Run Away’s ending was centered around Simon and Paige discussing the true identity of Ingrid. In order to get to that, though, in classic Harlan Coben fashion, we had to wade through four subplots that were running almost parallel to each other. The first one was obviously Paige running away from her family, supposedly because of her relationship with Aaron, and Simon and Ingrid’s search for her led to the latter getting shot by Luther and hospitalized. If it wasn’t for Cornelius—someone who lived near the flat that Paige and Aaron occupied—Simon would have been a goner. The second one was about Elena, who was investigating the disappearance of Henry, who was in touch with Paige and was probably killed off-screen, which led her to the discovery that the murders of Damien and several other men were related to an adoption center called Hope and Growth Adoption Agency. In addition to that, she was trying to connect with Maria, Remi’s daughter, who was technically Elena’s late husband Joel’s daughter too, because he was the donor. The third one followed Dee Dee and Ash, foster siblings turned assassins who were behind those murders because they had been employed by a cult called the Shining Truth to cull their leader Casper’s illegitimate children. And the fourth one featured Isaac and Ruby, who were looking to solve all of these cases because, well, that’s what the police do. Now, before the finale, the character arcs of Elena, Dee Dee, and Ash were wrapped up after the foster siblings killed Elena for getting too close to the Shining Haven’s truth. Since Simon was searching for Elena, Dee Dee and Ash tried to kill him too, and while Ash got killed by Cornelius, Dee Dee was killed by a member of the Shining Truth, Mother Adiona. What happened to the rest? Allow me to explain.
Spoiler Alert
The Shutdown Of The Shining Truth
Initially, it seemed like the Shining Truth was an organization that trained assassins from scratch and sent them out into the wild to take out high-profile targets. But no, all those killings were the result of a property dispute and because of its leader, Casper, not being able to keep “it” in his pants. As explained so succinctly by Dee Dee, Casper was dying of cancer, and it was only a matter of time before his two “legitimate” heirs took the reins. But, as per the rules of the Shining Truth, Casper would have to divide his property equally between all his sons, not just the two who were there on the property with him, but also the ones he had put up for adoption. No, the mothers of those children didn’t let go of them consensually; they were told that their sons had died during childbirth and then had their kids smuggled away. Now, these sons finding their respective mothers, and the followers of the cult learning that Casper was such a promiscuous fella, would have ruined whatever image of piety that the Shining Truth had. Given how the cult relied on their followers giving away everything they had to them in return for a safe haven and a simplistic lifestyle, Casper had to take care of that issue before his body gave out. Hence, he sanctioned all those killings. When Isaac, Ruby, and pretty much the entire police force descended upon the Shining Truth, Casper showed no remorse though. In fact, he didn’t want to get arrested either; he wanted to consume a cyanide capsule to avoid paying for his sins. Thankfully, Isaac knocked that capsule out of his hand and cuffed him, thereby bringing the Shining Truth to an end and freeing all those who had been imprisoned by that insidious organization.
This whole plot thread might have seemed preposterous to many, but you’ll be shocked to learn how realistic this is. I mean, the people in cults like these are so brainwashed that they run hashtags on social media outlets on a regular basis to spread the word of their arrested leader. With each passing day, society continues to become more and more unstable, and that allows these self-proclaimed godmen to thrive. They have access to nearly endless amounts of wealth, and instead of using it for the betterment of this world that we live in, they consume it to feed their bottomless ego. Since Run Away is a fictional story, Coben was able to script Casper’s arrest and eventual death as a deserved twist of fate. He was even able to show Mother Adiona vowing to start the Shining Truth anew, this time with the intention of actually helping all those women and children who are in need of support. Heck, he even showed Simon believing in Mother Adiona’s vision and not reporting his meeting with her to Isaac. What actually happens in real life is that if these cases get a lot of criticism from a significant number of people, these self-proclaimed godmen are kept in jail while their operations are allowed to run because the elite, especially politicians, benefit from it. They’re occasionally brought out of prison on parole, which initially attracts outrage. As the outrage dies down, these godmen’s sentences are suspended, and they are freed. I know that Casper’s death by cancer might seem satisfactory. But do you really think that the pain caused by that disease could come close to equalling all the horrors that he has inflicted upon the world? No, I don’t think so.
Ingrid killed Aaron
After the Shining Truth came to an end, Paige came to visit her hospitalized mother, and that’s when she ran into Simon, who had recovered from the gunshot wound he had suffered at the hands of Dee Dee. Of course, Simon asked the same questions that had been on the audience’s mind over the course of 8 episodes: firstly, where was she hiding all this while, and secondly, was she responsible for Aaron’s murder? Paige misdirected Simon a lot, but as far as I know, here’s the chronology of the events that led to Aaron’s death. Paige had been raped by her boyfriend, Doug. Aaron took revenge on Paige’s behalf. Hence, Paige gravitated to Aaron and was shocked to find out that he was a junkie. She tried getting away from him, and she even went to the rehab center recommended by Ingrid. But Aaron kept drawing her back into his life. It was after Aaron and Paige’s first and only physical altercation that the latter was prompted to go to Ingrid for help. Realizing the kind of pickle that her daughter was in, Ingrid took matters into her own hands, killed Aaron, and made it look like a gang hit. That was when Ingrid was spotted by Luther, who shot Ingrid when she and Simon came to meet Rocco, someone who had probably seen Paige after the murder, because he was under the impression that Ingrid was some kind of a hitwoman for a gang. All of this was corroborated by Ingrid after she regained consciousness and was able to stand on her own two feet. It was understandable that Simon felt low-key betrayed, because he had been left in the dark for such a long time. Even though Ingrid was in the hospital throughout the show, it seemed like she had done more for Paige than Simon did by running around almost the entirety of England since he was unaware of the fact that Paige was in rehab. Did that make Simon a loser? No, not at all. It showed that there were certain lines that Simon was unwilling to cross, even if it was for his family.
Simon was undoubtedly a good guy, but he’d rather rely on a broken judicial system and a private investigator and regulate people who claimed to have information than exact some righteous revenge. I mean, even when Doug’s life was in his hands, he just got the truth about his altercation with Aaron and Paige out of him; that’s it. Ingrid probably knew that Simon would do something similar when it came to Aaron instead of hurting him the way he hurt their daughter, because he was the “sensible” half of the couple, and he was still scarred by the social media backlash to his public fight with Aaron. Therefore, she decided to deal with this situation all by herself. That does beg the question of why Ingrid didn’t go for Doug’s life in addition to Aaron’s, given how he had sexually assaulted Paige? Maybe she would have had she not been shot by Luther. However, all this goes to show how differently parents can react to a certain situation. Simon opted for accountability, and Ingrid looked for violent punishment, and that was probably a result of the backgrounds that they came from. Simon was relatively untouched by the hurdles of life, which was why he believed in the “system,” while Ingrid had gone through hardships that Simon didn’t even know existed in the first place, which was why she knew that the “system” always protected or gave abusers a free pass. In addition to all that, Simon and Ingrid’s reaction to the ongoing situation was a subversion of the trope that only men can be avenging angels while women are always damsels in distress. Sure, regardless of the gender of the one exacting revenge, it is an act that rarely yields any positive results, but in some cases, bloody retribution seems like the only option.
Aaron Was Ingrid’s Son
In Run Away’s ending, Simon and Paige sat down for a chat about Aaron and Ingrid. So, yeah, the origins of Aaron and Paige’s relationship were a bit of a question mark. But Simon’s investigation into Ingrid’s old stuff revealed that she was a member of the Shining Truth. She was pregnant with Aaron, but, like many of the “undivine” sons of Casper, Ingrid was told that her son had died. Ingrid then escaped from the cult and went into rehab—the same rehab that she recommended to Paige. The truth of the matter, though, was that Aaron was very much alive, and since Paige was looking into her genealogy, she came across Aaron, and the two bonded over the fact that they were half-siblings. Which meant that Ingrid hadn’t just killed some random junkie who was poisoning her daughter; she had killed her own son. As per Paige, Ingrid didn’t know that, and she wanted to keep it that way, because the truth would simply destroy her. Meanwhile, Simon was of the opinion that Ingrid should know the truth because he knew more than anyone else how secrets almost destroyed his family. The show ended on an ambiguous note, where Simon was still contemplating if he should let Ingrid know that she had killed her own son or let her live in ignorance. If you have watched any Harlan Coben adaptations, you must’ve expected this revelation. In most cases, Coben’s last-minute twists feel shocking just for the sake of being shocking, while never really recontextualizing the entire narrative or compelling you to slog through the whole show again so that you can see everything in a new light. However, in this one, I think it did. The fact that Aaron was Paige’s half-brother sort of toyed with our perception of how we perceive men and women when we see them from afar—we just assume that they’re in a romantic relationship. No, I’m not saying that Aaron being Paige’s half-brother justified his actions, but, as underscored by Paige, it showed that his “white knight” behavior was more like a responsibility than a duty that had been passed down from one incel to another.
The drug-related approach that Aaron took was wrong, but that’s the only way he knew after being thrust upon this world by Casper, deprived of love and affection. Maybe if he got some level of care and nurturing, and if Casper and his sons didn’t turn out to be so selfish and murderous, he would have been able to form a healthy bond with his half-siblings and his parents, both biological and non-biological. Instead, Simon fell through the cracks, and the last thing that he saw was his own mother murdering him. Now, you’d expect that after all this, the Greenes would live happily ever after, but the specter of the Shining Truth continued to haunt them. I mean, think about it; the foundations of that cult were based on a lie, which Casper and his sons sought to bury under a mountain of bodies in order to save the organization from crumbling. The Greenes’ second chance at functioning like a normal family was also being built atop the lie that Ingrid’s son had died at birth and not by Ingrid’s own two hands. The truth would have been a bitter pill to swallow, but at the very least it would have allowed them to come together as a family to help Ingrid process the trauma of killing her son. Since they didn’t, Paige and Simon will have to walk on eggshells when it comes to Ingrid, which’ll cause the weight of the lie to balloon until the floor gives way, thereby causing the Greenes to hit rock bottom. If Ingrid has an inkling that Aaron was her son, then the discussion around that matter will probably go smoothly. If not, everyone’s getting hurt. Hence, it all depends on how long Paige and Simon can carry the cross that they’ve chosen to bear. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of the show. What are your opinions on the same? Feel free to let me know in the comments section below.
