with himself, saying it was his idea and “he didn’t like the idea of someone taking something that belonged to him,” referencing Logan. We see Pam and Logan eventually having sex, while Henry watches and pleasures himself in the corner, with Pam saying that Henry said it was like “watching a movie of himself” and being utterly entranced by Logan.
A theme that’s developing more prominently in every episode is men in this show consistently becoming more creepy and perverted. We have Rapp hitting on basically everyone, Logan with his disturbing tape recordings last episode, and in this episode, Officer Eckert, played by Patrick Gilmore, makes several side comments alluding to his attraction to Pam, who is a noticeably younger woman compared to himself – not to mention a suspect in a murder case, which just shows how unhinged his attraction is.
In search of more concrete evidence, Rapp and Carson head to the motel to have a chat with Angel about her tattoo. She confirms it is a Triskele (a variation of the Triskelion) with multiple potential meanings: death, life, and rebirth; fertility; the triple goddess; and past, present, and future.
We learn about a new character, Laney – an older Ukrainian woman who makes pottery and holds sabbats (guided meditations) in the woods. She creates “Villy,” the drug powder Rapp had taken the other night, which keeps showing up in places, including in Henry and Logan’s house. Angel very clearly states Villy is not a drug, but an “ethical organic dissociative tonic – a cure for every ailment” which we find out is made from chicken blood and human bone, and is taken during these sabbats for people to “manifest their dreams” and basically trip out.
Angel nonchalantly shares that, yes, Henry and Logan were both at these gatherings, piquing the interest of the buddy-cop duo, who fib to get more information out of her by any means necessary in order to find Laney.
As they drive to Laney’s house, the overhead drone shots where we see the car weaving through trees, and which are such a common motif in film and TV these days, take on a hauntingly beautiful feel which is enhanced by the entrancing score.
Carson and Rapp arrive at Laney’s house and, as they are peering around, they see someone fleeing from the premises. Unfortunately, they cannot identify who it is.
We see them searching carefully throughout Laney’s pottery studio and finding handmade jars that have the Triskele symbol on it – something Angel had said is “a mark of power.” Rapp comes across a worn-looking leather journal of Laney’s which is filled with sketches and recipes in Ukrainian – including what we now know to be the recipe for Villy. One of the sketches is of Baba Yaga’s house on chicken feet, and shockingly, another is of Henry wearing a flower crown while holding a chicken.
After digging for the whereabouts of Laney, they find out she’s at the hospital after suffering a fall, and are told she’s apparently delirious.
As Rapp and Carson arrive at the hospital, they find out Laney is, in fact, chaotically delirious, although it’s hard to tell how much of her character is deranged and how much she’s trying to deflect the questions Rapp is pressing her with, because she clearly knows things that are integral to finding Henry…
“He wants to dance with the devil.”
Rapp pushes her to share anything she knows about Henry, and as she sees a photo of him, she calls him a “bad dog” and says “he wants to dance with the devil.”
Carson steps into the hallway to answer a phone call from Eckert and finds out there was a video uploaded to Henry’s social media account. The utterly insane video shows Logan’s bedroom, complete with blood splattered around his window, as we saw last episode. The person recording shifts and moves the camera over the window ledge and we see Logan lying naked on the ground outside his bedroom window after he was allegedly murdered.
The person recording the video all of a sudden angles the camera onto a mirror in the room, seeing themselves in the reflection, wearing the creepy mask that appeared in Rapp’s visions more than once. They hold the shot on themselves for a few seconds before ending the video. Rapp and Carson now have a huge piece of evidence in Logan’s death that they need to decode.
We flip back to Rapp inside Laney’s hospital room, hearing him going back and forth asking her questions about Henry and “the devil” to get any type of answer. Laney keeps saying “wrong question!” over and over again like it’s a game. Then the music escalates, Laney’s heart rate spikes, the shots get tighter and faster going back and forth between them, and we finally hear Rapp yell “Who is the devil?!”… and everything stops.
Laney’s heart rate slows down as she grabs Rapp’s hand and kisses his palm saying, “Baba Yaga.” She cackles right before dropping back onto her bed as her heartrate flatlines. Laney’s dead.
