TV

Fire Country Fans Still Baffled By How Rebecca's Death Was Handled

Fire Country Fans Still Baffled By How Rebecca's Death Was Handled
Image credit: Legion-Media

Hit show experienced some missteps during its debut season.

Fire Country is a new series, whose main character, Bode Donovan (Max Thieriot), had enlisted into the California Conservation Camp Program in which prison inmates serve as assistants for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as Cal Fire.

Fire Country's first season enjoyed success, and it already has been renewed for Season 2.

From the beginning the tone of Fire Country has been dark and dramatic.

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The characters are struggling with their own issues, which is only to be expected when a good part of the cast have volunteered for a dangerous duty in hopes of redeeming themselves and shortening their sentences. And there is the looming threat of wildfires, plaguing the state, even fiercer and less predictable than in real life.

So, it is not unexpected for one of the characters to die. However, a death which occurred in Episode 15 of Season 1 (False Promises) left some of the viewers quite baffled. This might have something to do with the narrative bait-and-switch employed by the episode.

At its very beginning of that episode it becomes obvious that someone important to Bode just died, as we see him distraught and running through the woods, saying, "We lost her, she's gone."

Then time is rolling back by 15 hours, so we can witness what exactly led to Bode's breakdown. Throughout the episode, there are two obvious options – Bode's mother, Chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr), who is at the hospital for a kidney transplant, and a fellow firefighter, Eve Edwards (Jules Latimer), who is trapped under a tree and struggling to breathe.

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However, as it happens, the victim is neither of them, but Rebecca Lee (Fiona Rene), another member of the California Conservation Camp Program and a less important character than Eve, who tries to free the latter and manages to get her to safety, but in the process has the tree falling on herself, which caused fatal internal bleeding.

Her death is sudden, and happens just so that the showrunners can have their drama, while allowing a more popular character to live. While Rebecca was not the star of the show, neither she was an extra, and, as a number of Fire Country's fans on Reddit have agreed, "her character deserved a better exit."