EP104 – “Hell Is Other People” — Ryan Northcott as Geoff Miller and Tracy Spiridakos as Anna Pigeon in Anna Pigeon on USA Network. Photo Credit: Michelle Faye/USA Network © VERSANT MEDIA 2025. All Rights Reserved
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Major spoilers ahead for Anna Pigeon episode 5
There’s no escape from the past for Anna Pigeon (Tracy Spiridakos) in episode 5, “The Rope,” which sees her trapped in a cave. Dehydrated and hungry, she begins to hallucinate her late husband, Zach (Jordan Sledz).
Like in the premiere, he’s a comfort to her as Anna tries to figure how to save herself after nearly being killed by someone who wants her out of the way. But, in a surprising turn, the longer Anna’s stuck in the cave, the more her mind makes her confront the guilt she’s been carrying over Zach’s murder.
Through her hallucination’s vitriolic tirade against her, and a series of flashbacks, Anna Pigeon reveals a gut-wrenching and traumatic piece of the mystery surrounding her husband’s death that shines a light on why Anna tries so hard to keep her distance from others.
Anna Pigeon Is Trapped Alone With Her Guilt
When “The Rope” starts, no one is aware Anna is missing. Jesse (Cooper Levy) becomes suspicious when he stops by her house to fix her sink and not only is she not there, her door is locked. He rallies her fellow rangers together to look into where she could have gone.
The last time Anna was seen was three days ago after Geoff (Ryan Northcott) dismissed her for the rest of the week when she wouldn’t apologize for her behavior toward a bunch of rowdy twentysomethings who were littering and being disruptive in the park.
What they don’t know is that she’s stuck in a cave that she was pushed into after she stumbled across an agitated young man who was climbing out of a hole. Anna made the mistake of not checking her surroundings before going to investigate and is paying the price for her negligence.
The cave’s only exit is the hole she’s fallen down. Unable to free climb to the top, and dependent on her captor for food and water, Anna’s only solace is her hallucination of Zach. He keeps her company as she tries to piece together an escape plan. But it’s his encouragement to remember the bad along with the good that eventually catches up to Anna the more dire her circumstances get.
The water she’s been given is drugged. Anna learns this the hard way when she falls unconscious just as her captor climbs down the ladder. When she comes to, she finds that she hasn’t been sexually assaulted, but she was cut into on her back.
With little choice, Anna has to keep drinking the water to stay alive. At first, she tries measuring out her intake of it, putting time between each cap full. But eventually she starts going by feel. As she does this, Anna comes across a body buried in the ground.
It’s Kaye, the young woman she stopped to help while heading toward her favorite trail. She’d been waiting for her friends when Anna came across her in the woods. Anna properly cared for Kaye’s sprained ankle and handed over her walking sticks so she could move around more easily. Now she’s dead and it’s her killer who’s holding Anna hostage for interrupting his cover-up of the incident.
The stress of the situation triggers a memory that Anna’s been suppressing. Her hallucination of Zach accuses her of leaving him alone. What he means is that on the night he was murdered, Anna missed that her husband was dead despite his body being in plain view and sprawled out in their living room.
She’d been too drunk to notice. Earlier, Zach had confronted her about her drinking, but she continued to do so even after he’d sent the guests home. Anna went to go get another bottle of alcohol and walked past Zach’s body in a drunken stupor. She didn’t discover him until the next morning when he’d been gone for hours.
Time has not healed that wound. When Anna decided to leave New York, she told her sister Molly (Tricia Helfer) that it’s because she wants to disappear. That’s why she became a park ranger and the reason she’s never stuck to a park or maintained relationships for long since Zach’s death. Anna is unwilling to become attached.
However, it’s her relationships in Glacier National Park that ultimately prove to her that despite her previous efforts to be aloof, there are people who genuinely care for her and will be there when she needs them. That even though she can save herself, which she does in “The Rope,” she’s not alone and she does, in fact, need the care of others to survive.
How Anna Escapes The Cave
Though it was difficult confronting a memory she’d suppressed, it helps Anna figure out what she needs to do to get out of the cave. After drinking rain water that pours through the cave opening, she devises a plan to hide in the shadows just like the threat of bad memories waiting to launch a surprise attack.
Anna lures her captor into thinking she’s somewhere in the cave passed out from the drugged water. Once he’s climbed down, she crawls out of her hiding spot and hits him with the canteen she’s filled with rocks. She scrambles up the ladder and kicks him in the face when he tries to pull her off of it. When she gets to the top, Anna pulls the ladder up and leaves him to be the one trapped in the cave.
It’s daylight by the time she stumbles back toward the rangers’ homes where a search party led by FBI agent Freddie Stanton (Ronnie Rowe) is just about to set off on a search for Anna. One of the search dogs smells her and goes charging in her direction. Jesse follows and catches Anna just as she collapses. Zoe (Paulina Alexis) and Manny (Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz) are right on his heels to check on her as well.
Whether she wants it or not, Anna has people on her side and it will make all the difference the more she lets them into her life.
Anna Pigeon airs Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on USA Network. Follow Sabrina Reed on Forbes for weekly coverage of the series and news about the business of TV. For deeper thoughts on the TV she’s watching, chat with Sabrina on X and Substack.
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