11.22.63 Episode 4 recap revisited: Jake closes in on Oswald as his double life begins to collapse

11.22.63 hit Hulu as an eight-episode miniseries on February 15, 2016, bringing Stephen King’s best-selling time-travel thriller to the screen.

The plot centers on Jake Epping, a high school teacher who stumbles onto a portal to 1960. He jumps at the chance to stop President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Once Jake steps into the past, he finds himself tangled up in the culture and politics of the early ‘60s. He also falls for Sadie Dunhill, a local librarian, which only pulls him deeper.

11.22.63 Episode 4 is titled The Eyes of Texas. It first aired on March 7, 2016. This one really pulls Jake deeper into his mission and messes with his personal life, too. Jake and Bill are closing in on Lee Harvey Oswald, piecing together what he is up to. At the same time, Jake’s double life isn’t holding up so well. His undercover work keeps running into his real relationships, especially with Sadie. The web of lies he has spun to protect himself starts to tangle, and suddenly he has to make some tough calls.

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11.22.63 Episode 4 recap: The Eyes of Texas

The past is no longer silently opposing Jake Epping. It’s watching him.

11.22.63 Episode 4, we begin late in March 1963, as Lee Harvey Oswald takes his time in assembling and disassembling a rifle in his small Dallas apartment. He mumbles Marine slogans to himself. On the outside, he is standing up against a fence as Marina takes photographs and George de Mohrenschildt observes. When George inquires why he would require such a weapon, Oswald answers simply: he will be hunting for fascists. Marina mocks how silly he appears. Jake Epping does not.

Jake and Bill Turcotte have taken their position under the Oswalds, making their operation a kind of claustrophobic stakeout. Jake stands there, holding that old, burned photograph, watching history click into place. Bill’s mind is somewhere else entirely. Marina spots Bill staring up at her and even flirting with her without realizing that she is about to blow a fuse emotionally. Jake is attempting to stop history. Bill is gradually drifting into it.

In Jodie, Jake starts to experience cracks in his carefully compartmentalized life. He and Sadie Dunhill creep into a music room at school, kissing each other and stealing a moment before Principal Deke Simmons clears his throat at the door. The warning Deke gives is calculated, yet serious: Sadie is a role model, a new type of woman, and Jake must exercise discretion. Jake nods, yet discretion never lived long in his circle.

In Dallas, Jake and Bill listen to their tapes, and George promises to introduce Oswald to powerful friends, apparently confirming Jake in his suspicion that Oswald might be involved with some larger operation, even a CIA operation involving General Walker. In 11.22.63 Episode 4, Jake is confronted by Ms. Mimi of the school before they can act. The lack of immunization records and discrepancies in his identity have drawn her attention.

When Jake is cornered, he makes up a lie that he is in witness protection since he testified against the Mafia, stretching it with facts he borrowed from The Godfather. Ms. Mimi trusts him, but still not without caution. Denying a man the truth, she says, is a denial of dignity.

That caution is looming over Jake when he makes his choice of coming nearer to Sadie instead of retreating. He rents a romantic bungalow in which he hopes to say something, not the truth, but at least enough. They even spend the night together without knowing they are under surveillance. Jake discovers in the morning that there has been an envelope containing photographs of them being intimate. He panics, thinking that the CIA is sending him a message. Whatever he intended to tell Sadie dies at that point in 11.22.63 Episode 4.

As Jake loses his grip, Bill crosses the line. He returns Marina’s child’s doll, sparking a brief, tender moment between them. It seems benign, but it is detrimental at its core. Bill is already too emotionally attached, and the Oswald house is anything but secure.

In 11.22.63 Episode 4, Jake and Bill tail Oswald and de Mohrenschildt to what they suspect is an undercover intelligence meeting, including a password, which is “candy bar.” They instead stumble into a high-end brothel. George is dancing with a prostitute, and Oswald is seated, stiff as a beam and boiling inside. Police raid the place before Jake makes sense of it. Perhaps we are not over the past. Deke gets them out and is furious and disappointed, and hauls Jake right to school as punishment.

Later that same day, Jake finds Sadie talking with Johnny Clayton, her ex-husband, but he is not exactly an “ex.” Sadie acknowledges that the divorce is not final. Johnny is adamant about signing the papers. During their conversation, she unveils the reality of her marriage: humiliation, violence, and rape, disguised through small-town demands of what a wife is supposed to tolerate. Jake is shocked to the point of revulsion toward Sadie, and she drives away, believing that she has ruined everything.

The tension in 11.22.63 Episode 4 is further enhanced as Johnny meets Jake later on the same day. The CIA was not taking photos; it was Johnny, giving a warning. Jake doesn’t back down. He intimidates Johnny, reveals his secrets, and compels him to give Sadie her divorce. Johnny appears to be rattled, the first time.

Meanwhile, Bill is powerlessly listening to Oswald swinging between tenderness and brutality. Bill wants to come to the aid of Marina when Lee beats her. Jake stops him. History should be maintained, even when it is ugly. Their fight almost breaks up their partnership, but later, Bill discovers Marina alone in pain and battered. He gives her a shoulder and a cigarette, and she accepts them both.

Ms. Mimi literally disappears from the school in 11.22.63 Episode 4, allegedly ill, as though to emphasize the vulnerability of all that surrounds them. Her coughing is a reflection of the cancer that used to define Al Templeton, indicating that the past is possibly pulling back in quieter, more insidious ways.

Jake and Bill make peace and renew their alliance. They have gone too far together to regress.

However, the personal life of Jake collapses. Sadie visits his house in Jodie with a casserole and a note that states she loves him. He isn’t home. As she passes the house, a shadow drifts out of sight, the Yellow Card Man, the silent observer of Jake’s time travel, circles the house. Sadie discovers the tape recorder and presses play.

Russian voices fill the room. Intimate. Incriminating.

Jake comes right after Sadie discovers that she actually does not know anything about the man she falls in love with.

“Who are you?” she asks.

And Jake is unprepared to lie the first time.

By the end of 11.22.63 Episode 4, it’s clear that Jake Epping’s biggest problem isn’t just history; it’s the life he is putting together while he is stuck in it. As people start watching Lee Harvey Oswald more closely and the conspiracy gets harder to figure out, Jake’s personal life starts spinning out fast. 11.22.63 Episode 4 wraps up on a cold, unsettling moment, driving home one of the show’s main points: try to rewrite the past, and the past pushes right back. Sometimes, it does that by dragging your deepest secrets right into the light.