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| Monroe in the Halloween mood, courtesy NBC |
Opening Quote: "On many a dark night people would see her walking along the riverbank and crying for her children."
Luis Alvarez and his son, Rafael, are fishing when he sees a crying woman in a white dress wading into the river. He runs to help her, diving into the water, but finds no one. As he comes up for air, he sees the woman, white dress blowing in the breeze, leading his son away. The weeping woman has stolen Rafael.
Nick is grimly inspecting his weapons in Aunt Marie's Trailer. He takes a mace (no, not the pepper spray) and leaves. He parks outside Monroe's awesomely Halloween festooned yard. Aww, the Grimm is supplying Monroe with props for his Halloween display! Monroe tells Nick about an old Wesen tradition of running through the woods, terrorizing the villagers. "It's bigger than Christmas!" Monroe would totally continue the tradition if he could only find some villagers. He hooks the mace up to a fake skeleton and shows Nick how it will smash a pumpkin. Ah, Monroe. I wish you lived next to me.
Sgt. Wu is at the river trying to talk to the distraught Luis Alvarez. His Spanish is no bien and since the precinct's translator is in Botswana on safari, Nick calls Juliette. Juliette has a Spanish grandmother and speaks the language very well. Ah, the longing glances between Juliette and Renard as she enters the room.
A woman wakes from a dream of the weeping woman. As the camera pans across her desk, we see she is hunting missing children. An amber alert pops up on her computer screen. As she stares at the screen, she turns into a cool looking blue jaguar. I'm thinking this jaguar mama is pissed.
Juliette talks to Luis, who describes the weeping woman. Luckily, some kayakers caught some video of her leading poor little Rafael away. They leave to take Luis home. He lives in a Hispanic neighborhood, that is decked out for the holiday. The Day of the Dead, baby!
As Juliette talks to a neighbor about Rafael, the woman tells Juliette that she knows who took the boy. The woman says it was La Llorona, also called the Weeping Woman. Luis angrily proclaims the woman crazy and leaves the room. But the crazy woman sees the scars on Juliette's hand from Adalind's cat. Juliette tries to brush her off, but the woman proceeds to tell her she was very sick and has no memory. The woman, with no way of knowing what happened, tells Juliette just how it went down. She tries to tell her that someone did this to her, but Juliette becomes angry and defensive. Nick interrupts to talk to Juliette, who keeps the woman's information to herself.
Back at Monroe's epic Halloween yard, a batch of kids show up, delighted at the pumpkin smashing skeleton. He has to save a little girl from a bully trying to steal her candy. Ah, kids.
Renard is on the phone whispering in a conspiratorial fashion about the man who was tortured last episode. Wondering how much information he gave away to their enemies. He is interrupted by the arrival of Jaguar Woman, aka Valentina Espinosa, who is a detective from New Mexico. She explains to Nick and Hank that this has happened before in New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. She's been tracking this woman for 5 years. Three children will be taken, and will be dead by morning if they don't find them. There are always 2 boys and a girl taken between the ages of 7-12. They are always taken where 2 rivers meet and are found drowned without any other evidence. Witnesses always describe seeing a woman in a white dress crying just before the children disappear. Nick asks her about the La Llorona story. It's a ghost story of a woman who drowns her 3 children in the river as revenge for her husband leaving her for a younger woman. Valentina believes the woman thinks she is La Llorona, because ghosts aren't real. Right? She gets all jaguary when Nick shows her the kayaker's video.
Inevitably, La Llorona snatches her next victim, a little girl, from the woods next to the river. Sgt. Wu gets called away from Luis's house to help search for the missing girl. Juliette is explaining this to Luis as the crazy woman comes to the door. The woman again tries to convince Juliette that she is in danger, knowing that Juliette has feelings for two people, and that she must choose. Juliette angrily sends her away. Pityingly, the woman leaves.
Renard finds out that Poor Jaguar Lady isn't a cop anymore and has her arrested. Turns out she was fired three years ago. Poor Ms. Espinosa's obsession began when her nephew was taken by La Llorona. She was watching the boy that day, and saw the weeping woman. His body was never found. Perplexed, Nick and Hank go to the trailer to do a little research. They actually find La Llorona in one of his books. Apparently, Nick's ancestors couldn't figure out what she was either. Wesen or ghost? Nobody knows. There are stories going all the way back to 1519. The entry was never updated. Apparently she killed the ancestor who tried to stop her.
Meanwhile, at Monroe's the bullies enact a little payback by rigging up his pumpkin smasher to smash his front window. They laugh and run away when Monroe rushes out. Our normally genial Monroe does not appear to be amused.
The Grimmsters pack up Valentina and head off to confront La Llorona. As they get in the car, the third child abduction comes over the radio. Out of time, they rush off to save the kids.
On the bank of the river, the woman stands with the abducted children, calling out to her own dead children to come back to her. They eerily rise from the depths. Their spectral forms do not look very welcoming. She leads the children to the water to replace her own, but Nick tackles her, tumbling them both into the water. They struggle underwater, and the woman pulls Nick deeper. Suddenly, the woman's corpse-like face melts away turning once again into that of a young woman. Nick startled, releases her, and she sinks into the water and vanishes. It's one minute past midnight. She ran out of time. They return to the precinct where the new intern is overly excited by their success. Methinks there is something odd about him. Juliette appears in the doorway looking smittenly at Nick. Or is it Renard? Since they are standing next to each other, it's hard to tell. Perhaps she doesn’t know either.
The bully kids are gloating over the video of Monroe's smashed window, when he snatches it from their hands. He'll give the kids back the phone when they pay for his window. The kids huffily proclaim that they aren't scared of him, So Monroe shows them a little Blutbad face. They go screaming off into the night. Trick or Treat!
Next week, Nick must protect the Wesen of Portland from another Grimm!
The next episode of Grimm, "The Hour of Death" airs Friday, Nov. 2 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.