Finally, we have reached the end of The Last Thing He Told Me. It has been an arduous journey because it is a poorly written show and is filled to the brim with the most tired cliches known to the mystery-thriller genre. On top of that, each episode has successfully convinced me that book readers are turning the worst pieces of modern literature into bestsellers, which are then being greenlit for adaptations, thereby leading us to where we are currently. Anyway, since this journey began all the way back in mid-April, there’s a good chance that you’ve forgotten how things started. So, let’s do a little recap of the episodes leading up to the finale and then talk all about the last episode of the miniseries.
Spoilers Alert
The Events Leading Up To ‘Sanctuary’
Owen was apparently married to a woman named Olivia. The child born of that marriage is Bailey. Olivia allegedly died in a car crash, and Owen is the one who took care of Bailey. Years later, Owen fell in love with Hannah. They got married. And although Owen and Hannah shared a good bond, she had a hard time gelling with Bailey. Hannah is thrown into the deep end when Owen vanishes into thin air while the company he worked for, The Shop, gets embroiled in an embezzlement controversy. Things are complicated by Owen’s cryptic notes and a duffle bag full of money. Hannah tries to figure things out with her journalist friend, Jules, and her lawyer ex-boyfriend, Jake, while she’s hounded by a rogue US Marshal, Grady Bradford, and a spy for The Shop’s C.E.O. While Jules and Jake tell her to stay put and let the F.B.I. deal with the whole situation, Grady keeps telling Hannah to let him handle things. So, Hannah creates a third option by traveling to Austin with Bailey.
Why Austin? Well, based on her conversations with Owen and whatever memory Bailey has of her childhood, Hannah thinks that Austin has something to do with Owen’s disappearance. She turns out to be correct because all the clues point to the fact that Owen has been keeping Hannah and Bailey in a castle of lies. They find out that Owen isn’t actually Owen; he is Ethan. Bailey isn’t Bailey; she is Kristin. Olivia isn’t the woman Owen (or Ethan) married; that was Katherine. Katherine didn’t die in a car accident. She died due to a drive-by shooting. Why has the topic of “drive-by shooting” come up? Well, it turns out that Katherine’s father, i.e., Ethan’s father-in-law, is a lawyer for the Campano crime family named Nicholas Bell. When Katherine introduced Ethan to Nicholas, things were really great.
Ethan and Nicholas’s relationship was so great that Nicholas hired Ethan to make a message delivery system that would allow Nicholas to talk with his criminal clients in a discreet fashion. Ethan did help him with that. But Nicholas rejected a high-profile case, which resulted in the shooting and Katherine’s death. Since Ethan blamed Nicholas for Katherine’s death, he leaked Nicholas’ messages and sent him to jail. Ethan had to enter the F.B.I. witness protection program with Kristin, which involved the erasure of their identities. However, their new identities were leaked because Nicholas apparently had friends in the F.B.I. as well.
With the help of Grady, Charlie (Nicholas’ son), and Andrea (Charlie’s ex-wife), Ethan became Owen, and Kristin became Bailey. They helped the father-daughter duo move to California and begin a new life there. Owen didn’t have anything to do with the scandal at The Shop, though. He was aware of the fraud, which was why he kept records of Avett’s shifty activities. That said, he knew that as soon as he would appear publicly to defend himself, Nicholas would come after him. So, he ran and hoped that Hannah could build a new future for Bailey and herself. Since Hannah decided to unearth Ethan’s connection to Nicholas and Austin, things became more complicated. Grady advised Hannah to go into witness protection with Bailey. Hannah didn’t want to destroy Bailey’s life a second time. So, she went to Charlie to broker a truce with Nicholas.
Hannah And Nicholas Have A Really Long Conversation
Charlie is convinced that Hannah’s efforts to talk Nicholas out of his decision to go after Owen or keep Bailey hostage is pointless. But since Hannah is adamant about having a chat with Nicholas, Charlie takes him to Nicholas’ mansion. During the ride, Charlie and Hannah learn about Nicholas’ wife’s death, while Grady and Bailey realize that Hannah is missing. Bailey probably has an idea where Hannah has gone, but she doesn’t disclose it to Grady. As Hannah looks around Nicholas’ property, she realizes that if things go wrong, it’ll take a while for help to arrive, thereby making this a suicide mission. When Nicholas finally appears to meet Hannah, he gives her a little history lesson about the architecture of the place, which was designed by Meredith (Nicholas’ deceased wife). Then Nicholas’ bodyguard pats Hannah down to check if she’s wearing a wire because she has been at the US Marshal’s office, and it’s obvious that Nicholas suspects that she’s working for them.
Once the checking procedure is over, Nicholas tells Charlie to head back to town, which scares Charlie a little because he doesn’t know how the conversation between his father and Hannah is going to go down. But when Hannah says that she is feeling safe, especially after learning that Nicholas knows her real name and where she’s from, Charlie has no option but to follow Nicholas’ order. We briefly see Bailey getting a call from Owen as Grady looks for a way to locate Hannah before returning to the Bell household, where Nicholas cuts to the chase and asks what Hannah has on her mind. As soon as Hannah utters the word “agreement,” Nicholas essentially dashes her hopes of doing anything synonymous with that. And then Nicholas proceeds to recap everything that we’ve watched over the course of six episodes, just to prove that its writers only know how to pen expository dialogue.
Charlie gets things moving by informing Grady that Hannah is with Nicholas at Lake Travis, and Grady proceeds to take his team there. So, Hannah has a limited amount of time to make her offer. She simply states that Nicholas has two options. Either he can tell his clients to back off and let Hannah and Bailey live peacefully, or he can watch Hannah and Bailey go into the witness protection program and live their lives in hiding. Nicholas says that he can’t ensure the safety of all three of them, especially Ethan, because of his history with Nicholas’ clients. Therefore, Hannah requests that Nicholas only care about Bailey because she knows that Owen has come to terms with the fact that he won’t get to meet Hannah and Bailey ever again.
Owen Meets Hannah At Her Art Exhibition
Nicholas and Hannah’s conversation is interrupted by Grady Bradford, who has arrived at Nicholas’ doorstep with the U.S. Marshals and S.W.A.T. Nicholas asks if Hannah can arrange a meeting with Bailey. Hannah says that she can, and she promises him that she’ll educate Bailey about her and her family’s past so that she doesn’t grow up hating her grandfather. Nicholas promises Hannah that he won’t allow his clients to come anywhere near Bailey. But he warns her that Ethan will never be able to come back home. If he does, he’ll be killed. If he doesn’t, he can still be killed. Hannah accepts this truth and leaves.
On the way back to Austin, Hannah tells Grady that she and Bailey aren’t going to go into the witness protection program. Instead, they are going to go to Sausalito and continue living their lives. Hannah goes into exposition mode because she can’t leave anything up to our imagination or our observation. The writers have to spell out everything for us because they are under the impression that this miniseries is the most complex thing in existence. Anyway, Hannah reunites with Bailey, and she tells them what Owen told her on the phone, which basically boils down to an apology statement and a reminder that he can’t come back home. Then, for the umpteenth time, Grady, Hannah, and Bailey argue about going into witness protection or trusting Nicholas and going back to California.
At the end of The Last Thing He Told Me, we get a time jump of five years, which proves that Hannah and Bailey have been safely living their lives in Sausalito. Hannah is conducting a woodturning exhibition and waiting for Bailey to arrive. However, before she arrives, Hannah notices that Owen is there, who is completely unrecognizable, by the way. He lightly touches her hand and simply tells her that, even though he is her ex now, he still loves her. Owen disappears before Hannah can recover from the shock of seeing him in the flesh. When Hannah finally turns towards the door, she sees Bailey and smiles. As if it wasn’t clear before, that concluding note basically means that Hannah has come to terms with the notion that she won’t get Owen back in this lifetime. So, instead of worrying about that, she can focus on her passion and support Bailey. Is Owen going to be on the run forever? Yes. Is Nicholas going to cancel his deal because of the pressure from his clients? No. But he’s an old guy, and he can drop dead any day. What’s going to happen to the deal then? Well, hopefully, Charlie is going to make sure that the deal is honored. Does this miniseries have any semblance of relevance? No, absolutely not. Please read better books than The Last Thing He Told Me so that we can watch good shows.
