Underground Recap: Troubled Water

No one said running was going to be easy. And Noah (Aldis Hodge), Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Henry (Renwick Scott) and Cato (Alano Miller) have figured that out for themselves the hard way. Although they all have one goal in mind, there’s friction among the group, and it looks as though everyone is turning on one another.

When their original plans are thwarted, the runaways find a new one when they spot a riverboat filled with white people. They decide to seize the opportunity and hijack the boat, kicking off all the passengers, but little do they know, they have a stowaway.

August and his son Ben are right on their trail as they make their way in the boat. August starts shooting and hops onto the boat. As a fight breaks out, August grabs Rosalee and they both go flying into the water. As Cato and Noah watch Rosalee fend for herself, Cato urges Noah to shoot, but he doesn’t have a clear shot. Noah says that Rosalee can’t swim, and as she goes underwater, Noah and Cato panic.

But Rosalee’s secret is that she can swim. As she swims away from August, Noah shoots him between the shoulder blades. As the runaways float down the river, August and Ben come across one of the white women who were thrown off the boat. She begs August to let her travel with them, and you can tell Ben has a thing for the much older woman. But she has a thing for August.  

Back on the plantation, Tom Macon’s (Reed Diamond) wife gives birth, while the Rev. Willowset is visiting. Earlier, the reverend had caught the tail end of an “intimate” moment between Macon and Ernestine (Amirah Vann). When Macon announces that he’s named his newborn son Samuel, you can tell Ernestine is feeling some kind of way, especially since her own son is named Sam, which leads me to believe that all of Ernestine’s children are Macon’s. Macon asks the reverend to hold a baptism ceremony for his son and the slaves.

John Hawkes (Marc Blucas) and his wife, Elizabeth (Jessica De Gouw), are still renovating their home to help runaway slaves. But the marshal still has his suspicions about the couple. But instead of arresting them, he deputizes Hawkes and hands him a gun to help him hunt slaves.

Back to the boat.

Noah finds the stowaway, and even though the white guy says he can help them out, Cato isn’t trying to hear it. He throws the stowaway overboard and leaves him to drown.

But where does Rosalee disappear to? Cato tries to tell Noah that Rosalee is weak and only holding them back, so it’s better off that she’s gone. But is she really gone?

August and Ben’s relationship takes another turn. The woman Ben is crushing on ends up sleeping with his father. And Ben finds August in the bed drunk and naked. As the father-and-son slave-hunting duo get back on the trail of the runaways, August comes across rival slave hunters. But right as they are about to shoot each other up, they’re ambushed by Native Americans.

As Noah, Cato and Henry continue their journey, still wondering what happened to Rosalee, they spot her with a group of armed Native Americans who’ve just ambushed the slave hunters.

Underground airs Wednesday nights at 10 p.m ET on WGN America.