Resurrection, the new supernatural series about a boy who resurfaces 32 years after his apparent death, premiered on ABC Sunday night.

'Resurrection' Recap

In a rice paddy in China, a little boy clad in jeans and a red sweatshirt wakes up, takes in a large breath and wanders through the nearby town. There, after he’s approached by a concerned couple, he faints. The boy’s story is later recounted to Agent Martin Bellamy (Omar Epps). All the agent has to work with to identify the boy is the inscription of “Jacob” inside his shirt and its Mansfield Panthers logo.

Bellamy eventually contacts the Arcadia, Mo., police department and asks if there are any missing children. The sheriff informs the agent that no kids are missing from the town and promptly hangs up. Still convinced that Arcadia is the boy’s home, he asks Jacob (Landon Gimenez) if he’d know his house if he saw it. Bellamy takes his smile as a yes and brings him to the Langston home.

Jacob Reunites With Parents

Inside Jacob’s childhood home, his parents, 32-years-older than the last time he saw them, are doing a crossword puzzle together. Henry (Kurtwood Smith) is incredulous when Bellamy suggests he’s found his son, emphasizing that Jacob died three decades ago. Jacob, hiding by the porch, begins an old joke they shared together; when Henry mindlessly finishes it, he realizes it just might be his son. Watching close behind, Lucile (Frances Fisher) disbelievingly says her son’s name.

In shock, Henry tells Bellamy the story of Jacob’s death. He was just eight-years-old when he fell in the river. Jacob’s Aunt Barbara (April Billingsley), Henry’s sister-in-law, had followed him into the water to try to save him. Neither Jacob nor Barbara survived. While Henry is talking to Bellamy, Lucile approaches her son, who acknowledges his mother looks a bit different. Touched, she grazes his face, both laughing and tearing.

Eventually, the sheriff Bellamy had spoken to on the phone shows up and it turns out he’s Jacob’s Uncle Fred (Matt Craven). Fred’s daughter Maggie treats Jacob at the hospital later after he suffers a seizure. Jacob notes that Maggice looks remarkably like his late Aunt Barbara. Jacob also reveals that Barbara was the one who fell in the river first – and that there was a man there with them at the time of the incident.

Pastor Tom Hale Meets His Childhood Friend

Later on, Jacob meets the local pastor, who introduces himself as Tom Hale (Mark Hildreth). Jacob is duly confused, as Tom Hale was his childhood friend, not a middle-aged man. In a flashback, Jacob and a much younger Tom are playing war with toy soldiers. An astute Jacob, trying to piece everything together, asks his old friend if he died.

Also trying to understand Jacob’s story is Bellamy, who’s going through microfiche archives with Maggie’s help. He wants to know what was recorded about her mother, Barbara’s death. Bellamy realizes that everything Jacob has told him so far is accurate. Meanwhile, Jacob has escaped from the hospital and is back at his home. Realizing their son is missing, the Langstons get a ride from the police and see him just as he starts to run towards the river. When the police catch up to the boy, he’s digging an action figure out of a tree.

While Lucile feeds Jacob inside the house, Bellamy tries to get a bit more information about what he remembers from the day he supposedly died. He reveals that he’d been by the water looking for arrowheads when he heard his aunt scream. When he looked out, he saw a man holding onto her arm and went in to try to save her. The man, according to Jacob, is in a picture by the piano. After hearing the story and getting the DNA test results, Bellamy goes to find Henry, who’d gone to the cemetery where they’d buried Jacob. He tells the man that the boy is his son, according to the DNA test.

Henry Gives Fred Some Bad News; Elaine Gets Her Dad Back

After accepting the truths Bellamy shared with him, Henry pays a visit to his brother. He tells Fred that the man Jacob identified – the other man who had been at the scene of the incident – was a man with whom his late wife Barbara had been carrying on an affair.

Maggie and her best friend Elaine (Samaire Armstrong), meanwhile, are celebrating Jacob’s resurrection, when Elaine gets a call from her unhinged brother Ray (Travis Young). Ray is wielding a gun when they arrive, and yelling about there being a man inside the shed. When the man comes out – the man who’d been spotted hitchhiking to Arcadia throughout the episode – they realize it’s their father, who like Jacob, was believed to be dead.

– Chelsea Regan

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