Episode 3 of "Before" unfolds with Eli deeply engrossed in the audio recordings he's meticulously captured of Noah. His voice, an eerie echo of Eli's own, combined with the eerie Dutch accents, casts a chilling spell over the atmosphere. Convinced that these recordings harbor some form of cryptic message, Eli seeks guidance from Jackson, who urges him to explore beyond the conventional paths to uncover the truth.
That fateful night, Eli is haunted by an unseen presence lurking within the confines of his home. Despite his thorough search yielding no tangible results, he finds solace in documenting Noah's peculiar behaviors, driven to unravel the mystery once and for all.
Noah, too, feels the creeping sensation of dread, though his foster mother's soothing presence manages to lull him into a restless slumber.
The following day, Eli discusses Noah's case with his therapist, who speculates that transference might be at play. Eli detects glimpses of his own past in Noah, feeling a compelling duty to aid the troubled child. Yet, the unspoken elephant in the room remains Lynn, a subject Eli steadfastly avoids, grappling with the intricacies of his own feelings.
Returning to Noah's hospital bedside, Eli employs a mesmerizing hypnosis technique, his fingers wagging rhythmically and the sound of a pen clicking serving as a seductive lullaby. As Noah drifts into his earliest memories, vivid visions of a ceiling cracking and a shadowy figure impaled by the fragments emerge, which he hastily sketches for Eli. His murmurs of distress soon give way to a chilling transformation—his lips turning blue, his body shivering with an unnatural cold.
Eli wraps Noah in a comforting blanket, but the perplexing nature of his case, with a myriad of symptoms defying explanation, leaves no doubt that this is no ordinary affair. That very night, Eli's return to the hospital brings him face-to-face with another astonishing turn—Noah's lungs filled with water, as if he'd nearly succumbed to drowning in his own bed. All he had consumed was a simple glass of water, yet these haunting visions from the past seem to be seeping into the present.
Alarmingly, the doctors perceive this as a potential suicide risk, warning Eli that Noah must be transferred for closer monitoring. The enigma deepens, and Eli stands at a crossroads, grappling with the strange and perplexing case that defies all conventional understanding.
During his therapy session, Eli gradually unburdens himself about Lynn, painting a harrowing picture. He had witnessed her seemingly drowning in the bathtub, having stepped out momentarily—just an hour or so—to fetch some food. Upon his return, the sight that greeted him was Lynn lifelessly submerged in the tub, her wrists bearing the grim evidence of self-inflicted slashes. Yet, this narrative may harbor deeper, unspoken truths. As Eli is consumed by an escalating sense of dread and flees the room, haunting visions begin to surface, suggesting a more sinister scenario: it was Eli who had choked the life out of Lynn in the confines of that bathtub.
