Summary
Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga are both exceptional here, as the finale veers away from the source material to provide a new last-minute twist.
The ending of Presumed Innocent has two important matters to cover — the outcome of Rusty’s trial, and the reveal of who really killed Carolyn Polhemus. Episode 8, as predicted, veers away from the outcome of the book and the feature film and provides a new murderer, though it’s not enough of a deviation to change the story’s texture.
A potentially more interesting idea was left on the table, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, let’s break down the events of the season finale.
The Fireplace Poker
I’m not surprised Tommy Molto has a cat he cuddles like a baby. He seems the type, doesn’t he? He’s a lonely guy with many insecurities and an inflated sense of self-importance. Women — including the late Carolyn Polhemus — don’t seem to like him. A cat might tolerate him. Unfortunately, the cat can’t reveal who snuck into his apartment and left a fireplace poker on his kitchen counter.
Raymond makes a snarky remark about the cat, which feels right. He’s probably making the same connections I did. Tommy leaves the side door open for the moggy so his neighbor can come by to check on it, which coincidentally is what the intruder used to get in and plant the poker. As it turns out, it really is Carolyn’s; Rusty later tells Barbara that he recognized a chip on the handle, and once used it to make a fire, so it’s perhaps just as well that it has been scrubbed clean of DNA and fingerprints.
The poker isn’t admissible as evidence, but it can be mentioned, which the defense is hoping it won’t be. Who had more cause to incriminate Tommy than Rusty? The jury will suspect his involvement if it comes up. But brushing it under the rug legally speaking doesn’t mean we, the audience, can’t put two and two together. Someone — Rusty, Dalton, Michael, whoever — must have put it there.
The Chinese Takeout Conundrum
It’s funny the mundane stuff that can determine the outcome of a major murder trial, but Rusty’s fate largely depends on whether or not Carolyn ate crab rangoon on the night she died.
This matters because it takes around four hours for the human stomach to empty, and Carolyn’s stomach was indeed empty. Based on when she ordered Chinese takeout, if she ate it when it arrived, let alone afterward, that would put her time of death after midnight. Barbara can vouch that Rusty was home then.
But that’d require Barbara taking the stand, which everyone is dead against. Mya even reveals — in a very theatrical line of hypothetical questioning — that they had hired a private investigator to follow Barbara, meaning they know about her encounter with Clifton. She’ll be torn apart on the stand. The defense’s best approach is to rest and rely on the closing argument, which Rusty manipulates everyone into allowing him to make.
A Verdict Is Rendered
Presumed Innocent | Image via Apple TV+
The closing statements allow for some showreel acting from both Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, but they’re mostly tit-for-tat, reiterations of ideas we’ve heard before. To be clear: Rusty is banking on there not being enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered Carolyn, and Tommy is banking on their being just enough to suggest he did. Both men share an obvious trait, though — an ego a mile wide.
But these closing arguments are enough for the jury to reach a verdict. It takes some deliberation, but ultimately, Rusty is declared not guilty. He is exonerated of all charges.
The reactions are varied. Rusty’s kids are elated, as are Raymond and Mya. Barbara mostly looks at the floor. Tommy is devastated. But Rusty is harder to read. He mostly seems smug, which is his default setting, when you’d think he’d be exhibiting relief. This later turns to righteous anger when he finally gives a statement to the press to get them off his lawn, pointing the finger of blame at the prosecutor’s office and Tommy Molto specifically for pursuing an agenda instead of justice. Tommy watches it at home with the cat.
Who really killed Carolyn Polhemus?
It has been widely predicted that the Apple TV+ adaptation of Presumed Innocent would change the outcome of the book and the movie, and this is indeed the case.
After the trial, Rusty finds a suitcase packed with Barbara’s clothes and goes to the garage to confront her about it. He reveals that he deduced immediately that she was the one who killed Carolyn, which in the book and the film, she did. He staged Carolyn’s body to look like Bunny Davis’s in the hopes of being able to secure a false confession from Liam Reynolds and get Barbara off the hook. He was, ostensibly, protecting her.
But it becomes clear during this scene — and Ruth Negga is excellent in it — that Barbara has no idea what he’s talking about. At first, I thought the show was going to suggest that Rusty was guilty of everything and was trying to gaslight Barbara into believing she had murdered Carolyn and then disassociated from it, which would totally fit his character. But then Jaden comes in.
Jaden confesses to killing Carolyn, and to hiding the murder weapon before eventually delivering it to Tommy Molto’s apartment when she became fearful that Rusty would be convicted. She had only gone to Carolyn’s apartment to warn her away, but when Carolyn — rather smugly, to be fair — told her she was pregnant with Rusty’s child, Jaden struck.
Rusty does the only thing he can think of, which is to insist they never speak of it again and carry on as a family. Uncharacteristically for him, he takes responsibility for kick-starting the chain of events. But he’s quite happy for nobody to face justice when it suits him.
Presumed Innocent ends with a montage in which everyone seems to be getting on fine. Raymond has retired and is doing the lawn like he promised. Tommy is watching football (with the cat). And the Sabiches sit down to dinner together, though the look shared between Rusty and Barbara suggests that, as Carolyn had said to Jaden, she will always be intertwined with them.
What did you think of the ending of Presumed Innocent? Did you see the new twist coming? Would you have preferred the series stuck to the source material?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read More: Presumed Innocent Episode 7 Explained
