'The Killing' Recap: Seward Hangs, Linden Comes To Terms With His Possible Innocence

Things came to a standstill in The Killing’s Sunday night installment, ‘Six Minutes,’ as Seward (Peter Sarsgaard) counted down the hours until his execution with Linden (Mireille Enos) by his side.

Seward held onto the hope that Linden would be able to stay his execution until almost the very end, and it looked like a real possibility after he was able to identify one of the rings confiscated from Mills’ storage unit as Trisha’s. Linden rushes to call Holder (Joel Kinnaman), telling him to bring Trisha’s file over ASAP – if she can find further proof that the ring belonged to Trisha, then she could have a chance at saving Seward, at least for the time being. Linden is focused on the task at hand, but Seward is slowly losing it. They talk about their sons, Adrian (Rowan Longworth) and Jack, until Becker (Hugh Dillon) takes Seward away.

After fighting her way back into the visiting room, Linden tried to calm Seward down. He’s not having it – all he can think about is that the executioners might get his counterweight wrong and, instead of snapping his neck, he’ll suffer for six long minutes as he suffocates to death. He can’t help Linden with the case anymore, but he begs her to stay, and she does. Tensions between the two were mounting, Linden admitted that she had made a mistake and she was trying to fix it, and then Holder called.

Drunk and clearly off balance, Holder handed over Trisha’s file and stayed outside and crossed paths with Adrian while Linden went back inside. In the file, Linden found what she needed: a picture of Trisha wearing the ring – opening the possibility that Mills killed her and took the ring as a trophy after the crime. She’s on her way to get this new information to the Attorney General. It’s a Hail Mary play, and she knows it.

Outside, Linden talks to Adrian who has something to confess: he did see his father with his mother on the night of her murder, but he didn’t want his dad to get into more trouble, so he lied. Uh. Oh. Linden went straight to Seward to confront him.

Alas, only a few hours from his demise, Seward refused to play the game. He told Linden that it didn’t matter whether he had killed his wife in front of his son or not – he’s still in prison, awaiting his final meal. Seward appears to have given up, and so does Linden.

On her way out, Linden is stopped by a still drunk, yet wise, Holder, who tells her that she has to go back inside. He manages to talk her down, and she returns to face Seward. She now has news: the ring, the picture, the new evidence meant nothing, Seward was going to hang tonight for a crime he possibly did not commit.

Faced with the reality of his impending death, Seward manages to convey to Linden that he had gone back that night to get Adrian and take him away, to try to give him a better life. When he arrived, Trisha was already dead. Seward does not want to see his son, but Linden convinces him that Adrian needs to see his father.

Of course, Seward’s bad luck never runs out, and Becker keeps Adrian from visiting his father at the last minute. He sites some rules about visiting hours being over one hour before execution, but it does seems suspicious (not to mention, cruel.) If Seward wasn’t having a break down before, this sent him over the edge, and he cried as Linden and Adrian left. But Linden was able to send him a message: look at the trees, she said.

Moments later, as Seward was being escorted to his death, he looked out the window and saw Linden and Adrian, standing under the trees, waving. It was what he needed, and Seward made it to the execution room. Linden hoped that it wouldn’t happen, but the execution took place in the end, and Seward died, suffocating, as he had feared.

The Killing two-hour season finale airs Sunday at 9 P.M. on AMC.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong

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