When Heather Nill leaps off the highest point of a cliff
in the first challenge of Panic —
the life-threatening game that
takes over teen life in Carp,
Texas, every summer — she stares her fears in the face,
and overcomes them.
This is the Takeaway, a series brought to you by the Take,
where we break down the endings of your favorite films and TV shows,
to get at their deeper meanings and messages.
In this episode we’re going deep on Panic,
which follows Heather and her friends taking extreme risks to win
a mysterious, incredibly dangerous game and take home a $50,000 prize.
Heather may not have a life most would envy —
she’s grown up poor in a town everybody strives to leave,
“In Carp, Texas, out is the only place worth going.”
and she’s just had her life savings stolen by her mom.
“You’re not a bad person, you’re just not very good at being a mom.”
But this means that she feels like she has nothing left to lose,
and therefore, her fear can’t control her.
“Figure out what it is that you’re really scared of —
you look it straight in the eye, you walk toward it.
Because if you run, it will always catch up with you.”
Besides Heather, this year’s leading competitors in Panic include
seemingly fearless bad boy Ray Hall, Natalie Williams, a policeman’s
daughter hoping to get money to make it big in Hollywood,
and Dodge Mason, a mysterious newcomer with a hidden agenda,
while Heather’s more privileged best friend and crush Bishop Moore
isn’t playing.
Panic seems pretty scary and stressful in the best of times,
but this year a dark cloud hangs over the game,
thanks to three developments:
“How'd those two kids die last summer?”
First, while teens do sometimes die in Panic,
it emerges that the previous year’s deaths of couple Jimmy and Abby
appear not to have been an accident.
“Someone was blackmailing Abby to get her out of the game.”
Jimmy was Sheriff Cortez’s son, so this seems to be why the police
are so committed to investigating Panic this year —
when really, as we’ll discuss later, Cortez is even more personally involved
than he first appears.
Meanwhile, a second key revelation is that people are running
large bets on panic,
“So he wanted you to gamble on panic?”
“His sheet had over $200,000 on it.”
including a $100,000 wager placed by someone called “Doc Magic.”
So the kids who are playing to win the prize come to appear more like pawns,
while in the shadows, highly interested parties
with even more at stake may be trying to control the outcome.
“What does this mean about the game?”
“It means it’s not a game anymore.”
The third mysterious aspect of this year’s game
is the secret motivation
of Dodge Mason.
“You’re the new guy.”
“Everyone here’s known each other from diapers so
the new guy is pretty big news.”
Fellow senior Natalie finds out he’s repeating senior year
specifically to play the game, as part of a plot to get revenge for his sister
Dayna being paralyzed in a hit-and-run.
“People have done a lot of crazy things to win Panic,
but re-enrolling in school after you’ve already graduated?
Well, that takes the cake.”
Eventually, we learn that Dodge is plotting with Sheriff Cortez to win
so that he can entrap fellow contestant Ray Hall’s brother Luke,
who (according to Cortez) is the one who paralyzed Dayna.
“It’s not illegal to gamble in Texas,
okay, but it is a felony to be the house.”
“If I win we can prove that Luke is getting a kickback.”
But this turns out to be a lie —
Luke was in jail when the accident happened.
So why would the Sheriff lie to Dodge in order to frame Luke?
When we’re first introduced to Panic it feels chaotic —
an outlet for teens with too much time on their hands.
The twist is that it’s not chaos, but sinister organization —
Cortez has been manipulating the outcomes of both last year’s
and this year’s games in order to win large bets.
“Cortez is in severe debt. Jimmy knew that,
and he figured out that his dad was threatening Abby
to get her out of the game.”
His bullying of Abby, which led to her death,
motivated Jimmy to switch the fake gun in his game of Russian roulette
for a real one, to “take everything” from his father
just as his father took “everything” from him —
in other words, Jimmy losing panic costs Cortez not only his son’s life
but also the money he’d bet on Jimmy to win.
As this year’s game wraps up, Natalie is revealed to be a judge,
and Heather is disqualified after she leaves her individual challenge
to go rescue her sister Lily from the tiger cage at Anne’s farm,
where Heather has been working over the summer.
Lily was lured there by Cortez to distract Heather from her challenge
and get her out of the running for Panic,
because he bet on Dodge to win.
The final challenge is joust — essentially a game of chicken —
between the two finalists Ray and Dodge.
“We all have the same fear, that we’re heading nowhere but a dead end.
That’s why Panic ends on the road.”
But after Dodge pulls out, Cortez insists on driving his car,
which, unbeknownst to Cortez,
Ray has rigged with a bomb in an attempt to kill the Sheriff
and end Panic once and for all.
Meanwhile Heather ends up driving Ray’s car.
She wins and faces down the loose tiger from Anne’s farm,
and Cortez escapes from his car before the car explodes.
But then, Cortez is shot by his own wife,
who’s been intensely grieving Jimmy’s death
and is, understandably, pretty angry to find out her husband
was responsible for pushing him to suicide.
At the end, it seems like Heather’s courage has been rewarded
with fairytale bliss —
she’s happily in love with Ray, armed with the $50,000 prize
to help her pursue her creative dreams,
“You are truly a staggering nerd.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you, she might kill you off in the novel.”
but in the episode’s final moments a scarecrow is thrown
across her car window. Panic continues on.
“No-one knows how to stop it”
So what’s the deeper meaning of all this?
“You don’t seem the type?”
“To get scared?”
“To let it stop you.”
Heather’s primary fear in life is never leaving Carp —
and therefore, having a future of poverty and insecurity
just like her mother’s.
“You are moving to Hollywood, and you are going to college, and I’m
just going to live here forever.”
So after her mom destroys her plan for an accounting degree
that Heather thinks will ensure her a secure (if modest) living,
Panic becomes her only option for grabbing more out of life.
“You don’t need Panic to go to college.”
“No you don’t need Panic to go to college.
I’m poor, remember?”
Her jump in the first challenge is a literal leap into the unknown.
The episode ends without us seeing her land,
while the voiceover tells us she’s flying
“And the girl made of dirt turned to air, and flew.”
— because the moment when we don’t let our fears control us,
is the moment when we at last learn all that we’re capable of.
“Were you scared?”
“To jump? No. It’s the landing that gets you in trouble.”
Over the course of the summer, Heather surprises everyone
(but especially herself) by facing down the most
terrifying challenges both within Panic and outside of it.
“I’m scared.”
“I know, but everything is gonna be ok, alright.”
And this leads her to realize that she needs to dream bigger for herself.
“I figured, you know, since you’ve got your first book out you won’t
be so scared to do a follow up.”
In the final challenge, the tiger is a visual metaphor
for Heather’s greatest fears,
which (like tigers) can’t be outrun, only confronted.
“It’s one thing you should know about tigers,
you can’t out run them, running only signals prey.”
Earlier, the moment when Heather is most afraid is when
the tiger threatens Lilly, representing how the real tests of life
are outside of any game when the people we love are in danger.
“If anything had happened to her, or to them.”
“Don’t think about it, our sisters are ok, that’s what’s important.”
And in the final tiger scene, Heather’s ultimate victory is
looking into the face of fear itself and acknowledging
what’s holding her back within.
“There was no escaping her shadow, so the girl finally stopped
and turned to meet it.
And the girl’s shadow, afraid, laid down at her feet.”
Still, as Heather and Ray fall in love
they also discover the deepest fear that comes with having something
truly precious which could be lost.
“I’m scared I’m falling in love with you.”
“I’m scared too.”
A total lack of fear may be liberating, but true blessings
come with intense terror.
“How come it’s scarier to have the thing you want
than to want the thing you can’t have.”
“Because you’re scared to lose it?”
Dodge — the eventual frontrunner in the game —
is motivated by an emotion that dulls fear:
revenge.
“I’m Luke.”
“I know who you are.”
Over time, though, he realizes he’s been blinded by his obsession
with what he feels was taken from his family.
“Dayna, Luke ruined your life.”
“No, he didn’t. He ruined a life that never happened.”
He has to engage instead with what he still does have,
which means letting fear back in.
“I was so consumed about what had happened that I was never thinking
about what was next, I don’t even think I cared
if there was anything at all.”
Panic is a coming-of-age narrative,
and the central game works as a metaphor
for the process of leaving behind childhood and entering the adult world —
it’s scary, chaotic, and seemingly controlled
by some mysterious hidden system you never really get to see.
“They’re probably tracking where we work, and live. And hang out.
Watching what we do when we think no-one’s watching.”
But this process isn’t the same
for all of the young people in the town.
For some, that leap into adulthood is fraught with danger and uncertainty,
and may even be deadly.
While for others, it’s a relatively comfortable, insulated process
designed to protect them from serious harm.
Our society’s class power structures are woven into how the
different players relate to the game.
Heather and Ray are from poor backgrounds,
“We’re both trash.”
which emboldens them to tolerate a high level of risk.
“Ray Hall makes it across in 17 seconds setting the new record to beat!”
This is their superpower as players — they have less to lose and more to gain
from winning the pot.
But it’s also sad that they feel it’s worth putting themselves
in serious danger for this (or any) amount of money.
“You wanna keep playing?”
“I don’t wanna stay in Carp.”
Bishop, who turns out to be the game’s bagman, in charge
of holding onto the prize money, is a level removed from this risk
“School’s out ok,
I’m not even playing.”
because his family wealth means his future is already provided for.
“You’re twisting your whole life around some $50,000 bet,
I mean, one of my Dad’s cars costs more than that.”
“Yeah, which one?”
“$50,000 isn’t a lot of money to someone
who’s already really f-[BLEEP] rich.”
When events ever do get hairy for him, his father’s status can bail him out.
“You fellas are just doing your jobs, but it’s about that time that
you did it somewhere else.”
And when the pot Bishop’s supposed to be protecting gets stolen,
he can just sell one of his family’s cars
“I was wondering if you could give me an estimate on an Audi A4,
it only has 20,000 miles on it.”
to deliver the prize money to Heather,
“After careful review this year’s judgement has awarded
you the winning pot.”
for whom this amount of money is utterly life-changing.
Likewise, Heather’s benefactor and boss Anne is literally outside of the fray
thanks to her wealth, which allows her to physically retreat onto
her peaceful farm on the outskirts of Carp.
“I could use some help out at my farm. It’s not glamorous but I pay cash.”
The dangers in life (represented by her animals)
are under her control, locked in cages,
as if her privilege affords her inoculation from everything
anyone else might have to fear.
“That fence is there for a reason. Some animals never get
the wild outta them.”
And while Heather’s mom can’t keep Heather and Lily safe,
Anne can offer the girls an idyllic place to stay
at no real cost to herself,
“We got three spare bedrooms. Lord knows I could use the company”
underlining how much of what we moralize as good or bad parenting
really boils down to having sufficient means.
Still, while money protects the town’s higher-class residents from
the full brunt of the game, arguably that protection doesn’t
always benefit them as people.
“Must be nice having a Dad who pays for everything.”
Bishop learns that he can buy his way out of any problem,
and is spared from enduring the challenges of Panic which prove
character-forming for Heather and Ray,
helping them unlock their inner bravery,
value systems, and self-respect.
“Now come on and hit me you piece of s-[BLEEP].”
“Why, so you can go and tell your daddy about it?”
Still, Bishop’s situation is complicated;
he’s encouraged to focus on
his self-preservation and his future reputation
not simply because of his family’s lofty social standing,
but also due to the pressures of “respectability politics”
that Black people face in predominantly white spaces.
“You see all those houses in the trees, you see all those windows,
those are eyes son, watching for us to mess up.”
Bishop is highly aware that his family has much more to lose
than if they were a rich and powerful white family whose teen son
got caught up in an illegal game.
Meanwhile, when we first meet Ray, he plays into his reputation
for being a jerk, but this perception is due to people looking down on him
due to classism,
“Once upon a time there was a murderer’s son.”
and misunderstanding his unfiltered honesty and realistic view of the world.
“I’m not gonna play.”
“We’re all playing f-[BLEEP], one way or another.”
Ray doesn’t feel overly deferential to the fake rules of society’s games,
and this lets him employ a level of insight most don’t.
“Every decision is dangerous when you’re wearing a blindfold,
that’s why I went for the yellow in the last challenge.
S-[BLEEP] was straight see through.”
Whereas higher class people are submitting to metaphorical blindfolds
that make them blindly panic and sell out
for a little help from the system,
Ray is able to look at reality himself and maintain his integrity.
“You gotta know what to be afraid of, when to be afraid of it,
and you gotta know the difference.”
Meanwhile, Heather and Ray’s shared class background
allows them to respect and understand each other,
“They can’t roll their windows up fast enough to keep out the smell of poor.”
without bringing the same bias that everyone else uses to judge them.
“Did your Dad really shoot that ranger in the back?”
“Y’know my whole life nobody’s ever asked me that question.”
Panic uses fairytales as a framing device,
“How does she escape out of the high tower?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
and traditionally, fairy tales work as allegories to disseminate
social or moral lessons.
Panic’s fairytale about a “girl made of dirt”
who’s surrounded by people “made of stone,”
“You’re nothing, everyone told her”
sends the message that things (and the people)
our culture deems superior aren’t necessarily the ones
most worthy of our esteem.
While others look down on “dirt” because it seems common,
that material is adaptable in a way that rigid stone isn’t.
Dirt is earth, capable of supporting growing life.
“I love that smell. Sweat, hunger, life.”
Panic is a method of control — and it achieves control
in the same way many governments have for millennia: through fear
“Blind man’s bluff challenges you to face three fears at once:
fear of darkness, fear of falling, and fear of the unknown.”
Everyone within the structure of the game is trapped,
feeling they have no choice but to obey the rules,
however insane and out of control Panic might get.
This is also why the game can’t be ended as easily as we may think,
even after Cortez’s death — just as it didn’t stop
after the traumas of the year before.
“It was supposed to stop, Jimmy and I decided
after Abby died that we weren’t gonna pick our replacements
and we weren’t gonna set up for another game.”
The Panic structure feels more specifically like a proxy for how
our capitalist system controls us — both through financial carrots,
and through the fear of not having enough.
The shakedowns the students get throughout the year
to help pay for the prize money take on the feeling of taxation,
“Final collection, rules are rules.”
and maintaining this atmosphere of uncertainty and fear is key
to keeping the young population of the town compliant.
“These kids just follow the herd.”
All their energy is filtered through this game,
and as a result, there’s no opportunity for them to collectively interrogate
the inner workings of it, or of the deeper rooted problems
that keep their whole town economically depressed.
“You’re gonna play? After all the times you
told me the game was a trap, that it was a con?”
“It is.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because maybe it’s my only option.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
The real enemy is shown to be the society that stifles the young people in the town,
forcing them to feel they have no options.
“In fact, Carp is actually the capital of nothing.”
Heather’s heroism in the end isn’t just facing her fears to win
the game for herself, but her selfless attempt to
end it for good.
“Forget the money, I’m just glad that it’s over.”
“You’re a hero Heather, you know that right.”
Over the course of the series
we see the previously divided contestants
become more of a collective.
“Be careful”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a warning, you’re not the one writing the rules of this game.”
Part of rebelling against this system is not accepting the parameters
for what your society tells you to expect from your life.
Natalie (who’s from an economically stable background
thanks to her father’s employment in the police department)
doesn’t play Panic because she has no other good option
like Heather or Ray.
But she still takes on the role of a judge to get extra income
to go for a more ambitious and perhaps “unrealistic” dream
than her class status affords her: pursuing acting in LA.
“Who is going to keep me grounded when I’m a rich and famous actress?”
Just as Heather decides to go after the “impractical” career of writing
because it’s what her soul really wants.
“A totally fictional novel about a nowhere town
where a group of teens play a scary game every summer.”
There’s a lesson in this story that applies to all of our lives:
you have to stop letting your fears control you if you want
to take ownership of your story.
“I’d start by changing your story.”
Panic asks you to stare your fears straight in the eye and imagine
a different kind of world — one that’s worth risking it all for.
“The opposite of fear isn’t courage. It’s believing.
And finding something worth believing in.”
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