Home > Categories > Entertainment > Television > The Following: The Third and Final Season review
After a harrowing game of cat and mouse that led to the capture of serial killer and cult leader Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) in Season Two, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) has finally moved on. He's returned to the the FBI to work with his niece, Max Hardy (Jessica Stroup) and partner Mike Weston (Shawn Ashmore) and hes found new love with Dr Gwen Carter (Zuleikha Robinson).
But Ryan's happiness is quickly shattered when another threat arises to tear open old wounds and expose the sins of the past.
With Joe awaiting execution, the team must unravel a twisted matrix of murder before it destroys them all. Behind it lies a horrifying possibility: Can someone even more dangerous then Joe Carroll be at large?
Don't miss a suspensefilled moment of Season Three's 15 tense, unpredictable episodes.
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With Season One we where introduced to Joe Carroll. Season Two we met Lily Gray and her two sons Luke and Mark and in Season Three there is no shortage of cray-cray murderous psychopaths. Unfortunately it was not as good as its predecessors.
The Following is one of the only programmes I have watched where I find myself routing for the 'bad guy' and all I want is the 'good guys' to die. Joe Carroll has so much charisma and personality you can't help but full for his charm even when he has a knife to someones throat. His sweet smile and relaxing voice is so intoxicating. I love the fabricated relationship he has with Ryan even if it is at times all in his own head. I was so disappointed that he was hardly in this season and had very limited screen time. He was the "Following" and the major draw card for the whole series. Even with the introduction of so many new people, although they had there moments, did not reach the same scale as what Joe did. He was the heart of the show.
I found this season more about Ryan and his two lackies. The three of them seemed to be smarter than anyone else in the FBI and could solve the case purely by themselves. Proven by Max while in the hospital with only a laptop, managed to pin point exactly where the missing car had gone. All of the FBI with all of there resources could not. Or how she could find a phone in an apartment building by only a ping and locate its percise location in the basement (even though the world still can not find that missing Malaysian plane). The arogance of the three of them was so grating that I wanted anyone at all to slash their throats. The problem was there were so many occasions this could of happened but it was so obvious they would be victorious. You could almost see the writers sitting around a table thinking what crazy situations should we put these three in and what 'Macgyver' antic should they use to break away. The cockiness of Mike was so disturbing that even I wanted to grab a gun and just shoot him myself.
This season was not as fast paced as the previous seasons and I found it took a long time to set up the action shots. Bringing in so many new characters and trying to explain their back stories took its time. At times you where not sure who the bad guy was and what would happen. I am still in shock over what happened to Joe.
I did not like that Theo was a perfect murder machine at the start and was as cool as a cucumber but by the end he was making rookie mistakes and could no longer shoot someone standing right in front of him. For years he had been killing people and was not even on the polices radar. Wiping information off computers and covering his tracks as he went. Then all of a sudden he was just leaving evidence lying around and all emotional it was just silly. Its like the writers had forgotten what had happened in the early episodes and focused purely on Ryan looking good.
It says this is the last season, but it has completely left open a new story line which would focus solely on Ryan and his slow demise into the potential new Joe Carroll. This could be really interesting if he just let himself go completely instead of being such a control freak. I really do not like his character as he is so egotistical and uptight and definitely has a god complex but when he started torturing Theos sister it took a surprisingly good turn that they should of delved deeper with.
I note that Kevin Bacon was one of the producers for the series. It's like he said 'hey make it all about me and make me look good. Put me in dangerous situations that no one should escape from but let me walk out the hero and be idolised by everyone'. The whole credibility of the show went straight out of the window by about episode ten. Which is really sad as did start off with so much potential.
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"There's more to a person than the things they have done"
from 'Eastenders' TV show.