‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Episode 5 Recap: Excommunication Breakdown

Some families are hunting grounds. In these families, the man of the house sees his wife and children not as people but as belongings. Slap a religious imprimatur on it, give it the blessing of God Himself, and there’s no telling how far things will go.

That seems to be the story of Under the Banner of Heaven as of the show’s fifth episode, titled “One Mighty and Strong.” That title refers to a prophesied leader who will return the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its true roots. Predatory losers Dan and Ron Lafferty seize on the concept and act accordingly. The bloodshed that followed was almost a foregone conclusion.

The portrayal of Dan and Ron in this episode is truly terrifying. According to information gleaned by investigators Jeb Pyre and Bill Taba, both brothers were excommunicated by the LDS church. In Dan’s case, it’s because he announced to his wife Matilda his intention to “marry” her 12 and 14 year old daughters. In Ron’s case, it’s because he beat his wife Dianna.

Credit has to go to actors Wyatt Russell and Sam Worthington for their portrayals of these two frightening figures. Russell, who’s as good as playing “insufferable weasel of a man” as anyone since James Woods in his prime, shifts gears radically. Instead of the blustery, impulsive figure we’ve seen in previous episodes, he’s presented here as a full-bearded radical, calmly explaining to his wife that it is God’s will that she accept her own daughters as a “sister-wives.” Matilda helps the children escape; they flee directly to their old church, where they’re taken in and subsequently fostered out by the bishop. They subsequently run away from their new home, meaning that both they and their mother are now missing persons.

Ron, seemingly less of a true believer at first, is a far cry from Dan’s sangfroid. When he returns home from church court, he roams around the house like a beast or a boogeyman, chasing his frightened children from one hiding place to the next. One of his daughters defaces his sacred undergarment, which he then wears like some sort of talismanic symbol. Worthington’s gritted-teeth affect, familiar to anyone who saw him years back in his various Hollywood blockbusters, is used to much more pointed effect here. He’s a square-jawed monster, following his brothers Dan and Sam and Robin into psychosis. And his punch to Dianna’s face, which precipitates his excommunication, is absolutely savage.

But in terms of familial violence, both Dan and Ron learned at the feet of their father Ammon. Ron visits the now-bedridden patriarch to taunt and humiliate him, and for good reason: Ammon beat his children and their mother alike. He beat their dog to death in front of them. He beat Ron’s brother Jacob so badly he was permanently brain-damaged by the ordeal. Now, Ron says, it’s Ammon’s turn to be kept from the doctor, the way his brother once was.

Helping Jeb and Bill piece all this together as they rush from one Lafferty hidey-hole to the next is a gosh-golly-gee fella by the name of Bernard Brady (Nicholas Carella), one of the infamous “bearded men” to whom brother Allen attributed his brothers’ downfall. But Brady’s no prophetic throwback, like the elusive white-bearded figure named “Onias” for whom Bill and Jeb are also searching—he’s just some suburban doofus who got drawn into the brothers’ orbit with a regular scriptural study group. It’s Brady who warns the cops that Ron is “capable of a lot more than just domestic violence.” Thanks to the words of his supportive mother, Ron believes he is the “One Mighty and Strong” now—a “proud new Lion of the Lord,” a “Latter-day Brigham Young” as Jeb puts it. With a hitlist that includes his own ex-wife, Ron is in the wind, and Bill forecasts more blood before it’s all said and done.

Crosscut with all of this is the ongoing saga of LDS founder Joseph Smith. According to Allen, a letter from Emma to Joseph was doctored by his more militant followers, putting their call for his surrender to local authorities after the destruction of a newspaper’s printing press in her words rather than their own. This surrender led directly to his death and the ascent of his disciple Brigham Young, an adherent to the hotly debated doctrine of polygamy. Dan and Ron would see this as just another perfidious wife leading her husband astray.

How are we in the audience supposed to see it? I’m not quite sure. This episode’s cross-cutting between past and present is less effective than previous episodes, I think. There’s a tenuous case being made that Emma Smith’s meddling in Joseph’s affairs led to his downfall just as Dianna’s led to Ron’s, but only in the sense that she opposed polygamy while others in Smith’s circle supported it; if Emma’s message encouraging her husband to surrender was doctored by truculent disciples as alleged, how is that Emma’s fault? And Joseph’s murder by a lynch mob feels only tangentially related to any of the present-day events, as does Brigham Young’s ascent as his primary successor. I guess the argument is that Ron fancies himself a Brigham Young, but it still feels slightly off-balance, as if past events are being shoehorned into the space occupied by the murder of Brenda Lafferty and her child.

The most interesting wrinkle, I think, is that the Laffertys were involved in something called “the school of the prophets”—a misnomer in LDS terms, given that only one prophet at a time is ever ordained as such. What does that plural “prophets” mean, and will it factor into the murder case at all?

Time will tell, and I’m inclined to give Under the Banner of Heaven time. While less successful than some of the previous episodes, this remains a fascinating study of a family’s fall from grace and the weaponization of faith against the vulnerable, shored up by powerful performances. I fully expect the link between past and present to be firmed up the closer we get to the case’s resolution. And I dread seeing exactly what kind of monsters Dan and Ron, the mighty and strong, have become.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.