Strong Kitty

Abby slaughters the doves Lizzie kept — a cruelty the episode uses as the last argument against staying in the house. Maggie and Lizzie try a quieter method first, serving tainted oysters, and watch Andrew and Abby survive a night of violent sickness. The failure is the point: poison is too uncertain, and too easy to explain away.

By morning the plan has changed. The axe Abby used on the birds is still in the house, and Lizzie names it as the weapon. Jessica Barden's Nance O'Neil enters on the edge of the hour — a later friendship the historical record does preserve, pulled forward here as another life Lizzie can imagine outside Fall River. The intimacy between Lizzie and Maggie is the show's, not the inquest's.