- Sunday's "
Mare of Easttown " finale is packed with two major reveals. - There's a twist in the first 10 minutes followed by an even bigger one later on.
- The episode also contains some smaller twists, like Dylan becoming less mean-spirited.
Warning: This post contains major spoilers for the finale of "Mare of Easttown."
Sunday's "Mare of Easttown" finale packed in several big twists, including two about the identity of the person who committed the series' central killing.
Prior to the final episode, Detective Mare Sheehan (played by
The sixth episode appeared to offer answers by showing that Erin's relative Billy Ross (played by Robbie Tann) killed Erin and also fathered her baby.
However, less than 10 minutes into the seventh and final episode, it is revealed that neither of those two things are true. Billy's brother John (played by Joe Tippett) is the one who actually had an affair with Erin. John confesses to Mare that he's really the father of Erin's son and also admits to shooting the young mother during an angry confrontation.
While John's guilty confession seems to offer answers to the questions surrounding Erin's death, about forty minutes into the episode comes another devastating twist: John didn't actually kill Erin either. His teenaged son, Ryan (played by Cameron Mann), did.
The 13-year-old boy shot Erin after finding out about his father's affair with her, and both Billy and John were lying about killing Erin to cover for Ryan.
Even before Sunday's finale had aired, relatively few people bought the explanation offered by the sixth episode that Billy killed Erin - mostly because it seemed odd to wrap up the show's biggest mystery one episode early.
Some social-media users were convinced John was more likely to be Erin's killer and her baby's father.
-kmm24601 (@Kmm24601) May 24, 2021
-TY (@TahTy9) May 24, 2021
While some fans were right about John being Erin's son's father, viewers know now he's definitely not the killer.
Some others, like comedian Akilah Hughes and journalist Kara Swisher, were able to correctly guess that Ryan killed Erin ahead of the series finale airing.
Swisher tweeted that she had "deduced that Ryan is the perp."
-Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) May 24, 2021
Hughes offered a theory on Friday's episode of her "What a Day" podcast that was very close to how Erin's murder unfolds on the show.
Hughes said it was likely that Ryan texted Erin from John's phone (while pretending to be John) that he would meet her at the park. Ryan then shot Erin and asked his father and uncle for help.
Hughes explained on the podcast that she first started to think the killer might be Ryan after the detectives described the shooter's height while trying to build a profile for the perpetrator.
In a scene in an earlier episode, Ryan is also seen violently beating another student in the school cafeteria for bullying his sister, who has Down syndrome, which made Hughes think the young boy might have killed Erin, Hughes said.
"I think it's going to be Shakesperean," Hughes said about the theory she shared before the finale aired.
The finale also has a few other smaller plot twists
While the biggest twist on Sunday's "Mare of Easttown" finale is, by far, Ryan being exposed as Erin's killer, the episode also contains a few other unexpected moments.
For example, Erin's ex-boyfriend, Dylan (played by Jack Mulhern) spends most of his screentime in the first episode of the HBO thriller being cruel to Erin and telling her that he won't pay for her son's ear surgery (at the point where he still thought the baby was his child).
However, in the finale, Dylan shows up at Lori's home. Lori (played by Julianne Nicholson), who is Mare's best friend and John's wife, is seen taking care of Erin's baby after John goes to prison. Dylan hands Lori an envelope filled with cash and tells her to use it to cover the cost of the ear surgery the child needs or to buy the baby something nice with it.
Dylan's generosity in the finale is sharply contrasted with the version of the teenager viewers meet in the premiere.
Similarly, it is equally shocking to see that Mare was invited to her ex-husband Frank's (played by David Denman) wedding after she accused him of fathering Erin's baby in an earlier episode.
The twist-filled final episode answers all of the lingering questions viewers might have had while watching the seven-part series, except one: There's no conclusive explanation offered on the show about where Dylan went the night Erin was murdered.
While it's likely he was out making arrangements for money for Erin's baby's surgery, viewers don't find out for sure.