Summary
For all its faults, Untamed has a near-perfect ending, with Episode 6 tying up every loose end and delivering big emotional payoff.
Credit where it’s due – Untamed hasn’t exactly been a remarkable crime thriller, featuring many of the overly familiar hallmarks of shows in the genre, but it has a proper ending. For once, every loose end is tied up, every character arc is paid off, and there’s no suggestion that we need to return to this story for the sake of a second season. The journey might have had its bumps, or perhaps lulled the driver to sleep at the wheel, but the destination is, I think, more than worth it. Episode 6, “All Trails Lead Here”, is probably on balance the strongest episode of the entire show.
As ever, there’s quite a lot to go over involving almost all of the cast. Some of it loops back to earlier subplots and even a couple of throwaway little moments you might have missed, but for those who were paying attention from the beginning, there really is a surprising amount of payoff and emotional heft here. So, let’s get on with it.
The Downfall Of Shane Maguire
The first portion of Untamed’s finale is devoted to a cat-and-mouse game between Turner and Maguire, after the penultimate episode ended with the former being shot by the latter. Here in Episode 6, Turner tries to escape and/or fight back while Maguire tracks him, all without succumbing to his injury.
I’m not concerned about realism – I think, for instance, a sniper rifle bullet would have probably done a bit more damage? – or the fact that the script is rigged in Turner’s favour, since Maguire is cursed like all villains with last-minute monologues before being able to pull the trigger. I’m just happy to have a proper outdoorsy scene in a series that hasn’t featured very many of them, despite ostensibly being about them.
Predictably, just as Maguire is about to take Turner out, Vasquez arrives and shoots him dead. She’s starting to like the wilderness after all, but Turner is still on his last legs and has a long-ish recovery ahead of him.
What Happened to Sean Sanderson?
While Turner is laid up, Jill sits Scott down and decides to tell him a painful truth that she fears might ruin their marriage. It’s about Caleb.
Jill explains that after Caleb went missing, Turner found images on Maguire’s wildlife cameras that revealed Sean Sanderson had led him away and killed him. Maguire offered to kill Sean, but Turner wanted to do it the right way and secure a conviction. Jill went behind his back and paid Maguire to kill Sean Sanderson. Turner only found out afterwards, and this betrayal, not Caleb’s death, is what ended their marriage.
I’m annoyed at the fact I didn’t put this together, since the clues were all there. Maguire hinted at it multiple times in previous scenes. I was just so fixed on the idea that Turner killed Sean and that Jill knew about it that I never considered the alternative. Good twist.
After unburdening herself, Jill tells Turner that she’ll be okay and she no longer needs to worry about him. She also makes him promise he’ll be okay, too. They’re using “be okay” as a polite shorthand for not killing themselves, by the way. Eric Bana is really good at selling the emotional depth here. Turner also confesses to Avalos that he wasn’t at his best during the Sanderson investigation and probably shouldn’t have been leading it, and says he’ll sign a statement to that effect. He gives nothing else away, though.
Never Trust A Pastor
Turner continues to feel guilty about not looking harder for Lucy back in the day. He was fixated on the idea that Rory killed her, but DNA testing has subsequently proved that Rory wasn’t even her father. Knowing there’s still more to uncover, Turner follows the lead presented by the young man in Episode 4, who claimed Lucy had lived with a local pastor under the name Grace McRay. Turner goes to investigate.
What Turner finds is essentially a prison. The only person there is an old woman who is clearly not in her right mind, having been sworn to silence by her husband, Lester. The children’s beds are all downstairs, next to an office with a peephole in the wall. Lucy’s Miwok symbols are carved into the wall. She was here, but she was terrified. She and the other children were prisoners.
Turner tracks down Lester’s daughter, Faith, who reveals that the foster home thing was a racket. Her father barely fed the kids, just kept them locked up in the basement, and accepted money for their salvation until he was able to move them on. Faith remembers that Lucy cried a lot, more than was typical even for children in that position, and she eventually fled. But she also claimed that her father would come and rescue her, because he was “some kind of cop”.
(L to R) Eric Bana as Kyle Turner, Lily Santiago as Naya Vasquez in Untamed. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
Turner Figures Out Who Lucy Cook’s Father Was
With the suspect pool narrowed at this point, there’s only one person who can feasibly be the father of Lucy Cook – Captain Paul Souter. Turner confronts him, and he reluctantly explains.
Souter’s wife has no idea about Lucy’s existence; it’d ruin them. But Maggie, Lucy’s mother, had asked Souter on her deathbed to get Lucy away from Rory. That’s who opened Lucy’s bedroom window to rescue her in the closing flashback of Episode 3. He sent her to Lester, believing she would be safe. In the aftermath of her disappearance, he made sure Rory took the blame for her apparent death.
When Lucy returned to Yosemite, she was understandably fuming with Souter and began blackmailing him. Every time she turned up, she would want more money and threaten to expose who she was if she wasn’t paid. When Lucy eventually threatened to take Sadie to Lester, Souter decided enough was enough. He confesses to having shot her, but not with the intention of killing her. But he wasn’t especially concerned that she crawled up El Capitan and subsequently fell to her death.
Turner wants to take Souter in. He wants to run ballistics on his rifles. He wants to expose the truth. Souter is adamant that it can’t happen, and pulls a gun on Turner. However, he turns it on himself.
Healing
The ending of Untamed isn’t about closing Lucy Cook’s case. In a roundabout way, it’s about healing, a theme which Episode 6 expresses through the conclusion of several characters’ stories.
Lucy’s ashes are returned to the native people and scattered on the winds by Jay. This doesn’t do much for her, but it allows her relatives and their maligned community to achieve a measure of peace knowing justice has, for once, been done on their behalf.
Turner, meanwhile, is led to the water by the ghost of Caleb, the place where he has repeatedly intended to end his own life by sinking to the bottom. For the first time, though, he says he’s not ready, and Caleb comforts him. They eventually part ways, this scene obviously being indicative of Turner beginning to come to terms with the loss of his son.
When Vasquez calls on Turner, she finds his cabin empty. All of his belongings are gone except for a single box and a note. The note explains that he has left his horse for her, and the box contains all of Caleb’s toys that he stopped Gael from playing with in Episode 4. It’s another symbol of him having begun to move on from his loss, with the note being an endorsement of Vasquez remaining in Yosemite and keeping the peace in Turner’s stead.
As for Turner, he has left. There’s no indication of where he might be going, but it doesn’t really matter. The circle of pain Scott talked about has been closed off, and both he and Jill will be able to begin the process of healing. All in all, it’s just about the most meaningful conclusion Untamed could have pulled off.
