The Undoing finale: That ending was interrupted and more questions answered

HBO Miniseries The Undoing, with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant as a wealthy Manhattan couple in big legal trouble, it’s over. After six episodes that spun endless theories on the internet about who killed Elena Alves and why, we finally found out the identity of the killer in Sunday’s final episode, The Bloody Truth. But that doesn’t mean that every question raised by the thriller was answered beyond a reasonable doubt.

Let’s put on our flowing Stevie Nicks-style coats, stroll through (strangely empty) Central Park and dive right in, shall we?

Warning: Major, major spoiler ahead. Like the really, really great ones, including the biggest in the entire series.

Who killed Elena Alves?

Viewers had all kinds of ideas, but in the end the answer was right under our noses. The killer was Grace’s husband, Jonathan Fraser, the pediatric oncologist on trial for killing her lover. She was the mother of her former patient Miguel and her own daughter.

The revelation of killing Alves following an argument took place in flashbacks and proved as obvious as it was shocking. It also cemented the show as a more psychological thriller than many viewers expect from the mysteries.

“I love that collectively, as an audience, we’re all so used to coming up with wild twists”, a viewer tweeted. “All The Undoing had to do to fool us was shoot straight.”

And, of course, it drops a steady stream of falsifications that suggest the killer could be Grace or Grace Franklin’s father (Donald Sutherland) or son (Noah Jupe) or friend Sylvia (Lily Rabe). (There were so many shots of her that seemed to say, “Look at me! I’m a clue!” I fell in love, lesson learned.)

“In designing the episodes, we invited people to play with their prejudices, their curiosity and their version of the truth,” executive producer David E. Kelley told TVLine. “There were scenes with Sylvia that were deliberately cryptic, but it was never part of the overall plan that she was part of the crime.”

I have to apologize to Sylvia, Elena’s husband, Franklin and Henry … in that order. #TheUndoing

– spottieottiedopaliscious angel (trill_linaa) November 30, 2020

The Undoing is based on You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz. And from that title alone, it’s now easy to look back and think we should have. So why didn’t we do it? IS…

Because it was Grace so blind to the truth?

Deep, deep, oh-so deep denial. Despite being a Harvard-educated clinical psychologist who considered herself adept at reading people, it was simply too shocking for her to fully absorb the growing signs that her beloved husband was a sociopath (including the most glaring, revelation that he showed zero pain. his little sister died tragically many years ago). So to protect herself, her marriage, her son and her core beliefs about people and practically the whole world, Grace keeps herself in a state of denial until she can’t anymore.

The strength of the show is that it makes viewers as reluctant to face the truth about Jonathan as Grace is – and we’re not even married to the boy.

Hugh Grant out here kills the mother of his cancer patient with whom he has a child from an adulterous relationship, while he blames his own son for killing her and ruining countless lives at every turn and I’m like …#TheUndoing pic.twitter.com/PdRSdLWxi9

– Matt Skiles (@ MattSkiles2) November 30, 2020

Nobody wants to believe that someone who, by all accounts, has dedicated their life to healing can take a life in such a reckless and brutal way. And as Grace suggests to more than one patient, the mind can go to great lengths to deny information that conflicts with truths we don’t want to see, especially when those truths involve loved ones.

Also, let’s face it. Hugh Grant’s masterful manipulator Jonathan also reveals Hugh Grant-ey’s awww-shucks charm in that special way, with a tilted head and a romantic role. The charming British accent probably didn’t hurt either. Until the final 10 or 15 minutes of the finale, it was still easy to believe that Jonathan had been wrongly accused – until he set off with Henry on the creepiest father-son journey ever, getting crazier with every turn of the family. SUV.

What finally wakes up Grace?

Watch closely in the final episode as Jonathan suggests that his son Henry may have killed Elena in an attempt to keep his fractured family together, and you can see a subtle change happening in Grace. She may not know her husband the way she thought she knew him, but she certainly knows her son. And she’s absolutely sure he’s a good guy. He may have the strength to leave the violin on the floor out of the case (bad idea), but he certainly doesn’t have the ability to beat a woman to death.

It’s shortly after that pivotal moment Grace calls her friend Sylvia, a lawyer, and tells her she needs to talk. We are not aware of what they discuss on their morning walk. But supposedly Sylvia is advising Grace on how to take a wisely stand and implicate her narcissistic traitor of a husband, who at that point in the trial seems likely to be acquitted.

What does “The Undoing” refer to?

There are various ways to interpret the title of the show, as lives, marriages and long-standing tales are all canceled. Notably, cancellation is also a psychological term for a “defense mechanism in which a person tries to cancel or remove an unhealthy, destructive, or otherwise threatening thought or action by engaging in contrary behavior.” It seems that Grace’s initial inclination to believe in her husband’s innocence is her defense against the horrible reality she knows deep inside.

“Don’t you tell patients,” the prosecutor asks Grace during cross-examination, “that sometimes they want so much to believe in their partners that they choose not to know things? Not to see things? That sometimes the truth of who and what is are they married are distorted by the desperation of what they want to be married to? ”

Check and check.

Will there be a second season?

HBO has clearly defined The Undoing as a limited series, so a second season seems unlikely. However, both Kelley and director Susanne Bier have made comments that leave the door open at least for a small fragment. “Of course you wonder what will happen after this is all over. We joked about it on set,” Bier told OprahMag.com. When asked about the possibility of another season, he said: “I won’t rule it out. But it’s not in the concrete works.”

Kelley, while pointing out that a second season was never the intent, anticipated what it might face.

“Susanne Bier and I both loved the part of the book where Grace was rebuilding herself after her world collapsed. But for the purposes of this show, it was more about the thriller aspect,” she told The New York Times. “Who knows? If we extended Grace Fraser’s life beyond this season of The Undoing, maybe we’d get into the rebuilding part.”

PS What are Franklin’s eyebrows?

A rich and influential man like Franklin needs rich and influential brows, it seems. It was hard not to notice the pointed, overhanging eyebrows, which social media quickly transformed into their own character.

“I can’t believe Donald Sutherland’s brows don’t play a role in the separate cast in The Undoing,” wrote a Twitter user.

I can’t believe Donald Sutherland’s brows don’t have a separate cast credit #TheUndoing

– Eileen (@EileenBillinson) November 23, 2020

He wrote each other, “Are we SURE the killer wasn’t Donald Sutherland’s eyebrows ?!”