Otis Is Up To No Good On 'Star'

The pilot episode of Star dropped a major bomb in the first ten minutes: upon seeing her baby sister Simone being raped by her abusive foster father Otis, protagonist Star ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and stabbed him in the back. She then took Simone from the house and brought her to Atlanta in an attempt to jumpstart their music career. Both girls assumed Otis was dead, but the final moments of the first episode revealed he had just been hospitalized. Now it seems like he's looking for answers about what happened. But will Otis find Simone on Star?

Otis must have had a very rapid recovery from his multiple stab wounds, because by the end of Episode 2 he was totally back to normal. Seeing him walking and talking (and investigating things) was a far cry from where the pilot left him: in his hospital bed, keeping quiet while the police asked about his attack. In "The Devil You Know," Otis appeared at the office of the social worker who led Star to Simone in the first place and asked where "his daughter" was. It may not be clear yet whether or not he'll find her, but he is definitely looking.

What's less clear is just what Otis is planning. He could easily report what happened to the police and send them chasing after Simone and Star, but it looks like he's planning to handle this himself. The fact that he had the audacity to refer to Simone as his daughter when he had been assaulting her implies that he still wants to have some kind of control over her. Like many abusers, Otis doesn't want to let his victim go.

Unfortunately, as much as viewers may want Simone to escape from Otis once and for all, it seems inevitable that he will find her eventually. The show wouldn't have gone through all the work of establishing that he is alive and looking for her if he wasn't going to find her at some point. That storyline was left unresolved so that it could come up later, probably at the worst possible moment for Simone.

A person's past coming back to haunt them appears to be a growing theme on Star. Each character has some skeletons in their closet that hold them back from finding success. Simone's skeletons are particularly tragic because not only was her abuse horrific, but it was totally out of her control. She's just a teenager trying to find a way to be alright again. And as long as Otis is out there, she can't be.