‘The Audacity’ Ending Explained – In Silicon Valley, the Bad Guys Always Win

This is a weird statement, I’ll grant you that, but here it is anyway: The Audacity doesn’t feel like the kind of show that would have this kind of ending. Maybe it’s just me, but even though I wasn’t necessarily expecting closure in all areas, I was at least expecting a bit of it here and there. Instead, Episode 8, “Granfalloon”, literally blows up every ongoing storyline in a flurry of personal revelations, surprisingly serious consequences, and deeply immoral dilemmas. Absolutely nothing is resolved by the finale. The only substantial takeaway is, predictably, “the bad guys win”.

But in this show, everyone is a bad guy, so that doesn’t mean much. It’s only in the last couple of episodes that Duncan realised how much of a bad guy he could be, but he wasn’t exactly likeable from the very beginning. What’s more surprising is who turns out to actually have a conscience, and how much the depth of the dysfunction damages them. This creates a note of spiralling tragedy that has been missing from the rest of the season, and is a slightly odd, unexpected fit for the climax.

Carl Goes Back On His Word

Given his supposed fondness for veterans, it was easy to imagine that Carl Bardolph would have done something reasonably positive with the VA and Xander, especially after recent breakthroughs. But it becomes obvious during the cold open here that Carl’s appreciation for the soldiers is a kind of fetishised obsession. What he really wants is to commodify the pain and trauma of war while paying lip service to those who fight it. And that’s precisely what he does.

Already put off by his earlier interaction with Bardolph, Tom is horrified to learn that he has sold Xander – rebranded as Xandar – to the Department of Defence to function as an AI assistant to drone pilots. It’s a lucrative deal, but the exact opposite, morally speaking, of what Martin and Tom intended. Martin’s now very rich, but he seems determined to fight against Carl’s hijacking of his creation every step of the way. Surprisingly, Anushka even resigns as CEO in disgust.

But make no mistake, this is a win for the worst of the worst. Duncan even taunts Tom about it, since even though he doesn’t personally benefit – not yet anyway – his ideology is vindicated.  And he loves having his ego stroked.

The End of the Line

This finale goes especially badly for Tom. But it doesn’t exactly go well for Jamison, either, and she’s a surprising victim since she has largely had nothing to do with anything. But the machinations of others totally wreck her, leading to a moment where she almost decides to end it all and is saved by an equally unlikely rescuer.

The first problem is the fact that Orson stole JoAnne’s gun and put it in the trophy cabinet at school, from where it has since disappeared. Jamison ends up being blamed for this, which threatens her Stanford application. Later, after Lili has taken her home, Jamison hears her mother disparaging her to Duncan, causing her a tremendous amount of upset. Even though Lili and Beatrice manage to sort of get their own way at the Winter Gala, Jamison is still emotionally broken and steps out onto the train lines in the path of an oncoming locomotive. Luckily, it draws to a halt a while away from her, and Tess, having followed her, consoles her.

The reason the train stopped, though, is that Tom had thrown himself under it further up the tracks. We only see his ID badge hanging from a fence post, but it’s easy to intuit what happened. The deliberate misuse of veterans’ personal information is at least partially his fault. And that he couldn’t live with.

The FBI Is Calling

Through Orson, who is so desperate to secure more of his steroid tincture that he’s willing to do and say just about anything, Gary learns that JoAnne is being blackmailed by Duncan. Initially, he thinks the two of them are having an affair, and it’s hard to tell which is necessarily worse.

Gary and Orson are forced to form an unlikely partnership to find the missing gun, which is registered in Gary’s name, but that’s of no real concern in the ending of The Audacity. What matters more is that JoAnne receives a call from the FBI after Gary talks about her problem with a therapist who has ties to law enforcement. A phone call isn’t quite the same thing as the Feds breaking down the door, but I assume it isn’t especially good news either.

Duncan Owns His Villainy

The WatchCode Forum is an unlikely success for Duncan and PINATA, at least in part because he wholeheartedly embraces the deep-seated immorality of the idea. Nena Marx has a bunch of difficult questions, but not that really work on someone who isn’t ashamed of what they’re doing. He calls the outrage fake, embraces the idea of being a fascist eugenicist, and stokes enough panic around personal data and excitement around his product that the offers immediately begin rolling in.

The downside of the demonstration is that Duncan inadvertently reveals that Jamison isn’t his child. By tracing her bloodline as part of his privacy-violating presentation, he realises that she was sired by his former business partner, Hamish. The news clearly bothers him, but interest from Cupertino certainly softens the blow. It gives Duncan an angle to sell PINATA for $350 million, the same amount that the original acquisition of Hypergnosis would have been worth. But it also gives him some leverage on Bardolph.

Even though Carl is pretending to be bothered by Tom’s death, he can’t let an opportunity pass him by, even if he says he will. Duncan offers Carl PINATA for $1, with the deal being that he gets a bunch of stock options and once again becomes CEO of Hypergnosis. The two most immoral men in Silicon Valley can own everyone’s personal data together. Carl rejects the deal out of hand. But after Duncan leaves, he picks up a dollar out of the diner’s tip jar and follows him outside.