Warning: this article contains spoilers for THEM season 1 and 2.
THEM: The Scare concluded with a couple of surprise twists during THEM’s season 2 ending, revealing the Emory family’s connection from THEM: Covenant. Marketed as a horror anthology series on Prime Video, THEM follows in the footsteps of other anthologies like American Horror Story by bringing in characters from different seasons to make an appearance or connecting stories together in unexpected ways. THEM introduces new characters and focuses on an entirely separate storyline in season 2, but slyly builds up to a revelation that puts the series as a whole into a fresh perspective.
The initial link between seasons was Deborah Ayorinde, who played the main character in both installments. She first starred as Livia “Lucky” Emory in THEM: Covenant, which mostly takes place in 1953’s Los Angeles. In THEM: The Scare, Ayorinde returns this time as Detective Dawn Reeve as she investigates a serial killer who ends up being her brother, Edmund. The setting is still Los Angeles, only this time between 1989 and 1991. The location and family ties indicate an ongoing throughline that could continue in a potential THEM season 3.
In the final episode of THEM: The Scare, Dawn finds herself in a memory that reveals her and Edmund’s birth mother as Ruby Lee Emory (Shahadi Wright Joseph) from THEM: The Covenant. In THEM season 1, Ruby is 14. In the flashback, she appears as a young woman holding her twin babies in her arms. Dawn being in the abusive foster home she grew up in as a child (and with the help of her forgotten brother’s now darkened spirit), allows her repressed memories to come flooding back.
She is also able to see the painful decision Ruby had to make when leaving her children in foster care, unaware that Bernice would end up being a cruel foster mother. Ruby says, “I’m not right. What I went through as a kid… it never left me.” This touches on the trauma Ruby and her family went through and creates another connection passed down from the Emory family to Dawn and Edmund. THEM’s main characters are tied together through blood and generational traumas that help to explain Da Tap Dance Man in season 2.
In the final moments of THEM: The Scare, Dawn discovers a photo of the Emory family from season 1 stuck to the back of a picture of her and Edmund as children. Confusion mounts as she looks over the photo and focuses on the woman in the image, Lucky, who looks exactly like her. The second Dawn notices that her grandmother could be her twin, Da Tap Dance Man (Jeremiah Burkett) from THEM: Covenant comes up the stairs and appears in Dawn’s bedroom doorway. The timing of his return arrives only after this revelation and Dawn’s trip down memory lane.
Da Tap Dance Man is one of a few ghosts in THEM season 1 who haunt Black families in 1950s Compton. He seems to be one of the spirits attached to the land before it was transformed into HOA properties. Da Tap Dance Man latches onto Henry, Lucky’s husband and Dawn’s grandfather, encouraging him to lean into his violent impulses. The ghost’s history is never made clear beyond the implication that he was a slave and the story he tells Henry about how some of his fingers were cut off for daring to eat a peach in the hot sun.
Da Tap Dance Man has layers of white and black paint or makeup on his face, acting as an allusion to white performers who used to wear blackface in minstrel shows as a racist means of mocking slaves and Black people in general. In the THEM season 1 ending, Henry ostensibly defeats the ghost and reclaims himself before wiping off the layers to reveal a white man underneath. Henry isn’t shocked, and neither should the audience be.
Da Tap Dance Man is the ghost of a white man pretending to be a Black one to cause harm to Black families by attempting to influence their anger to force them into dangerous situations. Dawn can see him now that she has uncovered her repressed memories and family history. The “curse” of this ghost may have passed on to her after Dawn opened herself to the spirit world following generations of trauma within the Emory family. Furthermore, the final scene’s focus on Dawn and Lucky being “twins” in appearance could be another reason the ghost was awakened.
Now that the Emory family and their bloodline have been established as a throughline for the series, along with the time jumps in distinct decades, the probable setting and time period of THEM season 3 is clear — if the show is renewed. THEM: The Scare brought Dawn and Edmund’s story (and the return of Da Tap Dance Man) into the ’90s. A new iteration in the present day would make the most sense. The setting of current Los Angeles could follow an older Kel Reeve, Dawn’s son, or his children.
Beyond the reveal of the Emory family’s story continuing throughout generations, the biggest question in THEM regards Dawn and Lucky. At first, it seemed like the show and the audience accepted Ayorinde playing both characters as making complete sense because the series is an anthology. American Horror Story, for example, has utilized many of the same actors to star as new characters in additional seasons. The intriguing twist in THEM: The Scare, however, is how the final moments of the finale are not really focused on the family but on Dawn reacting to seeing herself in Lucky.
Dawn could have easily found a solo picture of her mother, but the point was to have her see her grandmother, Lucky, alongside the whole family. To what end, though? If THEM returns for a season 3, will the show address the similarities between the two women as a plotline, along with the reappearance of Da Tap Dance Man? Whichever character a potential new season follows after THEM: The Scare, there would have to be an explanation for how Dawn dealt with this ghost, her connection to Lucky beyond being her granddaughter, and if the Emory family curse continues.