MARE OF EASTTOWN Ending Explained

Mare Of Easttown has been a really gripping murder mystery that’s had some big twists and turns in it. Episode 7 of Season One has just dropped and in this, we’re gonna be recapping the plot, explaining its ending, and giving our thoughts on the show as a whole.

If you enjoy the video then please smash the thumbs up button and don’t forget to subscribe for breakdowns like this each and every day. With that out the way, welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show I’m your host Paul aka the guy who doesn’t cry over spilt milk that’s been thrown through his living room window. Now let’s get into Mare Of Easttown.

Mare Of Easttown Season One Recap

Ok so Mare Of Easttown has centred around the mystery of who killed Erin McMenamin. All the men..are..in suspicion and it’s led to several of them being under the glare of our mare played by Kate Winslet.

Miss Lady Hawk was a bit of a hero in the town but since then her reputation has started to fall and she’s now not regarded as highly.

Several years ago, Mare’s son took his own life and since then she’s lived with her mother Helen played by Jean Smart.

Mare losing her child was of course reflected in several of the other characters namely Dawn Bailey, whose daughter Katie had been kidnapped. At one point she admitted that she had lost her daughter to drugs several years before she was taken and the series in some ways is very much about Mare trying to right the wrongs of the past so others are spared her pain.

Mare’s daughter also lives with her as well as her grandson who was entrusted to her due to his mother’s drug addiction. However, she was back on the road to recovery, wanting to gain full custody and after Mare planted drugs in her car and got caught she was let go from the case.

Mare took things into her own hands leading to a big revelation.

The Death Of Colin

After teaming up with Colin Zabel played by Evan Peters, the pair managed to track down a man that had been abducting women in the area. Colin caught some Quicksilver and it led to him being one of the most tragic characters in the entire show. Colin was a prodigy detective who we discovered didn’t actually solve the case he was famous for and though he and Mare went on a date it was purely so that she could stay close to the case.

Mare like Colin was very much someone who had fame overshadowing their current work and it led to her wrestling with the pressure of living up to her past.

Colin still ended up a Bohner in the end and the show has used several elements like this to paint out it’s dower and depressing tone.

People are willing to ruin their own relationships to get away from Easttown and it’s one of the grimmest settings I’ve seen in a tv show. This place could genuinely be improved by Pennywise and all the characters in the show feel slightly lost.

It’s very gripping stuff and though he and Mare managed to discover the man who abducted two characters called Missy and Katie, it was revealed that he had an alibi for the night that Erin was murdered.

Mare was put back on the case and the prime suspects lined up with Deacon Mark admitting to being with her on the night she was killed and also the fact that he tried to hide her bike from the police. Erin’s ex was also put under the microscope as his girlfriend Brianna came forward and told the police that he was missing on the morning that she died.

Episode 7 Breakdown

However, it was a man named John Ross who looked to be behind the crime. Now being a murder mystery there are several twists and turns that set this up and John’s brother billy was even implicated in the crime.

Episode six culminated with Mare going after the latter as they took a fishing trip together.

But there was something that showed things weren’t as they seemed and characters Dylan and Jess went to Chief Carter who was overseeing the case. They presented a photograph of Erin in bed with John Ross, Billy’s brother and we discovered that he was actually the father of her child.

Episode 7 opens with Mare stumbling across John pointing a gun at Billy and after apprehending him he confesses to being Erin’s secret lover, meeting her that night, fighting over a gun with her which went off and then he apparently moved her body. It all seems to be tied up in a nice little bow but as we know from Mare Of Easttown, nothing is as clean-cut as it seems.

Parent Blaming Themselves

Looking back on Mare Of East Town, there are several themes in the show that are repeated in several of the characters. We very much get the feeling of guilt in several of the parents who feel weren’t really there for their children. Mare believes her son ended his own life because she focused on her work instead of him. Dawn lost Katie to drugs and was desperate to get her back when she went missing and John’s confession feels along the same lines.

The entire series is pretty much about family and what people are willing to do for the ones they love.

Whether it’s money or living a lie, they will sacrifice what they can in order to make it so that their kids are protected.

How they blame themselves for the fate of their children and this is reflected in Dawn blaming herself for Katie going missing, John and Lori for what we’ll talk about later and Mare for her son taking his life.

There’s even Dylan who though not related to Erin’s child DJ still feels like he has to be there for him and there’s this constant repetition throughout every character. They very much live lies and hold onto hope and as Mare states, they must learn to live with the unacceptable.

Mare has very much been trying to find redemption for her sons death and a way to get back to finding joy in life.

We’ll talk about this later on in the video but it’s a very important idea to deal with.

Hope

John is sent to jail and at the courthouse, he asks his wife Lori to raise DJ. Lori has been a very tragic character in the show and she has lied at several points to Mare in order to cover for her husband. By the end of the episode, her entire life is ripped apart and between her and Mare there’s definitely a feeling of betrayal.

She agrees to care for the child and life starts to get back to normal in Easttown. Mark is freed and after Mare says she hopes the next place he goes to treats him better. He says he has nowhere to go and that Easttown is his home to which she replies yep too.

I think this sums up how everyone is trapped within the city and though they know it’s possible to have a life outside of it, they don’t want to risk losing what took them so long to get. They also hope that life will improve there and Mare’s daughter states that her mother secretly loves it there because she believes she can make life better.

Now we do see some of these glimmers of hope when Katie is given a new home and DJ gets the ear surgery he needs though we can see Lori is fighting through it too.

I dunno if it’s because this show has been a constant kick in the balls or because there was some dust in the room but there may have been a tear, I said may have been a tear rolling down my cheek. Dylan gives the money that Erin had saved for DJ’s ear’s surgery to Lori.

However, Carrie relapses and ends up going back to rehab, leaving her son in Mare’s care. It’s a bitter-sweet win for the latter and she ends up parting ways with Richard, played by Guy Pearce.

He’s moving to a town over and though they say they’ll keep in touch we know deep down that they’ll both drift apart.

It seems like it’s as happy as things will get and something keeps itching away about the case to Mare.

Who Really Killed Erin?

Not only does she doubt the ballistics, her ex also says that John dropped them off on the night of the murder and we learn that he wasn’t having an affair at the time that we were told he was.

After visiting Mr. Carroll, who has been noticing that things have been moving about the property. This includes an Eagles Championship Mug, the world’s best pizza slicer and a gun that matches the make and model of the one that was used on Erin. We discover this was kept in the shed that’s been a big focal point in the series and discover that there are two rounds missing. Only he and another character had access to it and after Mare checks the CCTV we see that this is Lori and John’s son Ryan.

She goes to his school and instantly realises that the jig is up and sprints home to his mother who we learn knew about his involvement and like most of the characters, she was willing to do anything to protect him.

Mare takes as many available officers as she can to Lori’s but he comes along quietly and confesses.

Why Ryan Did It

It turns out that Ryan didn’t want his family to fall further apart because of his father’s affair which he discovered after finding text messages on his phone.

The night that they met he ended up taking Mr. Carroll’s gun from the shed and he tried to scare her with it. He said that he only wanted to scare Erin but when she went to grab it off him the gun went off twice.

Ryan called his dad, who, along with Billy helped him to move the body. They hoped that others would be blamed for it and Lori is furious that Mare has destroyed her family because she couldn’t leave things alone.

John is in prison and Ryan will likely spend a lot of time in a juvenile detention centre. All of their lives are ruined and Mare has to wrestle with whether she should’ve solved the case or kept the family together.

Mare realises that she’s been putting cases in the way to stop herself from grieving for her sons death and after saying goodbye to Siobhan who has left for school we see that life returns to somewhat normality in the town.

We see that Ryan has started taking writing classes and that the family has now fully accepted DJ.

Pastor Mark returns to work and talks about how we can always come back from tragedies in the community and this is very much shown here. Their spirits are rising once more and Mare goes to visit Lori. Unlike Colin’s mother who slapped her after destroying her life, Lori collapses into her arms in tear and the latter holds her whilst having an epiphany.

Mare realises that much like Lori she has been holding onto this pain for so long and that she hasn’t been able to let it out. Finally doing this allowed Lori to breathe once more and we end with Mare climbing back up into the attic which we know is where she found her sons body.

Throughout the entire series, Mare has been putting relationships, cases and whatever she can in the way of accepting the grief. But seeing Lori break down and being someone that has learned to live with it is an empowering moment.

According to Executive producer Craig Zobel, the team were discussing whether the camera should follow Mare or not but they decided not to. We very much leave Mare going off on her own to grieve in privacy, leaving us watching her move onto the next stage of her life.

This entire show has very much been about watching her trapped in this toxic cycle but her moving on from it shows that it is possible to grow. It’s a really impactful ending that shows her not only growing but moving onto a higher level in which she is no longer running from the past and instead moving towards it.

Mare Of Easttown Review

Now as for my thoughts on the series as a whole I think there was a lot of highs but a lot of lows to, though they were likely intentional. I’ve not experienced a show like this in a long time where everyone seems to be trapped in their own personal hell and unable to escape from it. Colin’s death was a massive moment in the show and I think that it’s probably the thing that people will think of first when we remember this series in yers to come. It was really shocking and I love how the show at several points felt quite pedestrian to the point that when this happened it completely knocked the wind out of you.

Now though it is slow paced, the central mystery is very gripping and the acting in the show is superb. This genuinely feels like prestige television and though I feel like a twat for saying that, I think it’s the best way to describe how well made the series is.

Tonally this is so depressing but I think it works so well to paint out how bleak life can be.

It’s a really gripping show that has a lot of twists and turns and though I doubt I’ll be revisiting it that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

Kate Winslett will no doubt get a lot of attention for her performance and she’ll probably garner some awards from it too. These are much deserved and Mare Of Easttown gets an…