The ending of The Last Night at Tremore Beach left the fate of the central characters, Judy and Alex, a bit of a blur. [Spoiler Alert] We are not sure if the two will end up together or not. Well, in the book, they do. Alex (or Peter Harper in the book) was finally going back to the city so he could continue his work and be around his kids, but he didn’t want to leave without Judy (or Judie in the book). In the book, he proposed to her and asked her if she wanted to move to Amsterdam with him, and Judy, without a second thought, said, “Yes.” In Netflix’s show, however, when Alex asked Judy to leave the town with him, she didn’t give any definitive answer. Actually, the entire thing was quite vague. The intercuts with Alex playing the piano implied that maybe Alex was imagining that conversation with Judy. He feared that Leo (or Souza) and Maria might try to hurt her because Alex exposed their true identity and whereabouts to Interpol, and therefore, for her safety, he wanted her to go to Amsterdam with him.
Also, in the very same scene, Alex revealed to Judy that he knew all about her tragic past, where she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by five men. In his visions, Alex saw Judy tied with a rope and saw some scars on her back, which she got when she tried to cut the rope with a broken piece of glass on the wall. Alex was just trying hard to persuade Judy to leave the town, but we never found out if she was convinced or not. The thing is, everything we know about Judy’s past is through Alex. He narrated these events through a long monologue that took place in his dreams (or visions), and we are not sure if any of it was real. To me, it sounded more like a cliche backstory, which one often writes for a character in a film, and coincidentally, Alex, too, was hired to compose music for an upcoming film titled “Way Up.” Funny thing is, this film was written by none other than Peter Harper. Yes, that’s what Alex’s character is called in the book.
The way Netflix’s show ended, I guess we can entertain two possibilities for Judy’s character. The first one is: just like it happened in the book, Alex did meet Judy at a hostel and fell in love with her while living on Tremore Beach. The second one is: he just saw her working at the hostel but never really got the courage to talk to her or ask her out. While reading the script of his new film, Alex created a fictional narrative around Judy and started a romantic relationship with her in his visions in order to compose a music piece titled “Tremore Beach.” It was the same composition that Alex had decided to send to Allan for the film. So, in the end, it makes sense to arrive at the conclusion that Alex, being obsessed with his work, used a fictional story centered around Judy to trigger his emotions and fuel his feelings for his art.
I know the second possibility hasn’t been explicitly suggested in Netflix’s show, but if we are not considering it, then we have to believe that Alex really had superpowers like his mother and used “The Instinct” to find out people’s past and future. Going through a creative block, Alex arrived at Tremore Beach and started a romantic relationship with Judy, but he didn’t know anything about her past until a year later, when he was struck by lightning and started getting hallucinatory visions just like his mother used to get. In these visions, Alex found out that Judy had lied to him about her car accident. Some eight years ago, in 2015, Judy worked as a nurse in a local hospital in Toulouse. She had recently lost her mother and therefore wanted to make a fresh start by enjoying life to the fullest. That was when she came across hippies in a nightclub who not only locked her in the basement but also raped her multiple times and recorded her on their phones. Judy managed to survive that dreadful night, but she never really recovered from the trauma and therefore left Toulouse some days later to start anew in Tremore. But you see, there is a huge difference between someone finding out your secret and you telling them because you feel safe and comfortable with them. In Alex’s vision, Judy trusted Alex enough to tell her about her past, but when Alex woke up for the second time, we didn’t come across any such emotional bonding between the two, and Alex just revealed to her that he knew all about her past, which sounded more like someone spying on you and invading your privacy. So, in short, even if Alex’s second vision is real, then I don’t think Judy trusts him enough to leave her life behind and move to Amsterdam or London.
If you still think the second possibility holds water, then I guess Alex just met Judy in town, or maybe had a secret fling with her, but it couldn’t have been anything more than that. And when he read about a character in the new film Allan had sent him, Alex started weaving a fictional narrative around Judy to feel more emotionally connected to her. One thing you might have noticed is that the second time Alex woke up in the hospital, he became a transformed version of himself, someone who wanted to compose music and be a better father to his kids. He wanted to make his secret relationship with Judy official and also told his ex-wife Paula about her. So, maybe it wasn’t the vision after all, and Alex just imagined where his life was actually headed. He realized that he needed to make some drastic changes in his life to become a better version of himself. In his visions, Alex believed that his divorce with Paula had taken a toll on his son’s mental health, who just like that, started to hallucinate about things too. The visions, in a way, made Alex realize that his current attitude towards things wasn’t helping anyone and that he needed to implement those changes to make life better for everyone. So, here I am, with all my theories presented before you, but I would love to know your thoughts on The Last Night at Tremore Beach. Please feel free to use the comment box below and share what you think about Oriol Paulo’s mind-bending show.
