Since Patty’s death, she’s served as a literal manifestation of Kevin’s guilt, and it’s never been more on-the-nose here, where, in a locked-down room, she serves as his mouthpiece, telling him about the planned nuclear event and why it’s so important. It’s because the world expects something to happen, and so they must make it so — to fulfill the desire for disaster. It’s a big, honking metaphor for Kevin’s real world, where those in his orbit are paralyzed by a thirst for what’s next, some new big thing to come along that makes the old big thing more palatable. But it’s also a matter of the heart. When their moment is interrupted by White Kevin’s vice president — a surprise Liv Tyler back as Meg Abbott — she tells him about something called the Fisher Protocol, an ordinance that says that for the president to set off the nukes, he must obtain the key from the heart of a volunteer by murdering that person. A test of wills. Of course, that volunteer is White Kevin’s identical twin, Black Kevin, whom we meet earlier in the episode when he washes up on a sandy shore and is met by a masked Dean the Dog Shooter (if this sounds bizarre, it weirdly feels…kind of straightforward — that’s what this show has done to us).