We Were Liars season 1 ending explained
Those who read E. Lockhart's sensational novel We Were Liars before it was adapted by Julie Plec for Prime Video are probably feeling pretty smug right now. The show, just like its source material, is keeping a major secret that isn't revealed until mid-way through the final episode. If you haven't read the book and are feeling majorly WTF, or want to skip to the proverbial last page and get spoiled, here's what you need to know about the ending of We Were Liars.
At the beginning of the season, seventeen year old Cadence Sinclair, played by Emily Alyn Lind, returns to her family's private island after sustaining a head injury and post-traumatic amnesia the previous year. Cadence has been struggling to remember what happened during Summer 16–the label that "the liars" she and her cousin Mirren, her cousin Johnny, and her boyfriend (and Johnny's future stepbrother) Gat give to the summer when they were all sixteen years old. She thinks that returning to the island will jog her memory, but everything feels off.
Why did her grandfather rebuild their island mansion into an early modern monstrosity? Why didn't her cousins or Gat call her all year while she was recovering? Her mother tells her that every time anyone tells her what happened, she has a mental episode, blacks out and forgets again. This feels a bit convenient, given that the Sinclair family way is to pretend that bad things never happened. In the We Were Liars finale, Cadence works with her cousins and Gat to remember what happened without triggering herself so bad that she forgets it all over again. Leading into the finale, Cadence remembers one key thing: fire.
In the penultimate episode, Cadence at least remembers that the liars burned down Clairmont, the family mansion, as a symbolic "f**k you" to decades of family rivalry and expectations. They decide that the Sinclairs need a clean slate. The four liars thought they had a good plan. They split up spreading boat fuel around the house. Gat prepares a getaway vehicle. They were all supposed to light their matches and run out of the house at the stroke of midnight. But the drunk, wealthy teenagers made some crucial, and deadly miscalculations.
The first thing that Cadence remembers is that all four of them forgot that there were two drugged-up dogs sleeping in the basement!! The moment Cadence, who was on the ground floor, ran outside she heard their cries. She heads back inside to get them, and sustained a head injury, but it was too late. She ran back outside, bleeding and burning.
Cadence demands that Johnny, Gat, and Mirren tell her the rest. What else didn't go to plan? They didn't think about how fast fire spreads and smoke rises. Creating a safe exit by avoiding the main staircase was not enough. Mirren hesitated to save one of her paintings that her mom kept–proving to her in that moment that her mom really did care about her. Johnny hesitated looking at childhood photos and smashing things with a golf club. They were trapped. When nobody showed up, Gat left the boat and followed them inside the burning house.
They also forgot about the gas main line. Once the fire spread far enough to hit it, the house exploded. This is what catapulted Cadence into the ocean where she was found. She was the only survivor. Gat, Johnny, Mirren, and the dogs all died in the fire.
Yup! For all of the Summer 17 timeline, a.k.a. the scenes where Cadence has brown hair, she has been talking and hanging out and arguing with their ghosts. You may have noticed throughout that while they might try to talk to the rest of them family, nobody else talks to them or sees them. In the final episode, it becomes more and more apparent that they're not just ghosts they like... represent Cadence's trauma and suppressed memories.
They are ghosts, though, and ghosts who were afraid of moving on once Cadence didn't need them anymore. So they do it together. They hold hands, jump off the dock, and vanish...
One of the final things that Cadence remembers about Summer 16 is that, before she ran out of the house, she hesitated too. Greed took over and she ran upstairs to steal her grandmother's black pearl necklace. She thinks this is why Gat didn't see her outside when they planned and ran into the fire. She blames herself for his death. Ghost Gat absolves her of that guilt. He could have saved himself. He also went against the plan. (Since Cadence ran back inside the house seconds later for the dogs, I personally don't think running upstairs made a huge difference. Gat would have seen her go back inside. He would have seen that Johnny and Mirren didn't make it out and gone to help regardless. Speaking of the dogs, that's the guilt she should be feeling. The four liars made some stupid mistakes that got them killed–the dogs didn't do anything! Go apologise to their ghosts!!)
Harris, who somehow escaped the hospital and found Cadence on the beach, kind of softly blackmails his granddaughter. He knows that she's guilty of arson, animal cruelty, and involuntary manslaughter. He urges her to tell the version of the story he has been telling for a year: the fire was an accident and Cadence got hurt trying to save the others. Keeping her family's horrible secrets is her burden now.
At the end of the show, Harris asks Cadence to talk to a reporter doing a profile on their family, played by We Were Liars author E. Lockhart herself. Cadence refuses, telling Harris and the family that she's not interested in fairy tales anymore, and takes off in a boat by herself. She tosses Tipper's necklace into the ocean like it's Titanic. This is a triumphant moment and all; I'm so happy that Cadence came to that realisation, but... surely that doesn't mean she's going to turn herself in to the police, or come clean to her mum, Ed, and her aunts about how the other liars died? It's fair to assume that Harris won't actually do it himself and voluntarily hurt his legacy like that. But Cadence is experiencing a moment of freedom at the end of We Were Liars, not a lifetime of it. She's ultimately trapped too.
The We Were Liars finale leaves things open for at least one other season in two different ways. In one of the rare moments we see the Sinclair sisters actually deal with the loss of their children, Bess tells Carrie that she thinks the fire was punishment for what happened on her Summer 16 when they were teenagers. Bess says that there's just one caveat: if the Sinclair sisters are being punished for what they did, why was Penny spared? Mysterious! (There is a prequel novel, titled Family of Liars, that was published in 2022...)
Then, in an even more harrowing moment, we see Carrie secretly take pills while packing up to leave the island. She's off the wagon and hiding it from Ed. She can also see Johnny's ghost, who tells her he can't leave just yet. The way she says "I thought you'd left" lowkey implies that she's been seeing his ghost, like Cadence, the whole time during Summer 17 too. That's enough unfinished business for a We Were Liars Season two, don't you think?
We Were Liars is available on Prime Video now
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Black America Web
an hour ago
- Black America Web
In Case You Forgot: Revisiting Kendrick Lamar & ‘The Pop Out' Concert One Year Later
Source: Timothy Norris / Getty One year ago today, (June 19th) the world watched as Kendrick Lamar performed for the first time since his public feud with Drake. Continue reading to refresh your memory and see how everyone reacted to the epic night! Unless you live under a rock, you know that last year the hip hop community was enthralled with the beef between rap giants Kendrick Lamar and Drake. The two Grammy Award-winners traded scathing shots back and forth for almost a month and left fans on both sides defending their goats. After much debate, public opinion crowned Kendrick the winner, especially after the release of the track 'Not Like Us.' The DJ Mustard produced song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release and spent the better part of the last year occupying the chart. Once the beef died down a bit, fans began to wonder what would be next. A video? A remix? Both? Instead, Kendrick, who just had celebrated his 37th birthday two days prior, blessed his fans with something much better, a one-off concert entitled The Pop Out – Ken and Friends in Los Angeles on Juneteenth. Unsurprisingly, almost as soon as tickets for The Pop Out released, they sold out. Naturally, the demand for tickets was so high that everyone wasn't able to purchase them. For all of those who weren't lucky enough to snatch up tickets to attend in person, the concert also live-streamed on Prime Video and the Amazon Music channel on Twitch. Even before fans stepped into The Forum, the atmosphere at The Pop Out , which was presented by pgLang and Free Lunch, was electric. It was a party outside as fans waited for doors to open. While people waited around, there were several merchandise stands, food and beverage stations and photo ops for them to hit up. On top of that, courtesy of HeadCount, there was a voter registration station, encouraging attendees to vote in November. As entertained as fans might've been outside, it was nothing compared to the show they were blessed with once they stepped inside The Forum. The highly anticipated concert began with a set from Real 92.3 FM's DJ Hed. He brought out a multitude of established and up and coming West Coast artists including Remble, Westside Boogie, BlueBucksClan, CUZZOS, Bino Rideaux and many more. Legendary Compton, California dancer Tommy the Clown even stepped out to take fans down memory lane with a special performance alongside his TSquad dancers. Hed's set was a great introduction to some of the rising talent in California and a perfect warmup for what went on to be an absolute epic night. The concert was titled The Pop Out, which was a play on one of the lyrics in 'Not Like Us.' What better way to continue the night than by having the producer of the smash hit grace the stage? That's right. DJ Mustard was next to electrify the crowd with an impeccable set. In addition to playing some of his own biggest hits, the Los Angeles native used his star power to bring out some of the superstar artists he's worked with throughout his illustrious career. Before Mustard exited the stage, West Coast staples Ty Dolla $ign, Dom Kennedy, YG and Roddy Ricch and more performed some of their massive slaps in front of a packed house. The roof of the building almost blew off when Tyler, The Creator surprised everyone and blazed the stage. In one of the most heartwarming moments of the night, Mustard paid tribute to the late legendary rapper Nipsey Hussle. He had fans in attendance raise their phones and turn their camera lights on while he played three of Nip's songs. Even if the show ended after Mustard's set, it would've been considered classic. Luckily, the main event was still on deck. After a brief intermission, the man of the hour popped out from the bottom of the stage and started his show in a way that only he could. The first song in Kendrick's set was his six minute 24 second Drake diss track, 'Euphoria.' The crowd rapped the whole song word for word as Kendrick set the tone for what the rest of his performance would be like. After the exhilarating introduction, Cornrow Kenny performed a plethora of his classics including, 'DNA,' 'Element,' 'Alright,' 'Swimming Pools' and more. Nostalgia hit an all-time high when Kendrick brought out Jay Rock, Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q to perform some of their biggest tracks together. The reunion was truly a special moment as it marked the first time Black Hippy had been seen together since Kendrick left TDE (Top Dawg Entertainment) in 2022. After Kendrick dipped into his catalog to perform some more of his timeless bangers and his controversial 'Like That' verse, he brought out one of his mentors and one of the West's most legendary musicians, Dr. Dre. To the delight of the crowd, Dre performed the undeniable classic tracks 'Still D.R.E' and 'California Love' with assistance from Kendrick. As Dre was about to exit the stage, Kendrick questioned if he was going to say anything else before they continued the party. This prompted Dre to walk back, quiet the crowd and whisper 'I see dead people' into the mic. Every single person in the crowd and watching at home knew exactly what that meant. For the first time ever, Kendrick began performing the song of the summer. The crowd completely exploded as they screamed the lyrics to the song at the top of their lungs. The song's impact become more and more apparent as Kendrick performed it four more times. Each time the track restarted, it seemed as if the crowd got louder and louder. The most impactful thing that took place during the whole night happened before the fifth performance of the chart-topping diss track. Kendrick brought up all of the artists who had performed throughout the night (regardless of their gang affiliations) and got them to take a picture together on stage. 'Let them see this. We put this together with peace.' Kendrick said to the crowd. After the picture, it seemed as if the whole West Coast music scene was on the stage performing 'Not Like Us' in one of the most beautiful and important moments in recent hip hop history. The Pop Out – Ken and Friends was a deserved victory lap for Kendrick and a much needed uniter for the West Coast and the city of Los Angeles in specific. Throughout the show and after, fans couldn't help but to chime in and give their opinions of the night, Kendrick, Drake and everything in between. One year later, check out some of the reactions to the biggest concert of last year! In Case You Forgot: Revisiting Kendrick Lamar & 'The Pop Out' Concert One Year Later was originally published on
USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
From 'Minecraft' to 'Snow White,' 10 movies you need to stream right now
From 'Minecraft' to 'Snow White,' 10 movies you need to stream right now Show Caption Hide Caption 'Chicken jockey!' Viral trend causes chaos at 'Minecraft' screenings In the U.S. and U.K., moviegoers are going wild when Jack Black shouts, "Chicken jockey!" during "A Minecraft Movie." Love movies? Live for TV? USA TODAY's Watch Party newsletter has all the best recommendations, delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now and be one of the cool kids. Now you can finally understand why your middle schooler has been saying "Chicken jockey!" for the past couple of months. The video-game hit "A Minecraft Movie" is one of several new streaming films that have arrived on your various streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon's Prime Video, Disney+ and more. There are theatrical releases finally coming home, including a Liam Neeson gangster thriller and an oddball Kristen Stewart movie, plus original fare like a K-pop animated adventure and a documentary about historic astronaut Sally Ride. Here are 10 notable new movies you can stream right now: 'Absolution' After finding out he doesn't have much time to live, an aging mob enforcer (Liam Neeson) seeks to make things right with his estranged daughter and grandson, plus do some good – by doing some bad – before the clock runs out. Have one last dose of action-movie Neeson before he goes full absurd in "The Naked Gun." Where to watch: Hulu 'The Accountant 2' There's sadly not as much math as in 2016's original "The Accountant," which became a surprise cult hit on cable TV. Plenty of bro love fills that gap in the serviceable sequel, which teams action-hero CPA Christian (Ben Affleck) with his hit-man sibling Braxton (Jon Bernthal) to solve a mystery involving a broken family and human trafficking. Where to watch: Prime Video 'Cleaner' Daisy Ridley stars in the action thriller as a window cleaner struggling to keep her job and care for her autistic older brother (Matthew Tuck). A day at work turns harrowing when environmental activists take the building hostage. So it's a good thing she's a former British soldier in a high-stakes drama that one could call "Die Hard" with Windex. Where to watch: Max 'Deep Cover' There's a motley crew at work in this action comedy, with Bryce Dallas Howard as an improv comedy teacher recruited to infiltrate the London crime scene. She enlists the help of two students (Orlando Bloom and "Ted Lasso" breakout Nick Mohammed) and they accidentally become decent gangsters. Where to watch: Prime Video 'Echo Valley' Julianne Moore is in the conversation for Movie Mom of the Year. She starts in the twisty thriller as a horse trainer struggling to keep her business afloat after her wife's death. Things get worse as efforts to reconnect with her addict daughter (Sydney Sweeney) end up with the mother going to extremes to cover up a dead body. Where to watch: Apple TV+ 'KPop Demon Hunters' Catchy music, anime style and some horror combine in this kid-friendly action comedy. When the members of Korean pop trio Huntrix aren't busy being mega-stars, they protect their fans from supernatural dangers. But dark secrets and hormones become issues, thanks to their latest enemy: demons disguised as a hunky boy band. Where to watch: Netflix 'Love Me' Are you ready for a romantic sort-of-comedy between inanimate objects? Hundreds of years after mankind is wiped out, a smart buoy (Kristen Stewart) turns on and strikes up a friendship with the last satellite (Steven Yeun) launched into space. This weird couple literally gets more real as time passes, trying ice cream for the first time and opening up to each other. Where to watch: Paramount+ 'A Minecraft Movie' Kids are going to love it, as will anyone with a soft spot for the glorious weirdness of "Napoleon Dynamite." The adventure centers on misfits stuck in a fantasy world that makes the most of their creativity, with an unhinged Jack Black singing about lava chicken and a hilariously macho Jason Momoa gamely taking the brunt of the gags. Where to watch: Max 'Sally' While this revealing documentary about Sally Ride obviously touches on her being the first American woman in space, it's more interested in getting into her personal life. The movie digs into her tennis roots, the misogyny she dealt with regularly at NASA, and the lesbian romance she kept private for 27 years knowing it wouldn't be accepted. Where to watch: Disney+, Hulu 'Snow White' Rachel Zegler is enchanting as the title character, even if the Disney live-action musical remake plays it too safe. Targeted for death by her evil queen stepmom (a camped-out Gal Gadot), scullery maid Snow high-tails it to a nearby forest and makes some friends – including seven little miner dudes – before sparking her own revolution. Where to watch: Disney+
Cosmopolitan
5 hours ago
- Cosmopolitan
We Were Liars season 1 ending explained
Those who read E. Lockhart's sensational novel We Were Liars before it was adapted by Julie Plec for Prime Video are probably feeling pretty smug right now. The show, just like its source material, is keeping a major secret that isn't revealed until mid-way through the final episode. If you haven't read the book and are feeling majorly WTF, or want to skip to the proverbial last page and get spoiled, here's what you need to know about the ending of We Were Liars. At the beginning of the season, seventeen year old Cadence Sinclair, played by Emily Alyn Lind, returns to her family's private island after sustaining a head injury and post-traumatic amnesia the previous year. Cadence has been struggling to remember what happened during Summer 16–the label that "the liars" she and her cousin Mirren, her cousin Johnny, and her boyfriend (and Johnny's future stepbrother) Gat give to the summer when they were all sixteen years old. She thinks that returning to the island will jog her memory, but everything feels off. Why did her grandfather rebuild their island mansion into an early modern monstrosity? Why didn't her cousins or Gat call her all year while she was recovering? Her mother tells her that every time anyone tells her what happened, she has a mental episode, blacks out and forgets again. This feels a bit convenient, given that the Sinclair family way is to pretend that bad things never happened. In the We Were Liars finale, Cadence works with her cousins and Gat to remember what happened without triggering herself so bad that she forgets it all over again. Leading into the finale, Cadence remembers one key thing: fire. In the penultimate episode, Cadence at least remembers that the liars burned down Clairmont, the family mansion, as a symbolic "f**k you" to decades of family rivalry and expectations. They decide that the Sinclairs need a clean slate. The four liars thought they had a good plan. They split up spreading boat fuel around the house. Gat prepares a getaway vehicle. They were all supposed to light their matches and run out of the house at the stroke of midnight. But the drunk, wealthy teenagers made some crucial, and deadly miscalculations. The first thing that Cadence remembers is that all four of them forgot that there were two drugged-up dogs sleeping in the basement!! The moment Cadence, who was on the ground floor, ran outside she heard their cries. She heads back inside to get them, and sustained a head injury, but it was too late. She ran back outside, bleeding and burning. Cadence demands that Johnny, Gat, and Mirren tell her the rest. What else didn't go to plan? They didn't think about how fast fire spreads and smoke rises. Creating a safe exit by avoiding the main staircase was not enough. Mirren hesitated to save one of her paintings that her mom kept–proving to her in that moment that her mom really did care about her. Johnny hesitated looking at childhood photos and smashing things with a golf club. They were trapped. When nobody showed up, Gat left the boat and followed them inside the burning house. They also forgot about the gas main line. Once the fire spread far enough to hit it, the house exploded. This is what catapulted Cadence into the ocean where she was found. She was the only survivor. Gat, Johnny, Mirren, and the dogs all died in the fire. Yup! For all of the Summer 17 timeline, a.k.a. the scenes where Cadence has brown hair, she has been talking and hanging out and arguing with their ghosts. You may have noticed throughout that while they might try to talk to the rest of them family, nobody else talks to them or sees them. In the final episode, it becomes more and more apparent that they're not just ghosts they like... represent Cadence's trauma and suppressed memories. They are ghosts, though, and ghosts who were afraid of moving on once Cadence didn't need them anymore. So they do it together. They hold hands, jump off the dock, and vanish... One of the final things that Cadence remembers about Summer 16 is that, before she ran out of the house, she hesitated too. Greed took over and she ran upstairs to steal her grandmother's black pearl necklace. She thinks this is why Gat didn't see her outside when they planned and ran into the fire. She blames herself for his death. Ghost Gat absolves her of that guilt. He could have saved himself. He also went against the plan. (Since Cadence ran back inside the house seconds later for the dogs, I personally don't think running upstairs made a huge difference. Gat would have seen her go back inside. He would have seen that Johnny and Mirren didn't make it out and gone to help regardless. Speaking of the dogs, that's the guilt she should be feeling. The four liars made some stupid mistakes that got them killed–the dogs didn't do anything! Go apologise to their ghosts!!) Harris, who somehow escaped the hospital and found Cadence on the beach, kind of softly blackmails his granddaughter. He knows that she's guilty of arson, animal cruelty, and involuntary manslaughter. He urges her to tell the version of the story he has been telling for a year: the fire was an accident and Cadence got hurt trying to save the others. Keeping her family's horrible secrets is her burden now. At the end of the show, Harris asks Cadence to talk to a reporter doing a profile on their family, played by We Were Liars author E. Lockhart herself. Cadence refuses, telling Harris and the family that she's not interested in fairy tales anymore, and takes off in a boat by herself. She tosses Tipper's necklace into the ocean like it's Titanic. This is a triumphant moment and all; I'm so happy that Cadence came to that realisation, but... surely that doesn't mean she's going to turn herself in to the police, or come clean to her mum, Ed, and her aunts about how the other liars died? It's fair to assume that Harris won't actually do it himself and voluntarily hurt his legacy like that. But Cadence is experiencing a moment of freedom at the end of We Were Liars, not a lifetime of it. She's ultimately trapped too. The We Were Liars finale leaves things open for at least one other season in two different ways. In one of the rare moments we see the Sinclair sisters actually deal with the loss of their children, Bess tells Carrie that she thinks the fire was punishment for what happened on her Summer 16 when they were teenagers. Bess says that there's just one caveat: if the Sinclair sisters are being punished for what they did, why was Penny spared? Mysterious! (There is a prequel novel, titled Family of Liars, that was published in 2022...) Then, in an even more harrowing moment, we see Carrie secretly take pills while packing up to leave the island. She's off the wagon and hiding it from Ed. She can also see Johnny's ghost, who tells her he can't leave just yet. The way she says "I thought you'd left" lowkey implies that she's been seeing his ghost, like Cadence, the whole time during Summer 17 too. That's enough unfinished business for a We Were Liars Season two, don't you think? We Were Liars is available on Prime Video now
