“Locke & Key” Season 2 debuted on Netflix in October 2021, perfect timing for Halloween, but now that the series is returning for its third and final season, you might need a refresher.
New adventures, characters and keys awaited the Locke family in Season 2 as they recovered from their first epic battle with the demon Dodge, and the second season only revealed that things were about to get even more complicated for Bode, Tyler and Kinsey.
Based on the comics by Joe Hil, Netflix’s “Locke & Key” will return to Netflix on Aug. 10. Here’s everything you need to remember from Season 2 before the final season.
The Premiere
Episode 1 opens with a flashback to British Captain Frederick Gideon (Kevin Durand), who came upon the Lockes back in 1775. Gideon and his soldiers ran to the sea caves with the dark door to hide from rebel soldiers. They stumble upon the portal, and after Gideon sees one of his redcoat soldiers get hit with a bullet of demonic Whispering Iron, he subjects himself to the same fate, becoming a host for the echo/demonic force that Dodge is.
Gabe (Griffin Gluck), who is actually another disguise for Dodge (Laysla De Oliveira), the echo of the demon that took over Lucas Caravaggio (Felix Mallard) is determined to make new keys, so he and Eden (Hallea Jones) go to the sea caves to search for pellets of Whispering Iron. Kinsey (Emilia Jones) and her filmmaking friends put on a fancy premiere for their film “The Splattering,” during which Eden devours a human body.
Gabe and Kinsey are dating after the love triangle that formed between them and Scot (Petrice Jones) in Season 1, but it seems like Kinsey might still have feelings for Scot. Tyler is dating Jackie (Genevieve Kang), who was friends with Eden before she got latched onto by whatever force is behind the black door.
Bode still discovers new things inside Keyhouse in the absence of his friend Rufus (Coby Bird), whose mother Ellie Whedon (Sherri Saum) is still “missing.” Dodge used Ellie as a decoy, changing her into the woman Dodge becomes with the Identity Key so the kids mistakenly throw her into the blue portal world in the Omega cave.
Scot reveals that he has applied to a prestigious film school in London, and the competition has narrowed down to him and one other person.
Gabe’s First Key Doesn’t Work
Episode 2 opens with Eden luring an innocent fisherman on whom to test their new Demon Key. All that happens is the poor guy dissolves into bones and mush (kind of like the Mindflayer substance in “Stranger Things”). In the shack they operate out of, they also have Kinsey’s fear monster in a cage. Gabe later approaches Bode and starts to play around with the keys. Bode offers the Ghost Key to Gabe/Dodge, so he goes into that realm and confronts Chamberlain Locke (Chris Britton) about making keys. Chamberlain knows Gabe is up to no good because he can see the parasitic demon on Gabe’s back. He tells Gabe to imbue the key with intention, and that a drop of fresh-cut blood is required as the final ingredient (though he didn’t specify that it’s actually Locke blood that’s needed).
Introducing Josh Bennett and Erin Voss
Nina Locke (Darby Stanchfield), the widowed wife of Rendell Locke and mother to Bode, Tyler and Kinsey, has taken up a job restoring the high school theater. On her first day, she meets Josh Bennett (Brendan Hines), the history teacher at Matheson Academy, but he does not make the best first impression on Nina.
Jackie has unfortunately started to lose herw memory of the magical keys, and Tyler realizes it’s because her eighteenth birthday is coming up, and adults don’t remember the magic. Kinsey, after visiting her dad’s old ex-girlfriend Erin Voss (Joy Tanner) in the psychiatric ward where she has been in a catatonic state for the past 20 years, realizes that using the Head Key on Erin might get them some more answers.
Twenty-three years ago, Erin Voss accidentally got locked inside her own head after she used the Head Key in Keyhouse and the housekeeper found her in the trancelike state that the Head Key produces. The housekeeper tries to shake Erin awake and in doing so, loosens the Head Key from the back of her neck, leaving her trapped in her own mind.
Kinsey and Tyler find the younger version of Erin (Nicole James) inside her head, and they bring her back out, returning her mind to her body. Erin plans to stay at Keyhouse until her trust fund money comes through, but she wants to destroy the keys because they are dangerous.
Bode and Jamie’s Adventures
Bode befriends Jamie Bennett (Liyou Abere), yes Josh’s daughter, at school after making a presentation about what he did over the summer and most of his classmates laughed about the notion of the keys. Jamie tells Bode she thinks it was really cool, and Bode explains to her everything that has happened to his family regarding the keys.
Nina and Josh arrange a playdate for the kids, where Jamie shows Bode a miniature model of Keyhouse that Josh has. Bode found the mini key that fits in the dollhouse, so he and Jamie test it out, realizing that it shows the viewer what is happening in Keyhouse in real-time. This will come in very handy later. Nina takes Bode home before he can grab the key, which remains in the door of the dollhouse. A spider gets inside the model, and since the key is in the door, the spider becomes a giant in the real Keyhouse. Tyler, Bode, Erin and Duncan run away from it while Bode calls Jamie to help. She kills the spider.
Gabe’s Second Key Doesn’t Work
Gabe attempts a second key with the blood instructions Chamberlain provided him. When it doesn’t work again, he visits Chamberlain once more to demand what he knows. Chamberlain tells Gabe that he knows his intentions are not pure. Sam Lesser (Thomas Mitchell Barnet), who got trapped in the Ghost realm in Season 1, tries to close the door on Gabe while his body is back at Keyhouse, but they both get back into Gabe’s body, and Dodge eventually kicks Sam out and back into the ghost realm.
Gabe/Dodge refuses to give up.
Gabe vs. Scot
Gabe realizes Kinsey is pulling away from him, so he gets Eden to use the Music Box Key to control Scot, making it seem like Scot aggressively approaches Gabe after a small spat over the progress of “The Splattering 2.” Kinsey believes Gabe over Scot when Scot tries to convince her he felt like he was being controlled. Scot sees Eden and Gabe conspiring so he warns Kinsey that something seems up with them. Kinsey confronts Gabe about it at Mr. Bennett’s dorm party, where he lies to her and tells her he is tutoring Eden.
At Mr. Bennett’s dorm party, Gabe steals another blob of Whispering Iron that Josh has from his ancestor, who just so happens to be Frederick Gideon. Josh realizes it is missing after he sees Nina out of their dinner date where they have sex, and she brings him a ledger from Keyhouse.
Later at a different party, Kinsey enlists the help of Scot to go inside Echo Eden’s head since she passes out from drinking too much. First Kinsey goes in by herself, but Scot soon joins her after she has looked through a few of Eden’s memories. A black sludge slowly crawls through Eden’s counter memory setup. Scot finds the key moment Eden remembers Gabe shifting identities to Dodge. The Mannequins in Eden’s head start to attack Kinsey and Scot, but they make it out alive. All of this takes place while Tyler and Gabe find the Memory Key.
Duncan’s Memories
Erin starts to feel bad that she and her friends took Duncan’s memories out of his head after he made them a new key to help the rest of them remember the magic forever. She and the Locke kids put Duncan’s memories back in his head, but he starts to become irritable and mentally blurry because of it.
Kinsey and Tyler want to find the Memory Key that Duncan made to fully restore his memories. Tyler also has the Memory Key in mind for Jackie. Erin realizes that she has a memory of where Rendell hid the Memory Key, so she goes back into her head to pull it out, and she and Tyler see that he used the Anywhere Key to hide it at Matheson Academy. Tyler goes in search of the key, and Gabe attaches himself to the quest as well. They meet Logan Calloway (Eric Graise) who takes them around the grounds with his master key. They find the key under a bench that has a Shakespeare quote on it from when Rendell did theater.
Bode Visits Rufus
In the final piece of the three-sibling solution to the puzzle, Bode uses the Anywhere Key to visit Rufus in Nebraska, where he is living now that his mom is missing. Rufus shows Bode a comic he is working on, and Bode turns the page to find a more disturbing drawing of two Dodges. Rufus explains that he has been working with a therapist, and this is what he saw in the Season 1 finale. Bode comes back, after Kinsey tells Tyler that Gabe is Dodge, to complete the mystery by telling his brother and sister what Rufus saw. They realize they pushed Ellie into the blue void.
Winter Fest
After all the puzzle pieces come together, Bode and Duncan find the Chain Key in one of Rendell’s old cassette tapes. Bode, Kinsey and Tyler head to the town’s customary Winter Fest, where Kinsey runs a face-painting booth. Jackie takes Tyler aside to talk about restoring her ability to remember magic and the keys, but she doesn’t want to.
Back at Keyhouse, Erin says she is moving out, but then she takes the Chain Key and leaves Duncan a letter saying she needs to finish this fight as the last remaining Keeper of the Keys. Duncan uses the Anywhere Key to get to Winter Fest and Eden watches him do it, so she alerts Gabe that Kinsey has lied to him about Duncan recovering his memories.
Jamie makes Bode go into The Maze, where a lot of action takes place. Kinsey, Tyler, Gabe, Eden, Duncan and Erin all follow each other into The Maze. Erin tries to face Gabe down with the Chain Key, but Eden comes to the rescue. Gabe chokes Erin to death and they bury her in the maze with the Plant Key.
Kinsey calls Gabe later that night to tell him the Memory Key finally worked on Duncan, luring him into a trap.
The Splattering 2
The gang gets Gabe to come over under the false pretenses of filming the sequel to “The Spattering,” laying a plan to trap Eden with the help of Jamie and mini Keyhouse, as well as some carefully coordinated key action. Trapping Eden works for a little while, and Tyler, Scot and Kinsey nearly succeed in using the Anywhere Key to open a door to the Wellhouse in order to put the echo of Dodge back. But Eden breaks free and saves Gabe, and he kidnaps Bode and Duncan to hold hostage and make them a new key. He also leaves Eden hanging out to dry, turning on her.
The Demon Key
Duncan has no choice but to forge Gabe’s new key, with which he intends to form an echo/demon army to take all the other keys from the Lockes. Unfortunately, Gabe succeeds with the first step of his plan, testing the key out on Javi (Kevin Alves), but Scot, Kinsey and Tyler come to Duncan and Bode’s rescue after finding receipts for food delivery to the shack where Gabe took them.
One of Gabe’s converted targets is Tyler’s girlfriend, Jackie. Another is the police detective Daniel Matuku (Martin Roach), who has been so dedicatedly on the search for Ellie.
Historical Consequences
Episode 8 takes viewers back to 1775 when the Locke family was manufacturing weapons for the Revolutionary War. Frederick Gideon and his British redcoat soldiers confront the family for their transgression, and a group of rebel soldiers lying in wait ambushes them, but not without Gideon killing Peter Locke, elder to Benjamin.
Gideon and his soldiers flee the attack by hiding in the sea caves, where they discover the Black Door and events unfold as seen the opening scene of this season. Gideon and his soldiers are eventually found and captured, but when Gideon is hanged, he doesn’t die because he’s an echo.
Benjamin frets over his lack of purpose, but he takes one of his sisters down to the cave, they find the door, and a bullet of Whispering Iron pops out. Benjamin Locke forges the first ever magical key from that iron — the Omega Key that seals the door between the two worlds.
More New Keys
Tyler forges yet another new key with an arrowhead shape to hopefully undo the effects of the Demon Key. He finds the Whispering Iron disguised as a fishing lure on one of his dad’s old hats, which Rendell used to hint at “for emergency.” Tyler gets the chance to use it on Jackie, but while it works at first, she dies after. This might be one of the saddest moments in the show after Erin’s death.
Ellie, who is disguised as Dodge, gets transported back to the sea caves after what happens to Jackie. Also, Scot does end up getting into that super competitive film school.
In the beginning stages of the epic Season 2 showdown against Gabe, Kinsey whips out a Wing Key that makes her look like an angel and soar like an eagle. Chamberlain leads her to it by creating a frozen trail of ice up her chimney, where the harness lies. She uses it to distract Gabe and draw him out of the cliffside hideout house where he and his army are lying in wait.
Tyler and Scot infiltrate the mansion by the sea to clear out all the rest of the demon echoes and get the demon key from a vault in the basement. Since Duncan forged the Demon Key, Dodge’s demon army listens to him, so he turns them on Dodge. They successfully disempower Gabe/Dodge with the reverse Demon Key, and Kinsey saves them with her wings as the house crumbles into the ocean.
The Alpha Key (which separates demons from human or echo bodies) separates Dodge from the echo of Lucas, and he lives. Ellie gets returned to her visual self from Dodge’s disguise, and the chaos she caused by summoning Lucas’ echo in the first place wraps up when they give each other a heartwarming hug.
Her reunion hug with Rufus might be even more heartwarming.
The End … But Far From It
With a “one week later” transition, the Lockes are slowly recouping.
Tyler packs up his clothes to travel over Winter Break after what happened to Jackie. He decides not to use the Memory Key on himself because he would rather not remember what happened. Kinsey throws Scot a surprise party to send him off to London. Nina does accept the Memory Key which grants her wish to reconnect with her kids and remember magic. Bode takes her into her head and she opens the memory of when she told Rendell that she was pregnant with Bode.
Eden visits the dead Gabe’s boarding room at Matheson Academy to get the Echo Key, which she takes to the Wellhouse. There, she summons the echo of Josh Bennett’s evil ancestor Captain Frederick Gideon. Gideon then throws Eden down the well, hinting at the chaos he is about to cause in Season 3.
