Departure is the sixth episode of Alan Wake and is the last episode before the DLC episodes. It explores Alan’s journey back to Cauldron Lake.
I will find a new face to wear. Someone else to dream me free.
Barbara Jagger
Plot
Alan decides to go alone to Cauldron Lake to fight the Dark Presence once and for all. He makes his way through the devastated mountainous areas surrounding Bright Falls while the Darkness attacks him by sending the Taken while hurling large objects from the lake through the air. Alan fights through the dark forces and reaches the top of Cauldron Lake, only to face a giant black tornado that has sucked in boats, planes, and other vehicles. Alan fires several flares at the tornado and obliterates it. Following Zane’s manuscript, he jumps into the lake, only to wake up in a fake dream created by the dark presence. An illusion of Alice in their apartment confronts Alan while dreaming. She implores him to stay with her as he wanders through the house looking for the “Clicker.” He shines his flashlight on a glowing word spelling “Clicker,” grabs it, and escapes.
The writer then wakes up to find Zane in a diving suit in the water around him. Zane introduces him to Mr. Scratch, a mirror image of Wake to take Wake’s place while he’s in the cabin. Alan fights through the Darkness surrounding him, shining a light on different words to bring them to reality. ( Coffee Thermos: Next to the word couch.) The Dark Presence sends messages to him in both Jagger and Alice’s voices as he moves forward. As he nears the cabin, he hears an echo of the past. Having brought his love Jagger back through the power of the place, Thomas Zane sees her heart filled with Darkness and physically cuts out her heart with a knife. Alan enters the cabin to find Jagger with a hole where her heart is. He sticks the clicker in the hole and turns it on, destroying her. He then goes upstairs to finish the manuscript.
A narration from Alan concludes that the ending must have a balance. Everything has to play out evenly. A cut-scene where Alice resurrects from the lake ten days later, shivering on the broken pier, calling Alan’s name plays. Deerfest begins, and several characters are cheering (Tor and Odin). Much as Weaver was, Rose is now hunched over in front of the Oh Deer Diner with a lantern. Agent Nightingale is standing in the window, appearing much like Jagger was in the previous episodes.
In the end, we see Alan once more in the cabin, at the typewriter, his eyes seeming dead and unseeing, much like his first visit to the place after Alice’s fall. We hear him say the last few words of the previous page of the manuscript: “It’s not a Lake; It’s an Ocean.” As the screen blacks out, we hear the voice of Alice saying, “Alan… wake up”. The episode ends with a period mark followed by “….”
Cast
- Ilkka Villi (model) and Matthew Perreta (voice) as Alan Wake
- Brett Madden as Alice Wake
- Fred Berman as Barry Wheeler
- Jessica Alexander as Sarah Breaker
- James McCaffrey as Thomas Zane
- Kate Weiman as Barbara Jagger
- Erik Bergman as Harry Garrett
- Sam Lake as Himself
- Poets of the Fall as Themselves
- Gianfranco Negroponte, Navid Khonsari and Andrew Totolos as The Taken
