The Wicked Man

The second episode of the fourth season of the series is called "Bad Man" (orig. "The Wicked Man").

Minogue and O'Leary are investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl named Sophie Wilkes, who looks like an adult woman. Sophie is a member of the Hornvale religious community that inhabits Sales Island. The servants of this cult, which is headed by the matriarch Avalon, worship the Horned God.

During the investigation, the police learn that members of the community intend to sacrifice them, mistaking them for virgins in order to receive eternal life and youth. While watching the introductory video, Minogue is hypnotized and captured, but O'Leary manages to escape. To save her partner, she disguises herself as a cult member and infiltrates the place of the sacrifice ritual. There, the police find out that Avalon faked Sophie's disappearance to lure them to the island.

Soon Sergeant Maaka arrives with reinforcements and rescues the policemen, who are about to be sacrificed to the Horned God.

The inhabitants of the community, who worship the Horned God, call him to the annual sacrifice. The creature who came to the ritual looks like a young man of 30-40 years old, with horns, tattoos all over his body and hooves instead of legs. He is intelligent and speaks English.

The cult presented in the episode is obviously an allusion to the modern neo-pagan religion of Wicca, whose representatives believe in a Horned God – a male deity who is a partner of the Triune Goddess. Ideas about this deity go back to the writings of the English writer and anthropologist Margaret Murray (1863-1963).