Summary
Stay Close answers all the lingering questions in a satisfying finale with no loose ends.
This recap of Stay Close season 1, episode 8 contains spoilers, including a discussion of Stay Close’s ending.
Is “Creep” by Radiohead the singular most overused “this guy is a bit odd” signifier song in all of popular media? I think you can make a case. It’s what is playing in the finale of Stay Close when Ken enters Vipers and starts asking after Carlton Flynn. It’s a morbid start, but then again, things can hardly get much more morbid after the grim discovery Broome and Erin made in the previous episode. The night is always darkest before the dawn, after all.
Stay Close season 1, episode 8 recap
Ray, currently free, is still adamant about meeting with Megan — he knows what she did, apparently. But on her way to meet him, Megan gets a call from Frances who claims that a woman is in her room, demanding she call Cassie. She looked like an angel, apparently. There are no angels present when Megan arrives, except perhaps Frances herself, whom Megan confides in and cuddles up to. Outside, though, is a different story. Barbie jumps Megan with a giant knife, and the two of them fight. It’s worth asking what Barbie and Ken’s fee is given how terribly their assignment has gone, and trying to kill someone in broad daylight in full view of a care home isn’t exactly high-quality assassin behavior, but we mustn’t grumble. Barbie ends up impaling herself with her own knife. If there’s an assassin Yelp, I dread to think what her reviews would look like.
Regardless, this leaves Ken all alone, and he’s fretting about why Barbie isn’t answering her phone as he continues to linger outside Vipers, convinced that Lorraine knows something. Meanwhile, the police track Ray’s phone while he idles around the pier waiting for Megan, and armed police chase him down the beach. They open fire as he ducks under the pier. Eventually, he’s cornered and forced to surrender. Broome arrests him on suspicion of murder.
Dave rushes to the hospital to see Megan — hilariously, her police protection detail is inside the room, so Dave just waltzes right in — and she’s distraught that all her secrets have led to this, which is fair enough. But do we know all her secrets yet? According to Ray, perhaps not. He’s determined to offer “no comment” in response to every question unless he gets to speak to Cassie first. Reluctantly, Broome agrees. And so does Megan.
Broome has to rush off when Erin informs him that Ken’s car has been tracked to outside Vipers, so that leaves Megan and Ray under the stewardship of Erin. They get ten minutes together. The first question she asks him is whether he killed all those men, and he says not, and I believe him. He’s willing to share his truth if Megan is willing to share hers, starting with whether or not she killed Stewart Green. He thinks she did. He found Stewart’s body and saw Megan running away. She claims he left her a message at the club; he claims he didn’t. Either way, Megan says when she got there Stewart was already dead. But Ray was following her — he didn’t kill Stewart. They both thought the other killed him. Ray, trying to protect Megan, did the only thing he could to help by disposing of the body. That’s why he remembers him being in the back of the car. He drove him somewhere remote and chopped him up with an ax, putting the pieces into plastic bags, weighing the bags down with stones, and throwing them into the river where they’d never be found. The next morning he went to Fester, unable to remember what had happened. He could never find Cassie after that, and he was left with the burden of the guilt.
Elsewhere Broome, after checking in with Rudy, heads to Lorraine’s apartment. He finds blood everywhere, Ken with a slashed throat, and Lorraine carrying the knife that killed him. She tells him to put his nightstick down and call any backup off. Lorraine explains what happened. Ken was going to kill her. He had been hired by Del and wanted information on Carlton. He could dish it out but couldn’t take it back, “like so many men.” Remember, I predicted this way back in the fourth episode. “They deserve it,” says Lorraine, “Don’t you think Broome?” The penny drops for Broome, and James Nesbitt sells his anguish so convincingly that I couldn’t help but feel for him. Lorraine has been killing an abusive man a year for the last 17. She tells Broome why. Her husband — she married young — one day decided to start beating her, for no good reason. She got pregnant. And for a while things were better, until the next time he flipped out and kicked her uterus to bits, meaning no kids, ever. They covered up the death of the baby. When Carnival came, he had a few drinks and tried it on, tried to force himself on Lorraine, so she killed him. “Just like that. I got a knife, and I stuck it in him. It was the best thing I ever did.”
The pattern continued. Every year she’d lure a man to the woods, kill him, and dump his body in the bunker. She killed Stewart Green. She killed Guy. She left the note for Cassie, telling her to meet Ray there, so she could know she was free of Stewart. We know what happened next. When Cassie returned to Vipers out of the blue, Lorraine wanted answers about what had happened to Stewart’s body, and what had happened in the intervening years. That’s why she lied and said that Stewart was back. There’s a surprising amount of emotion here. Both Broome and Lorraine sob and hold one another as she says she doesn’t want to spend her remaining days in prison. He promises to stay with her, and he reads her her rights through his tears.
Stay Close ending explained
Goldberg’s body is found. Del is arrested. Ray shows the police where he dumped Stewart’s remains. In her confession, Lorraine explains that she was the one who stole Ray’s camera and planted Carlton’s credit card in his car. She murdered Carlton, too. She also sometimes set up other men, to keep the heat off her and keep them away from women. One of those men was Jamal, who we see finally leaving prison. But the one part of Lorraine’s story that doesn’t add up is why Carlton’s body isn’t with the others. She says she can’t explain it.
Ray is leaving for a fresh start somewhere, but on his way, he stops off to attend Megan and Dave’s wedding. He smiles and leaves them alone. But when they are alone, Dave has a little confession of his own. He explains how he and Kayleigh had a father-daughter pact, that if she ever needed a ride he’d go and get her, no questions asked. The night she followed Megan to Vipers, she called him to pick her up after they’d stolen Carlton’s car. He saw the Subaru at the time. When he saw it on the news, he dumped it, to protect Kayleigh. And nothing has come of it since. He doesn’t understand the implications of this, obviously, but Megan does. Because Kayleigh told her the truth, back at the beach house. When Carlton jumped her as she was trying to escape, she bundled him in the Subaru’s trunk. When Dave dumped the car, he also unknowingly dumped Carlton’s body.
You can stream Stay Close season 1, episode 8 exclusively on Netflix. Do you have any thoughts on Stay Close’s ending? Let us know in the comments.
