Gracepoint season finale recap: 'Gracepoint' finale recap

When Fox embarked on remaking Broadchurch we were promised a different ending, and that promise was kept. In doing so, however, the show lost what made the U.K. version so special. I’d highly recommend that you watch Broadchurch if you haven’t yet… even if you have seen Gracepoint. However, here—and a spoiler alert goes without saying—I will look at some of the main differences. So let’s get right down to it, shall we?

At the beginning of this episode it seems that Gracepoint has led us to the exact same place as Broadchurch, with Ellie’s husband, Joe Miller, the killer. Emmett brings Joe and Tom in to confront Tom about his computer, which Emmett has mined for information and found emails that reveal how Danny and Tom had been feuding. As they leave, Emmett asks them for their shoe sizes. Tom’s a size 10—the size found in the hut. Later on, Emmett tells Ellie that he realized Joe was the killer because of the way he behaved during this interview and the fact that the email account on Danny’s smartphone had two contacts: Ellie’s husband and son. But Emmett doesn’t need to go looking for Joe or find more proof. Joe turns on that phone and provokes the detective to come look for him.

Joe then confesses to Emmett. Danny and Joe had been meeting for about three months, just talking—Joe insists. Danny had come to the Millers after Mark hit him over quitting the soccer team. The night of his death, Danny and Joe met in the Harvey Ridge hut for the first time; Joe brought him a gift from his vacation. Joe stroked Danny’s face, touching his lips, and Danny rebuked him. Danny ran out of the hut, to the edge of the cliff, threatening to jump. “You’re sick,” Danny told him. Joe tried to convince Danny to just go home, pretend like it never happened, keep it quiet, but Danny said he had to tell his parents. “You can’t,” Joe said, but Danny attempted to flee. Joe grabbed him, and Danny hit his head on a rock. Joe placed his body on the beach and cleaned the hut. He had tried to confess that night at the hut, but bolted when he saw that Ellie came with Emmett.

Though the circumstances are slightly varied, the revelation that Joe is the killer, would have made Gracepoint end in exactly the same way Broadchurch did. But Joe is not telling the whole truth. Tom is also culpable.

After Emmett tells Ellie of Joe’s confession and Ellie and her sons move to a motel, she confronts Tom, huddled in the bathroom, with the news. “Tom, I’m here with you, and I will never leave you. I will always love you, and I will always protect you,” she tells him. She asks Tom if his father ever tried to touch him or his brother. Tom is still defensive and angry. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Tom says. She says she doesn’t understand either. “No. You don’t,” he snaps back. Ellie notices his muddy sneakers, remembering that there were children’s size 6 prints around the Harvey Ridge hut. We flash back. Tom had followed Joe, and as Joe chased after Danny, Tom tried to intercept his father by grabbing something heavy. He swings at his father, but hits Danny in the head. Tom indeed killed his friend. Joe, still to blame for harm toward Danny, covered for his son. But more importantly: Tom’s mother covers for him, too.

NEXT: A wife’s agony, a mother’s protectiveness

“How could you not know?” That’s what Beth Solano asks Ellie when she finds her on the street as she takes a walk after discovering the truth about the killing. Beth, of course, echoes Ellie asking Susan Wright about how she could have remained in the dark about the sins of her husband. That’s one of the themes that carries over from Broadchurch. Ellie, at the beginning of the show, is blind to what could have perhaps been the faults of her fellow townspeople. By the end of the show, she realizes she was even more in the dark than she thought: She was blind to the inner workings of her own family. In Gracepoint, however, she practically goes all oedipal on her emotional vision.

When Emmett interrupts Ellie’s interrogation of Vince and reveals to his partner her husband’s crime and confession, her shock is palpable. She throws up into the garbage can. When she confronts Joe, who insists, “I’m a good man,” she flies into a rage, hitting and kicking him. But her tone is different when she goes to speak to her imprisoned husband. She is cold. She asks if she knows everything now. When he responds yes, she says: “Every single bit of it stays between us.” She makes the decision to be complicit in Danny’s death, to absorb some of the evil that she couldn’t initially recognize in her own town.

While the rest of the town is mourning Danny at the beach, Ellie and Emmett converse on the sidelines. “This doesn’t feel right to me, Miller, I hope you know that,” Emmett tells her. “I just keep thinking about your family, your boys.” She responds: “My boys will be fine. I’ll make sure of it.” That’s her resolve. Before she leaves, she says: “Look at us, former detectives club.” She departs and Emmett receives a call from his daughter. He plans to go to her graduation. She plans to come to his surgery. There’s a reconciliation. Emmett’s soul has been unburdened, but after the call he looks at his phone and pauses on the video of Tom and Joe’s interview. He opens it. On the screen he asks Tom: “Did you ever see anyone hit Danny?” He notices Tom glance to his father before he answers, “I never saw anyone else hit Danny.”

Emmett has realized. He calls Ellie. She looks at her sleeping boys and doesn’t answer. Ellie’s decision is, of course, understandable. She wants to keep what she has left of her family intact, but in doing so she also fuels the evil she once refused to see. We leave Gracepoint on a sinister note. That could not be more different from the way we left Broadchurch—even though there are many similarities in their endings. Some lines of dialogue essentially remain the same.

The ending of Broadchurch was finite and cathartic. The Latimer family (the British version of the Solanos) stood together looking out at the coastline of fires lit in honor of Danny. The Solanos witnessed that same gesture, but that is not the lasting image of the series. In fact, the ending gave us very little about how the Solano family and the town at large reacted to the news that Joe had killed Danny. The conclusion focused on Ellie in a moment that almost begs for a second season. Gracepoint‘s ratings seem to imply that will not be the case, while Broadchurch‘s second season is about to be released.

Yes, the ending of Gracepoint was different, but in doing so it changed the tenor of the work, becoming a show about retention of secrets, not acceptance and release in the face of tragedy.