‘Furious’: Who Is the Killer? And Why the Medusa Myth Is So Important to Her Story

Hulu’s Furious wastes no time pulling viewers into a dark psychological mystery. Created by Elizabeth Meriwether, the thriller stars Emmy Rossum as FBI agent Alice Black, on the hunt for a mysterious, lethal woman (Lola Petticrew) who quietly moves through New York under stolen identities, leaving a trail of victims in her wake. Warning: Spoilers ahead for Furious Episode 1, “The Gorgon.”

The premiere opens on Halloween as a woman wearing a cat mask calmly poisons a man slowly, then kills him with a syringe as she looks into his eyes.

Alice is introduced while working in the bureau’s call center, patiently fielding calls from people others would dismiss as crackpots. But after billionaire heir Caleb Easton is found dead under suspicious circumstances, her boss, Mason Adkins (Alex Morf), assigns her to process the crime scene, where she reunites with former NYPD colleague Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy). The case quickly turns from an apparent overdose into a homicide, and Alice notices a detail everyone else overlooked: The victim had been locked inside the bathroom.

Alice becomes convinced that Caleb’s murder is connected to a case from her days with the NYPD. After recognizing that the crime scene is almost exactly like that of a man named Adrian Murado, she seeks out FBI Special Agent Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who now heads the sex crimes division. Alice wants to transfer to Nora’s unit to get away from the boys’ club she is currently dealing with.

Nora explains that Adrian was suspected of trafficking, but admits how difficult those cases are to prosecute, telling Alice that “it is hard to make a trafficking charge stick.” She also challenges Alice’s mindset, bluntly telling her she is “f**ked” because she still “thinks like a cop,” though she nevertheless offers to bring Alice onto her team.

As the episode progresses, Nora becomes both a mentor and a reality check for Alice. Earlier in the episode, Alice is introduced to a teenage sex trafficker turned witner who is later put in the hospital. She is later put in the hospital, and Alice goes to visit her, where Nora meets her. It is there that Nora explains the myth of Medusa, a victim herself of assault who was turned into a monster just for being desirable, suggesting that sometimes monsters make monsters, and that “the victims of violence are the most violent,” while noting that society expects women to remain victims rather than harbor violent tendencies.

Disney/Sarah Shatz

“Being a victim of violence and then becoming a perpetrator of violence — how that happens and why that happens — that was always the North Star for me, and specifically being a woman in that cycle, and that’s where Medusa came too. I think that image really was stuck with me,” said Meriwether about the notion of monsters creating monsters. “I was reading that myth to my kid as I was writing these violent scripts. I was like reading from a book of mythology, and I was like, ‘This is exactly what I’m writing in this show.’ And I remember kind of going back, and like putting it in; that idea has definitely stuck with the show. It makes you think like, ‘Wow, this has also been something that’s been around for a really long time.'”

Star Emmy Rossom then added, “I think that’s like an important thing to think about. And the title of the show, Furious, is from Greek mythology, from the three furies who were women, who were goddesses of vengeance who roll through the sky.”

Nora also grows curious about Alice’s own past after learning she was once hospitalized, asking if she had been hit. Before they part, Nora gives Alice a flash drive containing everything she uncovered on Murado. When Alice reviews the footage, she sees Adrian dragging a screaming young woman from a store. The victim has the same poppy tattoo described by a witness in Caleb’s murder, giving Alice her first concrete evidence that the two cases may be connected.

Diving into Alice’s character, Alice is a mess. A survivor of a violent relationship that cost her a job she loved, her friends, her community, and her sanity, it is difficult to function or have a normal relationship. Bringing over rando from dating sites to fight them for her sexual gratification is the closest she’ll come to a relationship these days, and according to Rossum, it is in these moments that she found her character.

“There’s that scene in which Alice has been swiping and invites the guy over and then lies to him about who she really is, and we see that she is a victim of violence, but she’s also inviting strangers over to fight,” said Rossum. “I felt the complexity about the character was really interesting, and that was this a scene that took me a couple weeks to really understand and to work with psychologists to really understand the psychology and the effects of historical violence on a human and also to really understand being a person in law enforcement and how you have to separate from some of your softness and your vulnerabilities in order to to remain in the job, to remain able to do the job.”

“Not only has Alice become disconnected from herself because of the violence in her past, but also because of her job, and it’s what makes her unique and suited to the job, and also her history makes her so uniquely suited to finding the serial killer. So it’s actually her superpower at work that is actually kind of really affecting her personal life too,” explained Rossum.

So, who is this mysterious woman?

The woman spends the episode carefully reinventing herself. After murdering Caleb by poisoning him, she turns up outside an overcrowded women’s shelter. There, she manipulates a vulnerable woman named Jeanie into hitting her in exchange for a drink before stealing her bag and calling a domestic violence hotline using Jeanie’s phone. From that point on, she assumes Jeanie’s identity.

Disney/Sarah Shatz

Living at the shelter, “Jeanie” attends a support group for abused women, where she tells another resident to simply pretend the abuse never happened to get through it. She borrows a laptop to begin researching her next victim, a man named Oliver Charles (Rob Delaney), but shelter worker Becky Ledgate (Chloe Troast) catches her, confiscates her drugs, and questions why she’s looking into him. Rather than answer, the woman attempts to seduce Becky in hopes of getting what she wants.

Still posing as Jeanie, she lands a catering job that gives her access to Oliver Charles. She introduces herself under her stolen identity, accompanies him home, and seduces him. Their encounter quickly turns violent, with the two hurting each other, further hinting that her relationships are built on manipulation and violence. By the end of the episode, little is known about who she really is, but her stolen identity, childlike ways, and penchant for murder make her a danger to anyone around her.

Furious, Mondays, Hulu