Summary
Disclaimer brilliantly inverts its premise in Episode 6, shedding new light on old assumptions and reframing our understanding of the story’s villains and victims.
Episode 6 of Disclaimer not only proves me right – which is always fun – but completely and irrevocably inverts the premise of Alfonso Cuaron’s Apple TV+ drama. What was once a story about a kindly old man seeking revenge against the femme fatale who ruined his life for her pleasure has become, gradually and behind our backs, a story about a demented old psycho trying to murder a woman and her family for no reason at all.
I’ve been pushing the same theory for a couple of weeks now, and I reminded y’all of it in my recap of the previous episode. “VI” drops the bombshell, courtesy of Stephen, innocuously at first and then with more force. “This book was a work of fiction.” Nancy, in her grief, made it up; perhaps not all of it, and it’s clear that in the finale Catherine’s side of the story will be revealed, but certainly most of it. All those exaggerated literary stylings – the seductress, the heroic son, the intimately detailed sex scenes that she couldn’t possibly have known about – were a woman trying to rationalize the untimely death of her son. In her grief, she conjured a villain.
What’s more, Stephen has, over the years, bought into fiction. He’s complicit in the denial. And one gets the sense that this is a self-defense mechanism. Yes, it has helped him grieve, though there’s an argument to be made that neither he nor Nancy, thanks to their fantasies, never truly grieved at all. But there’s something else. In an early scene, the authenticity of the flashbacks is ruptured by a call from Sasha’s mother. You’ll remember Sasha as Jonathan’s girlfriend in the Italy flashbacks, who left suddenly to address a “family emergency”. But that’s not what happened. They had an argument so severe that not only did Sasha leave him behind, but her mother called Stephen and Nancy about it. When Sasha’s mother later learned of Jonathan’s death, she wasn’t moved. Whatever he did, from Sasha’s perspective, was worthy of the death penalty.
It’s very clever, really. Nancy’s version of Jonathan – enthusiastic, adrift, heroic – might not have been just a biased mother’s-eye-view, but an attempt to redress something darker. It’s a stretch, but perhaps Jonathan deserved it. And perhaps Nancy knew.
Disclaimer Episode 6 plays around with the timelines again, but smoothly, with key differences. The Italy flashbacks, now from Catherine’s perspective, aren’t as sun-drenched and idyllic. They’re more truthful. Catherine suddenly appears as more naïve, less predatory, and in the present day, with Stephen determined not just to ruin her but, I think, to destroy her utterly, and Robert being too limp to realize and bitter enough to help, it’s hard to imagine her as anything other than a victim.
Lesley Manville as Nancy Brigstocke (2001) | Image via Apple TV+
Speaking of victims – Nicholas, we learn, had a stroke as a result of his drug overdose, and may never wake up again. If he does, he could have extensive neurological damage. You’d think that Stephen’s work here was done, but not quite. When Robert, the “doting father” who had no idea that Nicholas even smoked, let alone that he had lost his job and was regularly taking heroin, calls Stephen to let him know what has befallen his son, it becomes clear that Stephen has a final play. He intends to kill Nicholas.
Cuaron’s juxtaposition of Stephen’s gleeful pursuit of revenge with Catherine’s recollections of Italy, where Stephen voyeuristically photographs her on the beach without her knowledge and has none of the hesitant, childlike charm we saw him exhibit in the previous version of this timeline, makes the point clear. He’s determined to become a murderer for reasons he doesn’t truly understand. His dead wife’s fantasy has driven him mad.
The long-awaited confrontation between Catherine and Stephen comes at the end of Disclaimer Episode 6. Earlier, Stephen had tried to pump a comatose Nicholas full of drain cleaner, and Catherine had intervened, obscuring his true intentions and allowing him to once again play the vulnerable old man. In the final sequence, Catherine takes a sip of the tea that we know Stephen has drugged, presumably in the hopes of killing her too.
“It’s time for my voice to be heard,” Catherine says as things close out. The truth is coming, but the question now is whether it can reveal itself before Stephen has his way.
