Summary
The finale of I Will Find You ends up being one of its weaker chapters, since all of the hard work was already done. This is about tying up loose ends and delivering a happy ending, which it achieves, but most of this episode could have been a coda to the previous one.
The problem with shows like I Will Find You chewing through plot so fast is that it’s feasible for them to run out. And in many ways that’s exactly what happens in the finale. All of the hard work has already been done, and the revelations in the penultimate episode filled in most of the missing information. This final, breezy half-hour is just about snipping off a few loose ends and delivering a happy ending, which it’s able to accomplish, but there’s little reason it couldn’t have been a ten-minute epilogue stuck onto the end of the previous chapter.
We’ll still break it down, though, and we’ll have fun doing so in the usual way that Harlan Coben shows provoke, where we can laugh at the idiocy and faux-sincerity and not wonder too much about tripping and falling into the fissures that emerge in the plot if you think about it too hard. This is all part of the fun, after all, and there’s no reason that our lovely readership should miss out on that.
Hayden Had Matthew All Along
After the revelation that Hayden was the real bad guy, the finale begins with a flashback to five years prior, when Hayden walked through the door of the Payne estate with a young boy he claimed was his son cradled in his arms. He had been drugged and kidnapped from his bedroom, his body replaced by that of a murdered kid imported from a Swiss orphanage. And at that point, Hayden became “Theo’s” father.
Matthew has literally been chilling in his bedroom at the estate for the entirety of the season. He can’t recall any of his life with David and Cheryl, and he believes, earnestly, that Hayden is his father and Gertrude is his grandmother. I’m not totally sure I’m buying this, but I think it may be drug-induced, since Matthew wasn’t so young when he was taken that his memory would be this foggy.
Plan of Attack
After bursting in on David, Cheryl, and Rachel in the operating room, it takes Greer about five seconds to see their point of view and come around to their way of thinking. She has known something was amiss from the very beginning, and now it’s time to do something about it, even though her powers are limited given she has been suspended. For backup, Cheryl goes to see Williams in the hospital and shows him the DNA results from the test that Philip ordered, proving that the dead kid wasn’t Matthew.
Rachel comes up with a plan to dupe Hayden by feigning David’s arrest and getting Jim to leak the story. She then calls Hayden and tells him that she has decided she loves him after all, and that the two of them should leave together as quickly as possible to live a romantic life abroad. Predictably, Hayden buys it.
Gertrude is less sold on the idea, though. The story has become too big to get away from. According to Stavros, the best-case scenario is that Matthew turns up dead, but Gertrude isn’t willing to take that path — not yet, anyway — since he has become a part of the Payne legacy and Hayden genuinely loves him. Luckily for her, Stavros is able to figure out that David hasn’t been arrested after all, tipping Hayden off that Rachel is manipulating him. Gertrude plans to use Rachel to lure David to the house, where they can both be killed in “self-defense”.
Hayden Is A Loser
The ending of I Will Find You kind of hinges on the idea of all this being caused by Hayden throwing a tantrum. The inciting event was Cheryl going to that fertility clinic and using Rachel’s name. Hayden’s assistant worked there and tipped him off about it, and when he thought that Rachel was having a family without him, he paid Heller to use his sperm to inseminate her. Of course, it later transpired that it wasn’t even Rachel who was trying to get pregnant, but at that point, Hayden still believed that Matthew was his.
When Hayden saw Matthew at the Fourth of July party, he apparently knew intuitively that Matthew was his, and then set his plan in motion. However, there’s a bit of an issue here, which Rachel points out when Hayden is explaining all this. Cheryl was already pregnant when she went to the clinic. Matthew is David’s son, and Gertrude lied about the paternity test (this is the document that Heller gave her, which she threw into the fire).
Hayden takes this news so badly that he just shoots his mother dead. She did also call him weak, to be fair, but I’m not sure that’s a serious enough insult to carry the death penalty. Either way, though, she’s out of the picture.
Rescue Mission
While all this is going on, David and Greer are able to infiltrate the estate, take down Stavros, and get upstairs to Matthew’s bedroom. Matthew doesn’t recognise David at all, but despite this, he nonetheless agrees to escape with him. They’re able to get Matthew outside before Hayden comes out with a gun to Rachel’s head. When he gets the opportunity, he grabs Matthew instead and bundles him into the car, but Greer shoots out the tire, and Matthew bolts into the woods, so everyone is forced to pursue on foot.
David manages to catch up to Hayden, but he gets shot in the ensuing scuffle. Rachel and Greer catch up, and Hayden knows he’s cornered. He emotionally tells Matthew that he was the best thing that ever happened to him before essentially committing suicide-by-Greer. Poor Matthew’s mental health must be taking quite the tumble at this point. By his own admission, he doesn’t even know what’s going on!
Eight Months Later
I Will Find You handles all of its climax in a hilariously speedy flash-forward montage. Eight months on, David is now a celebrity, with Rachel having published a bestselling book about the affair. Cheryl has given birth to a baby girl, and is still presumably happy with Ronald, and Adam has become a PI alongside Gerry after losing his Boston PD badge.
Lenny, sadly, passed away from the cancer, but he was able to spend some time with his grandson and give him a rapid tutorial on the Boston Red Sox before he did. Williams retired, and Greer took over his role as the head of the Boston Fugitives Task Force, but he keeps hanging around the office all the same.
Matthew still can’t remember anything, so he’s basically freestyling a relationship with his parents. But David is adamant that he’ll always find him if he needs him, which has to count for something. Oh, David and Rachel seem to be together romantically now, too, at least if their hand-holding is anything to go by. Wonder how Cheryl feels about that?
