The collector’s candle for this episode is After Curfew.

I filmed What We Come Back To at home, at a point when life had slowed just enough for certain things to come back into focus.

The episode opens with a chessboard. That wasn’t part of the original plan. Chess entered this world through Art of the Exit, an episode that took on a life of its own and found millions of people who understood what the board was really about. Not the game, but the patience. The cost of each move. The way light and dark sit across from one another without apology. When that chapter ended, it felt natural to let the language carry forward. Not as a gimmick. As continuity. In this world, Elle’s father plays chess. It adds something quiet and unspoken to who she is.

Then the book. "The Night Before Christmas." The same copy my dad has read from for as long as I can remember. Same illustrations. Same rhythm. Same ending, delivered without ceremony. He doesn’t read it like a performance. He reads it like someone who’s done this before, many times, and never needed it to be anything more than what it is. What surprised me wasn’t memory. It was the stability of the moment.

Life happened in the space between those readings. A lot of it. Good years, difficult ones, long stretches of uncertainty, versions of myself I had to become and then leave behind. And still, somehow, we ended up back in the same place, with the same words in the air, like none of that needed to be accounted for.

That’s when it became clear what this episode was really circling.

This isn’t a story about childhood. It’s about where strength comes from. About the people who set the standard before you ever knew there was one. Not through lectures or rules, but through the way they show up. Through consistency. Through doing the same small things well, over and over again. If Elle moves through the world with a certain steadiness, it didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was learned quietly, the way most important things are.

The flashbacks aren’t there to pull at nostalgia. They’re there because repetition carries weight. When something has been done enough times, it stops asking to be meaningful. It simply becomes part of the structure of your life. A voice reading aloud. A chessboard set up the same way. An ending you already know, and still listen for.

The collector's candle tied to this episode is After Curfew. It smells like the end of a good night. A fire that’s been tended properly. Wood, heat, a little depth left in the room after everyone’s settled in. The kind of warmth you associate with staying up late at the table, conversation slowing, nothing left to prove.

Cedar gives it structure. Musk keeps it grounded. It’s not decorative. It’s satisfying.

That’s why it belongs with What We Come Back To. The episode is about the things you grow up around that quietly teach you what good feels like. After Curfew carries that same sense of familiarity and assurance. Something you return to because it never disappoints.

If the episode, What We Come Back To, stayed with you, the matching candle is below. It’s for evenings when the noise drops, when you start to recognize the things that shaped you, and why certain presences still feel like home long after you’ve moved on.