Latest news with #Cadence
Cosmopolitan
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- 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
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
We Were Liars Author Explains What That Chilling Finale Ending Means for Potential Season 2
If you just finished bingeing the eight-episode first season of We Were Liars, you could probably use a big hug right now. Well, a hug… and some answers. While the Prime Video adaptation largely follows the blueprint of E. Lockhart's 2014 novel, it ends on a note that even book readers may not necessarily anticipate. As in the original text, we learn that Cadence convinced the Liars to help her set fire to Clairmont, the main house on the Sinclair family's private island of Beechwood. Unfortunately, we also learn that Cadence was the only survivor of the blaze; Mirren, Johnny and Gat all perished in the blaze, and Cadence has been hallucinating their collective existence ever since. More from TVLine Eric Dane: My Countdown Task Force Leader Is 'Unapologetic, Determined' - and Wears the Hell Out of a Suit We Were Liars EPs Talk Book-to-Show Changes, Including Which Sinclair Family Member Didn't Make the Cut Does Jensen Ackles' Countdown Hero Have BDE - Big Dean (Winchester) Energy? 'There Are Familiar Aspects,' Says Supernatural Vet As she does in the book, Cadence processes this information — which her grandfather attempts to use against her, agreeing to stay silent if she takes her place as his new heir — and decides to abandon the Sinclair ways once and for all, dropping her grandmother's prized pearl necklace in the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean. But wait, there's… more? Following Cadence's final act of defiance, we then see Carrie (Mamie Gummer) back at Red Gate, one of the other houses on the island. After popping a pill, she's surprised to see Johnny (Joseph Zada) appear to her in ghost form. 'I thought you left,' she tells him, to which he ominously replies, 'I don't think I can.' So, what's the deal with this unsettling, not-from-the-book ending? As it turns out, it is from one of Lockhart's books — just not the first one. 'That final scene with Carrie and Johnny is very close to the opening of my second book in the We Were Liars universe, which is called Family of Liars,' Lockhart tells TVLine. 'Really, it's a tip forward into Season 2 — should we get a Season 2 — but it's also a tip forward to the book that comes after We Were Liars. We all hope for a Season 2, and I know the showrunners have all kinds of plans.' Indeed they do. According to showrunner Julie Plec, the first season 'involves a lot of elements that we borrowed from the prequel, Family of Liars, that we now get to take into future seasons because we've done all the foundational work with the adult characters.' If you're unfamiliar with Family of Liars, which hit shelves in 2022, the follow-up book serves as a prequel to We Were Liars, taking readers back to Beechwood in the late 1980s. It's largely told from Carrie's perspective, as she tells Johnny's ghost about the worst things she did when she was younger. 'I wrote the finale, and that was a great chance to basically write a different version of the story that I had already written,' Lockhart says of Episode 8. 'I wrote a television version, and even though the same basic thing happens, it's paced differently. The action is built out, the drama is heightened, the reveals are done in a different way — and there are some additional reveals that aren't in the book.' Did you enjoy your summer with the Sinclairs? Grade the finale and the season in our polls below, then drop a comment with your thoughts on Prime Video's adaptation of . Best of TVLine Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress Talks Episode 4's Tai/Van Reunion: 'We're All Worried About Taissa' Vampire Diaries Turns 10: How Real-Life Plot Twists Shaped Everything From the Love Triangle to the Final Death Vampire Diaries' Biggest Twists Revisited (and Explained)
Cosmopolitan
a day ago
- Entertainment
- 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 "fuck 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 apologize 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 realization, but... surely that doesn't mean she's going to turn herself in to the police, or come clean to her mom, 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 2, don't you think?
Elle
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
6 Reasons It's Actually Fun Watching 'We Were Liars' And Knowing That Huge Twist
Spoilers below for the final episode and twist of 'We Were Liars'. It's a rollercoaster if you've adored a book and hear it's getting made into a TV show. There's the initial excitement. Who will play your favourite character? Will the world look like the one you've built in your mind? Everyone else is going to discover how amazing it is. And many fans of E. Lockhart's book, We Were Liars will have been excited by the release of Prime Video's adaptation, which began streaming this week. But there are drawbacks too - there's room for disappointment of course, but there's also the fact that you know how it ends. While loads of people find huge joy and comfort in repeat watches, maybe I'm just too plot driven because for me, already knowing how the story plays out isn't a draw, and in fact, it's a turn off. And in the case of a story like We Were Liars the risk of being turned off by this knowledge is even greater, because the whole story hinges on a huge twist - that while Candence Sinclair is trying to puzzle through what happened to her last summer, her friends, The Liars, are actually now ghosts, having died in the fire that also caused her injury. Author E. Lockhart is part of the writing team who created the show and says she has high hopes people will still love the show's ending. 'During the pandemic, people started making TikTok videos about the novel, holding the book with tears running down their face,' she said. 'This show is going to do that, turned up to 11.' But it's not just fans of the book who may have discovered the ending - the internet is a terrible spoilery place and some of us are just too tempted to wait for eight hours of television to play out. No mattter how you came to know what happens at the end of We Were Liars, I'm here to reassure you that you can still enjoy the eight-episode show. Here's why. Throughout Summer 17, The Liars get to be with Cadence all summer and somehow avoid a million moments where people say 'Er, Cadence, who are you talking to?' Knowing throughout the series that The Liars are ghosts in Summer 17 you get to really enjoy the subtle ways it's written into the plot. For instance, in the moment when Johnny's mother Carrie finds Cadence with his phone and she ignores his pleas to give the phone back. Or when Mirren's little sister laughs when Cadence suggests Mirren tell her a ghost story. Yes the moments are played back 'realisation style' at the end, but it's quietly satisfying watching them play out without Cadence realising what's going on. Well, obviously. But there are many moments when those who don't know the big plot twist will be shouting at their TVs 'But why won't you just tell her what happened?' and 'Why are you all going along with this?' The cover, that Cadence must learn for herself because otherwise she gets headaches and blacks out, starts to wear frustratingly thin six episodes in. Watching while understanding what's going on is a much less stressful experience. Sometimes you just need a little bittersweet in your life. True fans of the book fell for the great bond between The Liars and especially, Cadence and Gat. Watching their interactions before and after the fire knowing what's really going on adds a bittersweet layer to watching the story play out that you might've skimmed over in the book in your rush to find out what on earth was going on. As Cadence notes in the final episode - without fully understanding - in Summer 17 the Sinclair sisters - for my money, the best bit of the show, and one expanded out from the book - aren't fighting anymore. The levels to which the sisters will go to hurt each other when a verbal fight breaks out is unmatched. And to see the change - and truly understand it, makes a real difference to the depth of the show, and the clever plotting. Compared to some shows, the changes between the book and the TV series when it comes to We Were Liars are small and delicately done, but they are there. Particularly when it comes to the deeper exploration of Gat's background and his misgivings about Harris Sinclair and the family's treatment of their staff on the island. When Cadence first meets Gat, she asks him, 'Are you real?' For those of us who know how the relationship between the two plays out, it's a great and touching moment. And when Ed says in episode seven that The Liars have their whole lives ahead of them? Pure heartbreak. ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Unpacking the crazy twist ending of ‘We Were Liars': What really happened?
We Were Liars dropped on Prime Video June 18, and while it features gorgeous beach houses, family drama and romantic tension à la The Summer I Turned Pretty, it's the jaw-dropping twist ending that is the buzziest thing about the series. As the Season 1 ending revealed, something horrible happened to 'Liars' Gat (Shubham Maheshwari), Mirren (Esther McGregor) and Johnny (Joseph Zada) — which is why Cadence (Emily Alyn Lind), the show's narrator, had to suppress it. (Warning: Obviously, major spoilers for We Were Liars follow!) The ending won't come as a surprise to anyone who read E. Lockhart's novel of the same name, which follows the wealthy Sinclair family as they spend yet another summer on the fictional Beechwood Island. But even if you've read the novel, the story is still as heartbreaking as ever: What starts out as a summer of fun turns into the ultimate tragedy … with a supernatural twist. When the series begins, Cadence, the eldest grandchild of the Sinclair family, is crushing on family friend Gat — a relationship that finally blooms during her 16th summer on Beechwood. She, Gat and her cousins Johnny and Mirren — nicknamed the 'Liars' by their family — initially enjoy weeks of summer fun. However, when Cadence's grandmother Tipper (Wendy Crewson) dies, things shift, and tensions over inheritance emerge between the parents and the powerful, wealthy grandfather Harris (David Morse). The following year, which the show toggles back and forth between, reveals that something mysterious and terrible happened to the family in the final weeks of the previous summer. Cadence was in a some sort of accident at the end of her 16th summer that she can't remember, and none of the other Liars, nor her other family members, will tell her what happened. In fact, they didn't even visit her in the hospital — something they apologize for when she comes to spend the summer on Beechwood again. Cadence is desperate to learn what happened to her, despite everyone warning her that she doesn't want to know. Even Cadence's own mind seems to be hiding the truth: Every time Cadence gets close to finding out what happened, she's hit with a migraine or worse, which is why her mother Penny (Caitlin FitzGerald) forbids her from seeking answers. But as the summer progresses, memories surface, and Cadence starts to recall events from the previously forgotten summer. After a season of red herrings and wrong turns, Cadence's memories finally patch together, revealing what happened to her — and why. Over the course of her 16th summer, Cadence saw her mother, Penny, as well as her aunts Bess (Candice King) and Carrie (Mamie Gummer) fight for their father's affection — and, ultimately, money, as each woman had squandered their trust fund over the years and needed financial help. Seeing how the women fought over the heirlooms Harris dangled over their heads, the Liars decided to do something to end the squabbling. Cadence, who spent the season checking her privilege after deepening her relationship with Gat, came up with a plan. One night, while the Liars were alone on the island, they decided to burn down Harris's mansion, Clairmont. Their hope was that destroying Clairmont would force their mothers to see that family — not things —is what's most important. And since it was only the Liars on the island, they thought they could get away with arson without anyone getting hurt. Cadence led the charge to burn down Clairmont. While the Liars had a plan, they didn't foresee the things that would keep them tied up in the house — like getting distracted by the very same objects that their mothers were fighting over. Cadence, for example, went back for her deceased grandmother's pearls — something she feels terribly guilty about and struggles to even explain. While Cadence was able to get out of the house in time after the fire started, she didn't realize that the family's golden retrievers were stuck in the laundry room. Cadence desperately tried to get the dogs out, burning her hand in the process — but it was too late. Cadence ran out onto the beach towards the ocean. Then, an explosion: Clairmont's gas line caught fire, destroying the house in one boom. Tragically, Gat, Mirren and Johnny — as well as the dogs — were still inside. In the season finale, Cadence realizes that Gat, Mirren and Johnny are dead. While she was having conversations with them over the summer, no one else in the family could see them, and via flashbacks, it's shown that they never truly interacted with anyone other than Cadence over the course of the summer. Cadence gets to say goodbye to each of the Liars, who are regretful over the choice they made to destroy Clairmont — even as her grandfather used his power and privilege to ensure that she and the other Liars would never be blamed for the fire. But while Cadence is sorry for the way she went about dismantling the toxic family structure, it's clear that burning down Clairmont achieve some of what the Liars hoped for: Their mothers are now on the same team again, and Cadence is able to stand up to her powerful grandfather for the first time ever. The season finale initially leaves it open to interpretation if the Liars are ghosts or just figments of Cadence's mind until the last moments of the season, when Johnny appears in the kitchen with his mother, Carrie. Carrie, who isn't surprised to see Johnny, asks her son why he's still in the house, and Johnny admits that he's unable to leave — hinting that the Liars, or at the very least Johnny, are still haunting Beechwood Island. We don't know yet if We Were Liars will be renewed. But if the source material is any indication, a Season 2 would likely follow Cadence's story in yet another direction: into the past. Lockhart's 2022 novel, Family of Liars, is a prequel that explores the moms' backstory. Co-creator Julie Plec previously told Deadline that the Season 1 finale could 'set the stage for Season 2, which theoretically is going to take us deeper into the moms' lives as well and add another generation to the story.' Season 1 already hinted at a well of secrets for the Sinclair women, including the fact that there was a fourth sister who died during their childhood. In the finale, Bess muses that what happened to Mirren and Johnny could be punishment for what happened all those years ago. It's entirely possible that this mystery will unfold next on We Were Liars — as the ghosts of the past, literal and figurative, come back to haunt Beechwood.
