The Undoing's ending wasn't what viewers expected, but it was still great
The Undoing spoilers follow - including its ending.
Ever since the Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman-fronted drama first appeared on our screens, viewers were asking who had killed Elena Alves (Matilda De Angelis).
Following the blueprint for a whodunnit, theories were circulated and storylines picked apart. Everyone seemed to have a hunch about who dealt the fateful blow to the woman that served no other purpose than being the tragic victim of the piece.
With each twist and turn, a different character was momentarily cast with suspicion. As the plot unravelled, the HBO drama also raised its own stakes – the pay-off, after all, would need to satisfy the hours of audience investment.
The final episode, aptly titled 'The Bloody Truth', finally gave all the answers we had been seeking. Through flashbacks, we saw Elena's violent final moments and the true identity of her murderer.
Here's your final warning: massive finale spoilers follow.
As it turns out, the killer had been in our line of sight all along.
There were no last-minute revelations or shocking twists where this was concerned; the evidence had continued to point to Jonathan Fraser (Hugh Grant) throughout, and it was he that was in fact guilty.
His son Henry (Noah Jupe) was in possession of the murder weapon, only he had discovered it in the outdoor fireplace at the family beach house. Convinced that his father must, therefore, be guilty, he chose to try and protect him by concealing the vital piece of evidence which would have undoubtedly sent his father away to prison for a very, very long time. Not only that, but Henry ran it through the dishwasher – twice! – to clean it of blood and fingerprints.
Following some questionable off-the-record advice from their lawyer Haley Fitzgerald (Noma Dumezweni), Jonathan, Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her father Franklin (Donald Sutherland) ended up deciding not to turn this over to the authorities. Jonathan's trial had been on a knife edge, and this further 'coincidence' would have been one thing too many for his defence team to be able to explain away to the jury.
On the surface, it may seem lazy of The Undoing to have gone with the obvious suspect. But, what the final episode shows is that the series was never actually a whodunnit after all.
Rather than trying to outsmart the show and second guess who the murderer really was, it turns out that we should have been paying closer attention to the man placed in the frame from the off: Jonathan Fraser.
Much like Grace, we had been dazzled by his charm and didn't want to believe that he could have done it. At what point was she (and, by extension, the audience) going to finally see him for what he truly was?
The breadcrumbs had been dropped from a few episodes prior, his mask starting to slip. Jonathan's lawyer saw right through him instantly, pin-pointing that his misguided visit to Mr Alves had been a symptom of his bulging sense of grandeur and experience of being able to win people over.
His mother had offered up the biggest piece of the puzzle when she revealed to Grace that as a teenager he had lacked any emotion or empathy, after the tragic death of his sister. Also, if you look a little closer at scenes where Jonathan was displaying any emotional upset– such as his tears during his TV interview – something felt a little off.
But it was arguably Jonathan's reaction to the finding of the murder weapon that really shattered his outward image, and the hold that he had over his wife. Knowing how bad it looked for him, and desperate to shift the blame onto another, he suggested to his wife that their son may have been the murderer – an insinuation that, quite understandably, disgusted her.
"I do see," she finally told her father, who had been trying to make her see things objectively.
This kickstarted Grace's plan to influence Jonathan's trial. She phoned her friend Sylvia Steineitz (Lily Rabe) and asked to meet her in private and for help with a favour.
Fast-forward back to the trial, and Grace had orchestrated her own spot in the witness box by asking Jonathan's lawyer to call on her to testify. It all started off with her vouching for her husband, claiming that she did not believe him to be capable of the crime.
But when the time came for the prosecution to cross examine, they had knowledge (thanks to a tip off from Sylvia) of Grace's conversation with Jonathan's mother and therefore his troubling lack of empathy and remorse. What's more, Sylvia had told the prosecution about Grace's private concern that her husband had narcissistic personality disorder.
This was, of course, all planned by Grace. We finally got to see her break away from Jonathan, and take the steps that were needed to remove him from her life and protect her son from him.
His conviction now seeming inevitable, Jonathan once again attempted to blame his lawyer Haley Fitzgerald for the failure of putting Grace on the stand – but she wasn't having any of it. Recognising that it had been Jonathan that had his hold over his own family weakened, Haley flipped it right back onto him: "She was in your camp, and you lost her."
Not having much else to lose, Jonathan decided to trick Henry into getting into his car with him and tried to make a break for it.
The police were alerted when Henry didn't show up for school, and Grace and Franklin joined the chase from a helicopter. After a dramatic pursuit (which for a moment looked like it could have ended in tragedy, due to a near-miss with a truck) Jonathan pulled over on a bridge and seemed to contemplate jumping.
A panicked Grace, who saw how close Henry was to the edge, screamed at him not to do it. For a second, Jonathan took that as a sign that his wife was still on his side, and got down to embrace her.
But Grace, now emancipated from the toxicity of their relationship and seeing everything clearly, turned away and didn't look back.
While this may have been a very different kind of resolution to what viewers went into the finale expecting, it was certainly no less powerful. The Undoing has well and truly undone our expectations of a seemingly classic murder mystery.
The Undoing aired on HBO and Sky Atlantic, and is available on streaming service NOW TV.
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