The finale for the series is probably one of the better ones I’ve ever seen. While still leaving us with multiple questions, we’re allowed to have multiple moments of fear while making callbacks to every character.
The episode starts off with a really unsettling scene as it goes back and forth between Steve writing his new book and Steve and Hugh going to the house to save Luke. This is a great scene because of how different Hugh becomes when he’s encountering the ghosts. He’s strong and intelligent and nothing is going to keep him from his son. Going back and forth between the house and what we think is the future is a really effective way of getting to us. The show does a great job of making it seem like everything is normal until the viewer and Steve both realize that something is wrong. His wife starts to turn into a ghost herself while she starts hurling insults at him and starts to basically decompose. It’s a great start to the finale especially when Nellie shows up.
We go back to the house and see Luke on the floor with a needle in his arm and then it starts to tell his story. We see the ghost get him from Episode 8 and then we’re taken back to that night with him and Joey only this time, Joey comes back for him and they go to a hotel. It’s horrifying how the house plays on everyone’s greatest desires first before taking them away and showing everyone their worst nightmares. Joey is the one who puts the needle in his arm and he just lies there on the floor when Steve finds him.
Then we cut to Shirley. Shirley has been seeing this one guy randomly throughout the entire show and now we learn that he was a guy that she had a one night stand with a few years back. It’s haunted her for so long cause she was already married to Kevin at the time. The house starts to play on that by at first making it seem like Shirley turned him down but then the man turns around and they start talking about what actually happened. Then we move to a Funeral and we realize it’s Shirley’s own funeral and Kevin is mocking her for cheating on him. She walks up to the casket and watches as the body begins to tear her face off before Nellie comes up and wakes Shirley up.
Theodora’s is interesting because of how little Trish(The girl she picked up from the club) had meant to the story until this moment. This is the moment that Theodora starts to open up to her and then it all comes crashing around which is clearly her deepest fear. Trish starts to tell the story of how William Hill walled himself up and killed himself and then all kinds of ghostly hands cover Theo until Nellie gets there and wakes her up. This one was the one that scared me the most because the hands are absolutely horrific.
When we get back to the Red Room, Luke still won’t wake up and he goes to a white version of The Red Room with his mother and the younger versions of Abigail and Nellie. Nellie keeps telling him to go and the older version of Nellie finally comes and pulls him out. Then we get to my favorite scene of the series. The 5 Crain siblings are all in the Red Room and it’s revealed what the Red Room truly was. It was what the house needed it to be. It’s a brilliant twist that we’ve seen the Red Room throughout the series at Multiples times and just like the kids, we didn’t know it either. Nellie’s speech is one of my favorite moments because of how she lays out time and life and death in such a beautifully tragic way. She says that we live out certain moments and other moments fall around us like Snow or Confetti. She tells them to live and has this final speech which is the absolute highlight of the entire series :
Nellie : You have to live.
Luke : I don’t- I don’t know how to do this without you.
Nellie : I learned a secret. There’s no without. I am not gone. I’m scattered into so many pieces, sprinkled on your life like new snow. There’s so much I want to say to you all.
Theo : I’m so sorry our last words were in anger.
Nellie : They weren’t our last.
Shirley : I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t… answer the phone.
Nellie : But you did. So many times.
Steve : I’m sorry if I didn’t listen, and I’m sorry…
Nellie : It wouldn’t have changed anything. I need you to know that. Forgiveness is warm. Like a tear on a cheek. Think of that and of me when you stand in the rain. I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti.
All that Nellie wanted was for them to live. She gets that, even if she doesn’t get to join them completely. This scene made me a sobbing mess and I have no shame about that.
We focus back on Hugh outside of the Red Room and we see Poppy’s final scene while she tries to take Hugh until Olivia comes up and sends her away. Olivia and Hugh have a long discussion and we finally get to the truth of it. This is a scene that makes more sense the more times you watch it and it has probably my favorite line from Hugh : “I was holding a door because I knew there were monsters on the other side. I held it so hard and so tight that I didn’t have hands for the kids and the monsters got through anyway.” This is a perfect way to sum up Hugh’s character in my opinion. He wanted to help his kids be safe so much that he forgot how to actually help raise them. Olivia is still strong in her stance that the children should stay with her at the house forever. Hugh keeps telling her of how wonderful Nellie was and about how no matter what happens to them, we have to stay with them and bare witness to the horrors of what could happen to them. Hugh strikes a deal with Olivia and fixes one last thing.
Theo and Shirley take Luke to the hospital while Steve and Hugh stay behind and we finally learn the truth of hill house and of the night Olivia died. Younger Hugh held Olivia’s dead body in his arms while Mr. and Mrs. Dudley walked in. They were looking for their daughter who had snuck out that night. It’s here that we learn that Abigail was their daughter. They cry over her until Abigail’s ghost comes into the room. They embrace her and Hugh begins to talk about how he wants to burn the house down to never allow anyone to be hurt by the house ever again. The Dudley’s beg him to leave the house standing for their daughter and the other ghosts residing there. They’ll never say anything about Olivia or anything else as long as the house stands and they can come and see their daughter. Hugh agrees and now we know why he kept quiet about everything for all of those years. This is also when we find out that Hugh killed himself to remain at Hill House with Olivia and Nellie. He tells Steve that the house and the promise of it’s survival are his now. Hugh’s last words to Steve put the entire series in perspective : “I was so lucky to be your dad.”
Steve walks out while all of the ghosts follow him and stop at the entrance. Luke wakes up in the hospital bed. Steve goes back to his wife and they begin to reconcile. Shirley tells Kevin the truth about her past. Theo moves out of the guest house but not because of the anger between her and Shirley, instead she’s leaving to move in with Trish. The last thing she does is leave her gloves. We see the Dudleys as an older couple with white hair, Mr. Dudley carries his wife into Hill House as she passes away and then we see her ghost of her when she was younger, now reunited with both of her children. We see Luke on his two year anniversary of being sober and the entire family is together. All of this is shown while Steve narrates these scenes before ending with this : “Love is the relinquishment of Logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway. Without it, we cannot continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. Hill House, not sane, stands against it’s hills holding darkness within. It has stood so for a hundred years and might stand a hundred more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet neatly, floors are firm and doors are sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of hill house and those who walk there…walk together.”
Final Thoughts : I adored this entire series from beginning to end. As previously stated, my only real issue was still having questions about the history of the house itself but honestly, after watching it a second time : I think it works better if you don’t know about every single thing that happened in the house. It’s a mystery for a reason. I actually loved how they changed the core story of the house itself and that not every ghost was purely evil in the same way that the house wasn’t purely evil. There is love and peace in the house, the same way that there’s love and peace in our every day lives.
I loved you completely and you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti.
