Pulse season 1 episode 3 recap: Did Vero survive the power outage?

Episode 3 of Pulse season 1 serves up its most intense and emotionally complex hour to date, set against the backdrop of a savage hurricane that knocks out electricity and puts the hospital staff into survival mode, both medically and psychologically. With the ER in darkness and relationships strained under pressure, the episode poses a horrific question: Will Vero survive the night?

Vero does survive, as seen in the following episode, but only barely. In episode 3, as the hospital plunges into darkness during a relentless hurricane and its last generator sputters on borrowed time, Dr. Cruz is forced to take her critically ill daughter off life support. In a tense gamble between love and medicine, she chooses faith over machinery—and Vero pulls through.

It’s a moment of profound emotional weight that defines the episode’s theme: when the systems fail, all you have left is trust in people, instinct, and hope.

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Pulse season 1 episode 3: A storm outside, a crisis within

Pulse season 1 episode 3, titled Power, sets its high-stakes drama amid a full-blown natural disaster. The hurricane that has been brewing since episode 1 now strikes in full force, knocking out the city’s power grid.

Inside Maguire Medical, the hospital is running on a single failing backup generator, which threatens the lives of patients dependent on machines—none more so than Vero, Dr. Cruz’s teenage daughter.

While the medical team scrambles to triage under flashlight beams and flickering monitors, the leadership is tested. Dr. Cruz, usually composed and clinical, is brought to the edge as she weighs her daughter’s life against the hospital’s diminishing power supply.

With no certainty that fuel will arrive in time, Cruz makes the decision to extubate Vero, placing her on oxygen and praying her lungs can function independently.

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Pulse season 1: Tensions shift in the dark

Dr. Danny Simms and Dr. Xander Phillips continue to navigate their fractured relationship. At the start of the episode, Phillips offers Danny his Chief Resident badge as a gesture of solidarity during the crisis, but their truce is uneasy.

The two clash over how to handle a field trauma case involving a young couple injured in the storm. Further, Danny is sidelined from surgery by Cole, but later receives a quiet, unexpected note from him—a sign of professional respect, perhaps even reconciliation.

Meanwhile, Danny's emotional volatility, previously seen as a liability, becomes a surprising asset in the situation. She calms a frightened patient during an unlit procedure and keeps her team focused in a moment of panic. Though still burdened by doubts and past betrayals, she begins to reclaim some authority.

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Pulse season 1: A hospital on the edge

While the ER fights to stay afloat, Dr. Camila and Nurse Chan take on an unusual mission: a patient with a ruptured appendix has wandered off into the hurricane. Without hesitation, the two head out to find her. Battling wind and rain, they locate the woman just in time to save her life. It’s a quiet but vital win—and a pivotal moment for their budding friendship.

Chan, often overwhelmed and self-critical, starts to show backbone. When Cole later refuses her entry into the OR, Chan stands her ground and earns the doctor’s grudging respect. A celebratory, goofy dance with Camila afterward offers a rare moment of levity in an otherwise grim night.

Eventually, thanks to a risky call by Phillips to his estranged father, emergency fuel is delivered. Power returns to Maguire just in time to stabilize patients teetering on the edge, including Vero. But while lives are saved, the episode ends with no sense of victory—only exhaustion. The storm may be easing, but the emotional wreckage remains.

Pulse season 1 episode 3 is a tense, high-stakes hour of television that combines medical urgency with emotional mayhem, serving as a reminder that storms come and go, but their aftermath stays.

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Catch all the episodes of Pulse season 1 streaming on Netflix.