Disclaimer Finale Recap: Her Side of the Story — Plus, Grade the Season
Apple TV+’s twisted mystery Disclaimer wrapped up this week by flipping the entire narrative on its head — with Catherine writing the story this time.
Friday’s finale picks up with Catherine in Stephen’s kitchen, sipping the tea he spiked with sleeping pills and telling him her version of what happened to his son Jonathan years ago in Italy. We flash back to a young Catherine going back to her hotel room alone and gazing at her sleeping boy before sipping wine by herself on the terrace. The next day, she fell asleep on the beach, waking up to find her son Nicholas out at sea in a dinghy. She rushed out to save him, but she was afraid of the water: “I didn’t risk my life for my child, and that is something I have to live with.” Then Jonathan rushed in to save the boy, and the other men rescued Nicholas, not realizing that Jonathan was also in danger. She did see Jonathan struggling and didn’t do a thing to save him, she admits, but when Stephen protests, she snaps at him: “I am not finished!”
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Then Catherine tells us what really happened the night before Jonathan’s death: She was happily alone in her hotel room when Jonathan forced his way inside, holding her at knifepoint. “I thought it would be gentle, but it wasn’t gentle,” she recalls. “It was hateful.” He slapped her around and screamed threats in her ear before forcing her to reassure her sleeping son. He made her dress up in that red underwear so he could take photos, and “I did exactly as he asked,” she says. Jonathan ejaculated while watching her pose, and she asked him to leave, but that just made him angry: He brutally raped her, she tells Stephen, for three and a half hours. After that, “I would’ve given anything to watch him die,” she declares.
Stephen doesn’t believe her, but she says she kept evidence of his semen and photos of her bruises, but she never had the strength to go to the police, and after he died, she figured it was over and got rid of the evidence. Oh, and months later, she learned she was pregnant — and she had an abortion, even though it could’ve been her husband Robert’s baby and they did want another child. Catherine’s tea starts to take effect, and she collapses to the ground, with Stephen heading to the hospital where Nicholas is staying “to put an end to all this.” As he takes a cab to the hospital, Catherine wakes up and makes herself throw up, stumbling around to make coffee to perk herself up. Then she calls a rideshare, and it’s a race to the hospital, with Nicholas’ life hanging in the balance.
Catherine tries to alert Robert, but he’s still not taking her calls. He’s at the hospital, reassuring Nicholas that he’ll be OK. Stephen arrives first and talks his way past the nurses, even though visiting hours are over. He approaches Nicholas’ bed with a syringe (!) and starts to line it up… but he stops when a delirious Nicholas calls out for his mother: “Mom, please, I want to go.” He reaches out for Stephen’s hand, and Stephen takes it — and breaks down in jagged sobs before walking away. He runs into Robert, telling him: “I’m so sorry. I was wrong… I was wrong about everything.” Catherine finally arrives, and when she sees Stephen weeping and apologizing, she fears the worst — but Nicholas is fine, and Catherine weeps by his bedside.
Stephen didn’t want to believe his son was capable of such a heinous crime, and when Robert asks him, “Why didn’t you question it?” he fires back: “Why didn’t you?” Stephen ends up burning all the copies of Nancy’s book in his backyard, along with her old cardigan. Robert asks Catherine why she never told him the truth, and she says she wanted to protect him and Nicholas: “I suppose I didn’t want it to enter our lives.” She tried to tell Robert the truth after the book came out, but he was too angry to listen. Now she’s angry at him: “It’s almost like you’re relieved that I was raped.” She and Robert get divorced, we learn, and she concentrates on rebuilding her relationship with Nicholas. He doesn’t remember what happened that night, Nicholas tells her, but he’s sorry — and they hold each other in a warm hug.
Now it’s your turn to tell your story: Give the Disclaimer finale — and the season as a whole — a grade in our polls, and hit the comments to share your thoughts.
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