The five kidnapping suspects finally meet their tormentor in the gripping season finale of Apple TV+ thriller series Suspicion. All the information will be revealed about these perfect strangers this week. And they can decide for themselves, along with the rest of the world, whether they’ve been doing the right things for the wrong reasons.
This ecoterrorism lark has proven exciting so far. The first season of Suspicion closes on a satisfying note of audacious ambiguity about what happens next and who gets away.
Suspicion finale recap: ‘Unmasked’
In this week’s season finale, titled “Unmasked,” Natalie (played by Georgina Campbell) has shot Martin Copland (Robert Glenister) before Tara (Elizabeth Henstridge), Aadesh (Kunal Nayyar), Eddie (Tom Rhys-Harries) and Sean (Elyes Gabel) could finish interrogating him. She was distraught over the death of her sister, Monique (Lydia West). The way she sees it, Monique would still be alive if Martin hadn’t set up the kidnapping of Leo Newman (Gerran Howell) to begin with, which is all he was able to confess before he died.
The suspects flee. (Sean leaves them all in the lurch, not wanting them around to bring extra heat on him.) When they get to the city, they see that the network that kidnapped Leo has put his image on the giant video screens in Times Square.
As they flee, Anderson (Noah Emmerich) and Vanessa (Angel Coulby) interrogate Eric Cresswell (Karl Johnson). He was a climate scientist who had his reputation ruined after Katherine Newman (Uma Thurman) buried his report on climate change. That’s when he drops the bombshell: Tara is his daughter.
Tara was behind it all. She and Leo planned the whole thing. They chose everyone because they looked guilty, but also because they’d had dealings with Newman’s firm and saw how dirty she was. They wanted to tell the world Katherine Newman’s secrets.
He never did what anyone told him to either
The second half of this episode unleashes a revelation a minute. It’s brilliant stuff. Tara makes for an ace antihero. And the way she describes it, of course, as always happens, makes perfect sense. Her desire for revolution is a perfectly reasonable one. And her hatred of the ultra-rich is perfectly justified because of course it is. Everyone’s hatred for the rich is justified.
Suspicion admirably doesn’t try to shove that particular genie back in the bottle. There’s no way they could have gotten away with it. (Tara gets away with Aadesh, which means they have work to do in season 2.)
I’m more than satisfied with how they left things at the end of this season. Natalie in handcuffs. Sean getting away. Leo and Katherine begrudgingly reunited. Eddie hanging on by a thread after Sean shot him for his betrayal of the group.
I don’t know what direction you take the show now, but divorced of the tight structure of this first season, you can imagine just about anything as the continuing adventures of Tara’s ecoterrorist cell, and her unresolved sexual tension with Sean. I also like how much Daisy, Tara’s daughter, immediately approves of her mother’s actions. And how well she gets along with her newly rediscovered grandfather. That gives me some hope that the writers aren’t completely hedging their bets about audience sympathy for the “bad guys.”
Assuming Apple TV+ renews Suspicion for a second season, the show may yet prove itself to be one of the most excitingly expansive things on the streamer. Playing in the same sandbox as, say, Invasion or Tehran, it outstripped both for sheer entertainment value. It’s been a pleasure being sucked into this agreeably superficial potboiler.
Watch Suspicion on Apple TV+
New episodes of Suspicion arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
