Been Away is the eleventh episode of the third season of Syfy's Van Helsing and the thirty-seventh episode of the series overall.
Synopsis[]
In his home town, Axel fights both his tragic past and a vicious pack of Daywalkers.
Plot[]
After dropping of his passengers in Denver, and blissfully unaware of the hell in which he left them, Axel is on his own for the first time since the apocalypse began. He makes a beeline for the meeting place he and Scarlett agreed upon: his hometown.
It’s a place that holds a lot of memories for the former Marine, including the painful one of the day his sister went missing on his watch when they were kids. Axel doesn’t have a lot of time to reminisce, however, because the first morning after he arrives, there’s an attack by Daywalkers, and a group of survivors barely escape alive. Axel comes in for the assist, naturally, and upon returning with them to their base of operations comes to know a few of their membership, including Lorne, his former boss at the local feed store; Kelly, a young woman looking for someone to ride out the apocalypse with; and another young woman who has a lot of secrets and even more baggage.
Axel offers to help the group finish the supply run that got interrupted by the Daywalkers in exchange for some food and the group sets off once again. But this mission, despite how well it has been planned, is also quite ill-fated. Lorne, in a fit of dementia, runs into the fray guns blazing, resulting in the death of Kelly. The other woman, meanwhile, freezes when faced with both Lorne’s aggression and the concept of heading down to the basement to loot the supplies.
Back at home base, Axel makes a grim discovery. Not only is the mysterious and surly young woman his little sister, Polly, but she is not long for this world. One of Lorne’s bullets grazed her side in the attack and it is just enough to kill her, but not before a tearful reunion with her brother, a confession that it was Lorne who kidnapped her all those years ago, and a plea to Axel not to let his hate and anger consume him.
Axel doesn’t quite take his sister’s words to heart, though. Furious over what has been taken from him — not once, but twice — after Polly dies, Axel finds Lorne, beats him, and finally shoots him dead. They say you can’t go home again.
Elsewhere, Sam is still on the hunt for Mohamad, but when he returns to the Johnson’s camp where he left him, he discovers his friend is nowhere to be found. With no other leads, Sam hunts down the family, cornering one of the patriarchs in the woods. Their encounter turns to the subject of love and faith and forgiveness, where Sam is adamant that while he does feel love it is the greatest torture that can be bestowed on a person. His victim, meanwhile, believes that love is the only thing that matters. Of course, Sam’s point of view is proved right, at least in the moment when he kills the man in front of his husband, taking love away. Axel may agree with Sam this week.
Sam, however, still needs to remove his own love and Mohamad is the only one who can help him do that. The Oracle, in all her wisdom, informs him that Mohamad is with Vanessa, who has returned to the crypt to raise the Dark One. The stage for the final battle may have been set.
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