Polygamy, Abuse, and Murder: ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Episode 5 Goes to the Darkest Places Yet

Each and every episode of FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven takes us deeper into the horrifying actions of brothers Ron (Sam Worthington) and Dan Lafferty (Wyatt Russell). We’ve watched for weeks as the two eldest Lafferty boys found themselves pulled away from the mainstream Mormon Church and enthralled by the dark teachings of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. In Under the Banner of Heaven Episode 5, we watch as both men finally cross horrific lines.

Ron and Dan abuse their wives, get excommunicated from the church and finally broach the topic of taking multiple wives. Oh, and we get to watch Ron murder his father by denying him much-needed medical care. All in all, Under the Banner of Heaven Episode 5 “One Mighty and Strong” is a nauseating watch that gets us closer to understanding how the Lafferty brothers could be driven to murder their sister-in-law Brenda (Daisy Edgar Jones) and their infant niece Erica.

FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven is, of course, based on the electrifying Jon Krakauer book of the same name. While that non-fiction work weaves together Mormon history, interviews with survivors of polygamy, and true crime reporting, Under the Banner of Heaven is structured more like a traditional crime thriller. Writer and creator Dustin Lance Black created two fictional detectives — Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) and Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham) — to take us through the investigation into Brenda and Erica’s deaths. We learn in tandem with the detectives how the Lafferty brothers fell from grace.

One of the most harrowing scenes in this week’s episode comes when Dan’s brow-beaten wife Matilda (Chloe Pirrie) learns that her husband intends to take her teen daughters from a past relationship as his plural wives. It’s a revelation that gives Matilda the courage to make her one act of resistance we’ve seen so far; she aids her daughters’ escape from Dan’s house.

“Yeah, it’s a really full on scene,” Pirrie told Decider. “Honestly, I don’t know [where Matilda found that courage] because it’s such a moment where she’s just faced with the enormity of that. I looked at the girl playing my daughter, a wonderful actress, and I understood what was happening. I saw it in my mind what was happening so clearly. And it’s really devastating.”

“I did a lot of research around the polygamous sex and some real life people who have been through that world, which was very helpful and moving and shocking. And when you check in with all of that it was quite obvious where that scene had to sit and what it had to do.”

Wyatt Russell told Decider that he struggled with the fact that the real Dan Lafferty is a charismatic figure and he worried how playing him honestly would lend credence to his warped view of himself. “You feel like you’re giving something to someone who doesn’t deserve it. People like this they love the attention,” Russell said.

Nevertheless, Russell believes that it’s important to “play these characters who did these terrible things.”

“When people start looking at things from ‘What would I do?” and they don’t actually look at the world around them and assess the situation for what it is…then bad things happen. Being able to portray characters who lead with love and manipulation can be very dangerous. Playing that person right is important to getting that story across in the correct way for it to be effective I believe. I thought that was a challenge I was ready to take on,” he said.

Of course, Dan Lafferty isn’t the only character who veers into true terrifying evil this week. After being excommunicated from the Mormon church, Ron Lafferty essentially has a breakdown wherein he seems to delight in chasing his scared children through the house. Under the Banner of Heaven star Sam Worthington told Decider that he didn’t approach it as a breakdown per se, but “all fun and games.”

“You can’t actually approach it from a negative point of view. He wants to keep playing with his kids. He wants his family together. It’s how much that sense of commitment is,” Worthington said. “Even in [Episodes] 5 and 6 and 7, you can’t necessarily play a descent into delusion. You can play a commitment to and a passion.”

However that’s not the worst thing that Ron does. By episode’s end, we learn that Ron essentially kills his own father. Worthington once again wanted to play the juxtaposition in the scene. Instead of going loud and monstrous, he went “as sensitive and quiet” as he could.

“I think his father’s whipped him his whole life. That’s him whipping his father,” Worthington said. “His father beat his own dog to death and he’s now treating his father like the dog. That’s probably the harshest that you’re ever going to see him.”

Adding to the complexity of the scene? Worthington said he approached Ron’s relationships with his parents as “Oedipal.” It’s not just that he’s closer to his mother than his father, but there is something deeper going on with the matriarch of the Lafferty clan.

“I wanted something Oedipal. That’s what I wanted. I wanted that it was almost sexual between him and his mum. It’s not written like that. It’s just something that I wanted to explore that his mum is this, it’s deeper than just a motherly bond,” Worthington said.

“If the other actor is open to it, you start discovering things about characters and scenes that [Dustin] Lance [Black] would then, you know, brightly pick up on and go, ‘Wow, keep going down that route in Episode 5, or keep going down that route in Episode 6.’ And that’s very cool that a filmmaker like Lance isn’t just saying, this is what I see in my head and I want you to just portray that, but he’s taking what you’re delivering and what you’re discovering, and that feeds back into a story to tell a great series.”

Under the Banner of Heaven continues next week with the penultimate episode of the series.