‘Vanished’ Ending Explained – A Generational Cop-Out

I should like the ending of Vanished. “Run, Alice, Run” addresses one of my key issues with the series overall, which has been Alice’s phenomenal obliviousness. The penultimate outing looked like she had reconciled her shortsightedness and elected to put her frustrations to work in solving a bigger issue, but Episode 4, which would be the final act of the movie that this limited series probably should have been, cheapens the whole thing by making Tom a good guy after all, and giving Alice a smug victory moment that doesn’t make a great deal of sense with the new context.

The finale also completely sidelines Helene so that Alice can become the action-hero-archaeologist, which I’m not sure I’m buying. But Inspector Drax at least gets some more screen-time and a few funny lines, which is perhaps just as well, since it’s he who raises the big question I’ve been repeatedly asking myself – if Alice is so smart and brilliant, how has she managed to get herself into this situation in the first place?

Where We Left Off

You’ll recall that the penultimate outing ended with Alice and Helene opening a shipping container full of trafficked women and children, and “Run, Alice, Run” picks up immediately from there.

Naturally, Alice and Helene’s blundering doesn’t go unnoticed, and they’re quickly pursued by Saeed and the other traffickers in a so-so chase sequence through the port. It’s fine enough, though the setting is much blander than the solid, similar sequence through the streets last week. And it doesn’t end as positively, since Alice and Helene are both knocked out and captured by the bad guys, waking up in a warehouse to be greeted by Alex, Mira, and Tom himself.

The Evidence Is There

It’s around this point that I started to realise what Vanished was doing. It would make complete sense for the villains to simply shoot Alice and Helene dead and be done with it, but Tom manages to talk them out of it, claiming that the disappearance of an American tourist would bring too much attention to the operation. Hmm.

Tom later returns with the bad news that Saeed is going to kill Alice. He hands her a syringe and tells him to jab it in his eye – that’s a pretty big ask for an archaeologist – and flee, which is advice she follows, even though she can’t work out why Tom would be giving it. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? I certainly thought so.

Alice is forced to leave Helene behind, which keeps her out of the way for most of the episode, and turns to another unlikely ally in the form of Drax.

Drax Isn’t A Bad Guy After All

Despite the fact that Alice earlier saw Inspector Drax have a clandestine meeting with Alex, it turns out that he was never on the payroll after all. Instead, Alex had tried to frame Alice for his own crimes, or at least the crimes of his assassin, but Drax wasn’t buying it. Despite Alice acting deeply suspicious all the time, she doesn’t seem the type for murder, and her employers vouched for her, too.

This doesn’t mean that Drax is totally on board with Alice’s claims, but to be fair, they’re pretty big ones, and that’s what evidence is for. When she drags him to the warehouse, the place is conspicuously empty, but an errant slipper helps her to make her case. But Drax needs time to look into it, and Alice doesn’t feel like she has much of that, so instead of following the advice to not do anything reckless while Drax looks into the matter, she instead does something reckless immediately.

Tom Isn’t A Bad Guy Either

Following another lead, following a truck at the warehouse to the company factory, Alice sneaks inside alone like a maniac to see what’s what. She manages to find and free Helene, but is promptly attacked and recaptured by Saeed. When Alex instructs Saeed to kill her, though, Tom intervenes and shoots Saeed. It’s a standoff!

As it turns out, Tom is working deep undercover for Interpol and has been playing his role to accumulate evidence against Alex’s trafficking operation. Another standoff ensues, this time with Drax getting involved, but it all goes wrong when Helene opens fire on Alex. In the chaos, Tom and Alice manage to batter Alex, and then Drax shoots Mira when she gets the drop on them. The trafficking ring has been rumbled. The victims will be taken care of, and the surviving perpetrators are in custody.

Alice Chooses Herself

A questionable part of the ending of Vanished is what happens between Alice and Tom. Now, it’s important to keep in mind that Alice has adamantly refused to accept the idea of Tom being a scumbag throughout the entire season, to justify her own spotty decision-making if nothing else, but now it has finally turned out that he isn’t a scumbag and was a good guy all along, she suddenly doesn’t want anything to do with him.

Now, granted, he did lie about a lot. But you can sort of justify it in context, and now he seems super keen to spend their lives making it up to her, including moving with her to Princeton. But Alice isn’t having it. She and Tom spend the night together, granted, but when Tom wakes up, it’s to a note telling him that she has left him. But at least she had the decency to let him know.

Not sure I’m buying any of that. But then again, I haven’t bought much of it since the beginning.