[Spoiler Alert] Playing Gracie Darling’s ending was all about the revelation that James was responsible for the two deaths that were haunting a small town in New South Wales. So, all the way back in 1997, Joni, Gracie, Jay, and Anita had gone to a shack in the woods to perform a seance. They were visited by a spirit named Levi, who went on to possess Gracie. As Gracie suffered a fit, Joni, Jay, and Anita ran out of the shack and never looked back. Later on, they learned that Gracie had gone missing, and even after extensive searches and investigations, nobody was able to figure out where she was. 27 years after that incident, Frankie, the daughter of Ruth (who was Gracie’s sister), went missing as well, after she went to the aforementioned shack with Raffy, Jay and Anita’s daughter. While the authorities began an official investigation into the matter, Joni took it upon herself to solve this mystery around the disappearances of girls from the Darling family and whether or not there was something supernatural about it. So, did Joni find anything concrete? Let’s talk about the finale of the show to find out.
Joni Saw Gracie Being Cremated
Chronologically speaking, the issue in the Darling family started when James killed his brother, Levi. The events that led to the altercation between James and Levi were never exactly explained. We learned that the brothers had some kind of a tiff in the shack, and in order to punish Levi, James set a fire and left him there to burn alive. Since the Darlings were so rich and influential, and because it was the family’s internal matter, nothing really happened, and they continued to expand their empire. James married Moira, and they had Gracie and Ruth. That said, James’ guilt over killing Levi kept eating away at his soul from the inside, and he turned to religion to cleanse himself. Of course, his obsession with religion wasn’t limited to himself; he administered it to both of his daughters, because he thought that that was the only way to discipline them and keep them in line. I guess James thought that if he did a good job of bringing up those two girls, then he would be absolved of his past mistakes. But the thing about dogmatism and forcing religious practices upon impressionable minds is that it’ll eventually backfire. And that’s what happened with Ruth and Gracie.
The sisters developed feelings for Peter, even though he was their cousin. Gracie began consuming drugs and alcohol on a regular basis. She became classist and didn’t hold back while insulting Billy, one of her schoolmates who wasn’t that well off and was a bit awkward. She had frequent fights with Ruth, and the more they clashed, the more abusive James became with them, which in turn fueled their rebellious behavior instead of making them subservient. Now, it was obvious that due to James and Levi’s sordid past, the family was forbidden from even uttering his name in the house. Naturally, Gracie went ahead and summoned his spirit through that seance in the very shack where he had been killed. Levi supposedly took over Gracie’s body, which was why she began saying “Let me out” on a loop, as those were the last words that Levi had spoken while being burnt alive. Assuming that it was a fit or that Gracie was overacting, Joni tried to snap her out of it and tore off Gracie’s necklace. After that, she left the shack and went home. Later on, Joni apparently went back to the shack, probably to return the necklace, and saw James and Peter burning something. So, reeling from the shock of what she might have witnessed, Joni went back home again, and Bob, Joni’s father, took that necklace and hid it, even though he didn’t know what his daughter had gone through.
Frankie Was Hiding
After the seance and before Joni arrived at the shack a second time, Jay went back to the shack as well, to check on Gracie. She was still under the possession of Levi’s spirit, and she attacked him. In retaliation, Jay shoved Gracie into the fireplace, giving her a head injury and finally snapping her out of her trance. Jay spotted the blood flowing out of her skull, but he didn’t hang around to check if Gracie was alive or dead; he just bolted out of there. When Gracie regained consciousness, she walked all the way to her home. Since it was extremely late, James confronted her and asked her where she’d been. As soon as she said that she was with Levi, James got agitated and killed her. Ruth and Peter saw that, and they tried to stage a protest against James. But James whacked Ruth across the face, told her to go back into the house, and not speak a word of what had transpired to Moira. In the meantime, James and Peter took Gracie’s dead body into the woods and burnt it, which was something that Joni saw, and then buried it deep into her subconscious.
Although the leads regarding Gracie’s “disappearance” ran cold, Gracie herself became a sort of urban legend, and her spirit was regularly invoked by the kids of the town in New South Wales. And a part of that myth-building was Gracie’s niece, Frankie. Now, Frankie was dealing with demons of her own, because she had a sneaking suspicion that she was the result of the taboo affair between her mother, Ruth, and her uncle, Peter. Well, her suspicions were right, and were confirmed to be true when, one night, she encountered a drunk Ruth coming out of her bedroom with Peter. She went to the shack, where Raffy was waiting for her, got drunk, and played the titular game. When Gracie’s spirit possessed Frankie, Raffy ran away, and Frankie saw the vision of James killing Gracie. Frankie was already disturbed by the revelation that her uncle was her father, and when she learned that her grandfather had killed her aunt, she decided to never go back to her family. She made a pact with Billy and staged her disappearance. I guess they expected people to forget about her, much like how they forgot about Levi and Gracie, and then she’d leave New South Wales, or even Australia, and start a new life somewhere far away from the reach of the Darlings. Maybe if the police were the only ones looking for Frankie, her plan would have worked. But since both Joni and Mina got involved, the spotlight on her disappearance lingered for longer than she had expected.
Moira killed James
Mina confronted James regarding Levi. Mina had seen Joni do the same during their book-reading sessions with James, and she had seen a plaque with Levi’s name on it at the local church. Hence, she thought about giving it a spin in Joni’s absence. James, who was suffering from dementia, assumed that it wasn’t Mina, but Gracie who was asking him about Levi again. So, in his mind, he was reliving the events of the night of Gracie’s murder, except this time he was killing Mina. Gracie not being able to fight off James was believable, but Mina failing to take on James was nonsensical. That geriatric fool was a bag of bones, while Mina was perfectly healthy. How the hell was she overpowered by that dude? I mean, I understand that the show wanted to draw parallels between Gracie’s death and the attempt to murder Mina in order to underscore James’ involvement, but yeah, I couldn’t buy that second altercation. Anyway, while Mina was struggling to fend off James, Joni went looking for her everywhere in the town, fearing that she had gone missing. Ultimately, she ended up in the shack, where she evoked the spirit of Gracie, who showed her how James had killed her. When Joni was a kid, she had seen the “prayer hall” where the murder had happened, and when she got glimpses of that building, she went there with the intention of questioning James.
However, Joni was horrified to see that he was about to kill Mina. Who knows? Maybe he would have succeeded if it wasn’t for the visions and Joni’s quick thinking. But Joni saved Mina, and James was taken to the hospital. Jay conveyed this information to Billy, who heaved a sigh of relief because, for the longest time, he was believed to be the one who had killed Gracie. That said, Jay wanted some clarification regarding Billy discarding Frankie’s backpack, and Billy not only admitted that he was protecting Frankie from her murderous grandfather by faking her disappearance, but also that he had arranged for a hiding spot for Frankie. Since the police had been made aware of James’ actions, Frankie was able to return. That didn’t mean that James would be put on trial because, both physically and psychologically, the geriatric murderer was not “competent.” What about Ruth and Peter, though? Yeah, the show kind of glossed over their involvement in the cover-up. We only heard Jay say that he had made a statement about accidentally injuring Gracie on the night she was murdered. But it was Ruth and Peter who actually aided in protecting the person who had killed Gracie. Moira knew that, legally speaking, James wouldn’t get the punishment that he deserved. Hence, she took matters into her own hands and smothered him with a pillow. Did she face the consequences of that righteous murder? We don’t know. Did she do something similar to Ruth and Peter? We don’t know that either. Therefore, we have to take solace in the fact that they surrendered to the police or were guilt-ridden enough to ostracize themselves from society, thereby allowing Frankie to grow up properly. What about the ghosts, though?
The Ghosts Were Real
In Playing Gracie Darling’s ending, we saw the Greys moving back to their house in the city, and while the kids settled in, Joni thought she saw Ivy, one of her patients from the psychiatric center that she worked at, in her backyard. By the time Joni got to her, Ivy was gone. That’s when she got a call from her workplace, informing her that Ivy had died by suicide. Joni could have seen the ghost of any of the dead people. Since she had buried Gracie’s locket at the place where she had been burnt, she could have seen her spirit saying her last goodbye to her best friend. Joni’s intervention, in a way, led to James’ death. Hence, an appearance from him could have served as a reminder that while she might have managed to finish his torturous legacy in the physical realm, he will continue to torment his family from the metaphysical realm. But no, it was Ivy who appeared before Joni, that too before she had learnt about Ivy’s death. Therefore, we can consider that as one of the concrete examples of a ghost sighting that didn’t involve somebody pretending to see something that wasn’t actually there. The second example could be Gracie showing her own death to Frankie. Yeah, Joni saw that vision too, but by that point, she already knew that James was involved in Gracie’s death. That said, Frankie was nowhere close to knowing such a thing, because it was a really well-kept secret. When Jay found her, she confidently said that James had killed Gracie, and news of that accusation against James hadn’t reached the news or social media. So, the only way she could have known about it is through a supernatural intervention.
The third concrete example was Levi showing up during Joni and Jay’s seance. No, there was no sudden gust of air or anything like that. We got an objective look at Levi’s ghost. If we saw that split-second frame from one of the characters’ perspectives, I wouldn’t have counted it. But I feel that that shot was confirmation of the fact that ghosts exist (in the world of this show) and Levi’s spirit had latched onto that shack (much like an onryo from Japanese mythology) after his tragic death. And every time someone tried to talk to him exclusively from that shack, he tried to tell them that James had killed him, and punishing him would free Levi’s spirit. With James dead, hopefully Levi will rest in peace. Regardless of whether the ghosts are real or not, it’s obvious that they were a metaphor for the trauma that James had inflicted upon his family and how that had caused them to become dysfunctional and problematic. It’s an important reminder that if we commit some kind of a crime, we should own up to it. We might get away because of the corrupt judicial system or the lack of evidence, but it’ll come to bite us in one way or another. Even if we don’t suffer the consequences of our actions, we’ll be forced to see our loved ones paying a heavy price for the truth that we thought we had buried a long time ago. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of Playing Gracie Darling. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
