Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen flips its own structure in Episode 4 and hands over control to Victoria Pedretti (The Haunting of Hill House) for a solid 15-minute stretch. What’s crazy is that this shift was not planned on paper, and it only happened because Victoria’s performance, along with Logan Miller’s, was too strong to cut away from.
Instead of jumping back to the present timeline, the episode stays with Alexandra’s story for a bit, and this one tiny decision changes how the horror in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen lands and how it makes Episode 4 feel like its own self-contained nightmare.
Episode 4 of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen gave up the original script because Pedretti’s scenes were too strong to cut
Episode 4 of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, titled “The Witness“, was not supposed to play out the way it did. The plan was to move between Rachel’s present and her parents’ past, but once Victoria Pedretti came in as Alexandra (Rachel’s mother), the showrunners decided to deviate from the script.
Showrunner Haley Z Boston told Radio Times exactly what happened, and she said,
“Victoria and Logan just did an incredible job and allowed me to to be able to structure the episode with, I think, 15 minutes of just their story. That’s not how the script was written.”
Boston added,
“It was challenging to depart from the main story and if you’re going to do that, you really need to compel the audience with a different character, a different story.”
And if you think about it, the risk taken for Episode 4 of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen surely paid off because Alexandra’s story was no filler, even though she was on screen for only 15 minutes.
Because of Victoria’s character, it is that we get to learn about the curse, the fear, and why Rachel’s life is already doomed before her wedding could even start.
Boston backed this up, too. She said,
“She’s so brilliant, so great in this genre, the way she captures fear, and she’s very good at externalising these very internal emotions.”
Alexandra’s wedding horror is the reason the show could afford that 15-minute takeover
The reason Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen lets Episode 4 slow down and stay in the past is because Alexandra’s story is brutal enough on its own to carry it.
Rachel is forced to watch a tape from 1997 by her own father, and in that tape, Alexandra is pregnant and in love. We then get to see her get married, and the wedding itself looks normal at first, and nothing really feels off.
Back in their hotel room, during what should have been a happy moment for the couple, Alexandra suddenly starts bleeding. First her nose. Then her eyes. The bleeding does not stop. She collapses, completely covered in blood, and that is the moment the show confirms that the curse is real.
Jay, completely panicked, cuts her open to save the baby, and that baby is Rachel. And a young Julian watches all of this from under the bed, which also connects directly to the “Sorry Man” story later.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen takes a big risk in Episode 4, and it works. The show pauses the main timeline and takes us back into learning about Alexandra’s story, letting that horror unfold slowly for a few minutes.
The result is one of the most disturbing parts of the series, and it is THE SCENE that fully explains the curse.
Stay tuned to Soap Central for more updates!
Edited by Priscillah Mueni