The ending of Echo Valley was about Kate framing Jackie for the death of Greg and stopping the drug peddler from extorting her. Kate’s daughter, Claire, and her boyfriend, Ryan, were in cahoots with Jackie. While supposedly fooling around with Ryan’s stuff, Claire had accidentally thrown $10,000 worth of drugs into the river. Claire came to Kate, asking her to help her out of this pickle. Kate did have that kind of money, thanks to her ex-husband, Richard, but she needed it to fix the titular ranch. So, she refused to part with her cash to help her daughter with a problem she had created all by herself. A few days later, Claire showed up with a dead body in her car: the dead body of Ryan. After Claire confessed that she had murdered Ryan, Kate disposed of the body in Marsh Creek Lake and told her daughter to stick to a narrative that wouldn’t place her at the scene of the crime. Kate and Claire thought that chapter of their lives had concluded, but Jackie continued to threaten the latter because he still hadn’t gotten his money. Kate had no option but to pay him off. As soon as that transaction was done, Claire up and vanished. So, Kate tracked her down and drove all the way from Chester County to Lumber St. and got the shock of her life: Ryan was alive. Instead of explaining what had happened, Claire and Ryan bolted. To make matters worse, Jackie showed up at Kate’s doorstep again, demanding truckloads of cash because he knew what she’d done with the body of Greg. Did Kate bow down to Jackie? Or did she turn the tables? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Claire Betrayed Kate
Jackie sat down for a chat with Kate in her house regarding the truth and the version of the truth that was peddled to Kate in order to get her to cough up $10,000 and also take care of a dead body. So, the part about Claire accidentally disposing of Jackie’s drugs and owing him money was factually accurate; everything after that was a bunch of lies. When Kate refused to give Claire the money that she needed, she and Ryan started making and dealing drugs. One of the batches that Ryan had made contained an extremely deadly mixture of fentanyl. Hence, when a kid named Greg consumed it, he overdosed and died. Claire and Ryan came running to Jackie for help. Once they all calmed down, they came up with the plan to dupe Kate. Claire was aware of the fact that if the right buttons were pushed, Kate would be ready to do just about anything to save her one and only daughter from going to jail.
Through Claire, Echo Valley was trying to show how difficult it is for queer women to defy stereotypes. It was a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t situation.” If Kate didn’t help Claire, then she would be labeled as a lesbian woman who had not only managed to “lose” an “upstanding” husband like Richard but also failed to save her wife, Patty, after a freak horse accident and ignored her daughter when she needed her mother. If Kate helped Claire, the same label would apply, except for the part about ignoring her daughter, because in this scenario she’d be enabling her daughter to do horrible things. Ideally, Claire should’ve known how society views queer women, how they were raring to see her fail after her divorce and her wife’s death, and helped her subvert expectations. Instead, she chose to exploit her! Claire knew that, given how vulnerable Kate was already feeling, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from helping her daughter if she showed up with a bleeding dead body. And, sadly, Claire was right, because Kate did move heaven and earth to get Jackie out of her hair, only to find herself in a whole other world of trouble.
Jackie Held Kate Hostage
Since Jackie had seen that Kate was quite the resourceful woman, he wanted more than $10,000; he wanted $100,000. Kate didn’t have that kind of money lying around, so she flat-out refused to entertain Jackie’s request. On that note, Jackie reminded Kate that there was a dead body in Marsh Creek Lake. If Jackie made an anonymous phone call to the police, they’d comb the bottom of that reservoir, link it to Claire, Ryan, and Kate, and send them all to jail, thereby undoing all the hard work that she had done. Just to be on the safe side, Jackie even eliminated the option of her going to the police by drugging Kate. Yes, he might have done it to calm Kate down as well, since she was freaking out quite a bit after experiencing an information overload. But I guess he also did it to put Kate at a disadvantage. Now, if Kate chose to go to the police and narrate this elaborate story about how a drug dealer was extorting her, the police would ask her stuff like how she got in touch with a drug dealer in the first place and maybe even get her to do a blood test.
As soon as they’d see that there were traces of whatever drug Jackie had injected her with in her blood, Kate would go to jail. Kate was smart enough to know that. Hence, she allowed Jackie to live in the room atop the horse shed, which used to be Patty’s workshop, while she came up with a plan. Kate was aware of the fact that Jackie was underestimating her, and that was the only real advantage she had. Jackie already thought that he was lightyears ahead of Kate because he was a man who had managed to utilize one of Kate’s biggest weaknesses to his benefit. He saw Kate as a frail, aging, widowed, gullible, queer woman who could be hoodwinked incredibly easily. And Kate could use that to paint this image that she legitimately intended to burn down her barn, as well as two of her horses, and give the insurance money to him, in installments, thereby making it seem like Jackie was her employee and she was just paying him his salary. She was sure that Jackie would never doubt that she had any ulterior motives, none whatsoever.
Kate Framed Jackie
Echo Valley’s ending revealed that after Kate confirmed that she was ready to burn the barn and two of her horses, using a flare, she called up Les, her most trusted confidant, who knew all about the stuff with Greg’s body. At the dead of night, while Jackie was sleeping, the duo went to Marsh Creek Lake, extracted Greg’s cadaver (which Kate had previously located when she went on a swim), brought it back to the ranch, and put it in the freezer. She ordered the hay, which would be used to spread the fire. She secretly called up Emma, one of her clients, to come to the ranch to pick up the saddles, knowing full well that Jackie would decide to confront her instead of letting Kate do it, because he didn’t want to take a chance on her and allow her to seek help. Hence, Emma became an eyewitness to the fact that there was a new “stable boy” at the ranch. The same theory applied to the purchase of the flare that was used to burn the barn. Kate knew that Jackie wouldn’t allow her to go to a shop to buy the flare in case she tried to get help there. Since he went there himself, his face was recorded on the CCTV camera buying the flare that’d be used to destroy Kate’s property. The last mistake that Jackie made is that he didn’t hang back until the whole barn went up in flames. He just saw the initial moments of the process, and he hit the road because he was that sure that Kate would follow through on the plan that she had laid out in front of him.
As soon as Jackie was out of sight, Les re-entered the picture, placed Greg’s body in the room that Jackie was staying in, evacuated the horses, and Kate threw the wire stand that comes with road flares into the burning barn so that it could be discovered later by the authorities. So, the following day, when the fire marshal came to take stock of the situation, he told Detective Ballard that the incident wasn’t accidental; it had been done intentionally with a road flare. Kate, of course, scoffed at the insinuation that she had burned down her own barn to get the insurance money. That said, when Greg’s charred remains were found in the ashes, Jackie’s name came up, because he was the one who had been living in that barn recently, and he was the one who had bought the flare. When Jackie was brought in for questioning, he claimed that he was never at the ranch. However, the money that Kate had sneakily sent to Jackie’s account as his “salary” as a stable boy and Emma having seen Jackie at the ranch firsthand contradicted his claim. Since all the evidence pointed to the fact that Jackie was the one who had killed Greg, placed his body in the barn, lit the road flare (while forgetting to remove the wire stand from the location in order to make it look like an accident), and then bolted, he was arrested. Meanwhile, Kate got her freedom back.
The Crack In The Ceiling
Michael Pearce used the Kuleshov effect to infuse meaning into the crack in the ceiling of Kate’s bedroom. We never really learned what caused that crack. Maybe it was a result of lack of maintenance because Kate didn’t have the money to take care of her property on a regular basis. Maybe it was due to an accident. Maybe Kate had chucked something at the ceiling. The thing is, it didn’t matter what had caused the crack to appear; what matters is understanding what it represented. We saw it for the first time in the opening scene where Kate had a forlorn expression on her face while she was looking at it, having just woken up from a dream where she was snuggling with Patty. During the third act, Kate had a determined and slightly anxious expression on her face when she was staring at the crack while Les was blinking her headlights right outside her window so as to let her know that it was time to extract Greg’s body from Marsh Creek Lake. And in the end, Kate was almost smiling at the crack as she had successfully punished Jackie for his sins.
Therefore, I think that it won’t be a stretch to say that that fissure in the ceiling reflected Kate’s need to fix all the broken parts of her life. She thought that the grief she felt after Patty’s passing would automatically go away with time, but it didn’t. She thought Claire would improve with time, but she didn’t. She thought that Jackie would just go away after getting that $10,000, but he didn’t. While the issue with Jackie was repairable, she understood that the pain caused by Patty’s death and Claire’s betrayal were there to stay. Heck, even the psychological scars left by Jackie’s horrifying actions were indelible. Hence, she made peace with it and decided to soldier on. And that’s a lesson that we should all practice in our lives instead of seeking easy, temporary fixes that’ll only exacerbate the problem rather than solving it.
Kate’s Prologue
Kate’s plan was nothing short of genius. I mean, the woman was grieving the loss of her wife. She was witnessing the degradation of her daughter. On top of all that, some oversmart douchebag had waltzed into her house, drugged her, and tried to extort her. That would’ve been shocking for anyone. But to not succumb under all that pressure and pain and flip the script, that must’ve taken a lot of strength and determination. Hence, when she realized that she had “won,” she didn’t celebrate or go on a drunken bender. She just cried her heart out because she wasn’t some stone-cold killer or an emotionless criminal mastermind. She didn’t dispose of Greg’s body because she did that kind of thing on a daily basis. She did it to save Claire. Given the choice, she would’ve loved to live in a world where she didn’t have to play multidimensional mind games with a drug peddler. However, she had to do that, not just for herself, but also for her daughter, because if Jackie had presented “the truth” to the police, both of their lives would’ve been ruined beyond recognition. What did that cost? Everything that kept Patty’s memory alive in Kate’s heart was gone; the wedding videos, Patty’s artwork… just turned to ashes in that fire. That was devastating.
Hence, during Echo Valley’s ending, when Claire showed up at Kate’s doorstep for the umpteenth time, we were left with the question, “Will Kate be able to forgive Claire?” The movie didn’t give us a solid answer, because there weren’t any easy answers. It was again a case of “damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.” If she let Claire back into her life, there was a good chance that she’d restart that toxic cycle again, thereby proving what an incompetent parent Kate was. If she kicked out Claire, Kate would be seen as a mother who “didn’t support her child during her darkest hour.” I don’t know what Kate will do, but I would recommend the second option. It’s better to be labeled as a mother who “failed” her child than to be subjected to years and years of mental and physical abuse from one’s own daughter. Kate should use the insurance money to rebuild her ranch, train kids to ride horses, dance around with Les, and live peacefully. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of Echo Valley. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
