Directed by Robyn Grace and Douglas Mackinnon, The Ridge is yet another riveting series from the production house (BBC network) that has been the most-consistent this year and has given some quality content to binge on. Mia, a Scottish doctor, who was supposed to attend her younger sister’s wedding in New Zealand, got a voice message that set the tone of the series and made her realise that Cassy was in deep trouble. So let’s find out what happened to Cassy and if Mia was able to find out what happened to her and who was behind it.
Spoiler Alert
What happened to Cassy Beaton?
After Cassy had moved to New Zealand, she had fallen in love with a man named Ewan. Cassy was a marine biologist, and she wanted to work for the environment and do whatever she could to reverse the damage caused by humans and their exploitative activities. That’s how Cassy started working with Natalie, Teddy and Ewan, and together they tried to rewild the entire region and bring it back to its natural uncultivated state. This was one of the reasons why the farmers’ unions were against Cassy and the others, because they didn’t want to lose their land or stop growing crops. The worst part was that even Teddy’s mother was against the entire rewilding movement, because she was a farm owner, a rather fierce one, I would say, and she was not ready to give up her land or let Natalie impose her conservation practices so easily. Cassy had decided to get married to Ewan, and she let Mia, her sister, know. Mia decided to fly to the South Island, New Zealand and apart from the wedding, she wanted to make that trip because for the last three years she hadn’t met her sister. It seemed as if they lost touch and got busy in their respective lives. Now, Mia had the opportunity to mend that bond, but just when she boarded the plane, she received a voice message from Cassy. Mia heard the voice message, and she got paranoid as Cassy was desperately asking for help, and it felt as if her life was in danger. Mia didn’t know what to do, and the moment she reached her sister’s place, she realized that Cassy had met with a fateful accident. She had apparently fallen off a cliff and lost her life while trekking. Mia didn’t believe that her sister, who knew the entire terrain so well, could end up dead like that by falling. Mia suspected foul play, and she decided that if the local authorities weren’t going to help her out, she would take the investigation into her own hands.
How did Harry and Teddy become the first suspects?
Harry was the local undertaker (basically a mortician, who, from dressing up the corpse, oversees the funeral rites and makes sure everything is carried out properly), and he was married to Libby, who worked in the police force and was in charge of the Cassy murder case. Libby was Ewan’s half-sister, and so she was basically family too, though Ewan’s mother, Annot, never accepted her. Teddy, the son of local farmer Lousie, also shared a close bond with Cassy. Just days before Cassy’s accident, Cassy had an argument with Teddy, and some local kids witnessed it and then told Mia about it. In fact, those notorious youngsters (Josh and Eva) had a video of Cassy and Teddy skinny dipping, and they used it to blackmail both of them. They gave that video to Mia in exchange for some Duranyl patches that the latter used on a regular basis. Mia realized that because it was such a tight-knit community, it was impossible to believe that the investigation would be carried out fairly. Though Mia suspected Teddy and Harry, because of their secretive demeanor, she found out that they didn’t have anything to do with the murder. Teddy had an argument with Cassy regarding their rewilding movement, and though he did go skinny dipping with her, he had no feelings for her because he was gay. Teddy loved Harry, a fact that people knew, but still chose to overlook and kept it a secret from the visitors. For the longest time, Harry found it extremely difficult to confront his wife and tell her about his affair. Harry loved Libby, and he had utmost respect for her, but he just couldn’t part ways with Teddy either. At the end, Harry did reveal the truth to his wife. Libby was shocked, but at the same time, she was relieved that he told her the truth. Teddy’s mother, a dominating personality who believed in the traditional ways and means, also accepted their relationship. It was hard for her to understand, but she loved her kid and she wanted him to be happy at any cost.
Was Mia killing her patients intentionally?
Just before Mia left for New Zealand, her hospital got an emergency case where a man named Mr. Coulter had been stabbed by one of his cellmates in the prison. The man was a known criminal, and he was in prison for the longest time. Coulter woke up in the middle of the surgery, though Mia had given him a proper dose of anesthesia. The patient ultimately died, and the family decided to file a case of medical negligence against the hospital. Riz, the surgeon in charge, was pretty sure that Mia had followed the proper procedure, but then he made certain discoveries that changed his opinion. Mia, in the past, had been involved in multiple surgeries where the patient had died. Apparently, all of them had a criminal record, and Riz felt that Mia did it intentionally. Then, during his investigation, he found out that Mia had stolen a few packets of Duranyl from the hospital’s stash, and he felt compelled to report about her to the authorities. By that point, the criminal’s family had decided to withdraw the medical negligence case since they realized that it was a waste of time and money going against such a big hospital. After the case was dismissed, Riz gave a call to Mia and told her that he was going to report her to the authorities. Mia didn’t understand why he would do that and make her lose her job. From Mia’s perspective, she had served justice to the families of those who had been affected by the actions of these despicable patients. Riz seemed rather amused by the fact that Mia had been able to carry out these operations without anybody knowing about it for so long. Now, most of the cases where these patients had died were emergency cases, and so Mia didn’t really have time to prepare and come up with a plan of action. She improvised in the operating theatre itself and almost always made it look like the team tried everything to save the patient. Also, her colleagues didn’t come to know about it, which was again quite surprising. Riz went to the authorities to reveal what he had found out. The hospital management had been able to convince the patient’s family to withdraw the case. They didn’t want to do anything to ruin their reputation, and so they made it pretty clear (even though they might not have said it explicitly) that they were not going to initiate a formal investigation against Mia. Also, I don’t think that they believed that Mia could improvise to that extent, and they felt that Riz was just being a little far-fetched in his assumptions and approach.
What happened to Mia and Cassy’s mother?
Mia kept getting flashes of her childhood, and it was pretty evident that it was not a happy one. When somebody asked Mia what happened to her mother, she said that she died in an accident. But that was not the truth. Mia and Cassy’s mother was a troubled woman, who I believe was dealing with alcoholism and other mental health issues. Maybe she didn’t have a very happy marriage, or there were other things that had a grave impact on her life. But whatever it was, she tortured her kids. While Cassy obediently did what her mother asked her to, her elder sister, Mia, was a rebel. She was protective towards her sister, and she had realized that she couldn’t depend on her mother. One day, their mother made them sit in the back of the car, closed the garage door, started the engine, and let the fumes from the exhaust fill the space. As a result, the girls and their mother started suffocating. That was when Mia took out her knife and stabbed her mother. She took Cassy out of the garage, and they managed to escape just in time. Their mother died due to asphyxiation, and I believe nobody came to know that Mia had stabbed her. So yes, in a way, Mia had killed her mother because, if she hadn’t, her mother would have killed them along with herself. Yeah, she didn’t need to stab her, but that was the kind of anger she had within her because of the way their mother treated them.
Who Killed Cassy? And Why?
Mia got rather close to Ewan, and she ended up getting intimate with him one night. Ewan took her Duranyl patches, and he told her that he had disposed of them. He said that he wanted her to get rid of her addiction, but the truth was far from what he was telling her. In fact, Ewan wanted Mia to stop snooping around. He wanted her to stop looking into Cassy’s murder, and he didn’t want to be put behind bars. Around 15 years before Cassy’s fateful death, a girl named Hera Olsen had died in a similar fashion by falling off the cliff. That girl was also involved with Ewan, and in fact, she was carrying his baby. Hera had a misscarriage and after that she died in mysterious circumstances. Ewan’s mother, who I believe was suffering from memory loss and other mental health disorders, kept remembering what her son had done in bits and pieces. Whenever she remembered something, she spoke it out aloud. She knew her son had something to do with Hera’s murder, and in fact, she had also seen him near Mia’s AIRBNB the night her cottage was set on fire. Ewan realized that he needed to do something before his mother spilled his secrets. The man had a wolf in captivity that he and Cassy had rescued from smugglers back in the day. He fed his mother to the wolf and then dumped her body in the woods. By that time, Mia had figured out that Ewan was the last person who had seen her and even Cassy and he were present at the ridge when they both had died. In fact, Ewan’s half sister, Libby, also knew the truth, but she was just not ready to accept the reality and expose Ewan. She was too scared of the truth, and probably she didn’t want to go against her only surviving family member. Mia found Annot’s scarf in the wolf’s den, and she realized what must have happened. By then, even Ewan had realized what Mia was up to, as he had seen her going inside the wolves’ den on his CCTV camera.
Ewan took Mia to the same cliff under the pretense of spending some time at the place where Cassy had taken her last breaths. But in reality, they both were playing one another. Ewan wanted to kill Mia, and she, too, had made plans to take revenge on him. Mia had found her Duranyl packets in Ewan’s cupboard, and she had spiked his drink with them. She too consumed it, but her body was so accustomed to the dosage that nothing happened to her. Ewan lost consciousness, and Mia took the opportunity to push him off the cliff and kill him. Libby arrived at the scene, and she saw Mia in the act. She tried to stop her at first, but then she realized that it was for the best, and her half-brother deserved such an ending. I believe Mia will eventually tell Brenda Olsen, mother of Hera Olsen, that she was right all that whole to think that her daughter’s death was not an accident. In The Ridge’s ending, Libby decided to make a fresh start and not make her husband do anything that he didn’t want. Harry and Teddy didn’t want to hide their relationship any longer, even if it meant people talking behind their backs and making fun of them. As for Mia, I believe that she would spend some downtime in New Zealand and give herself a breather, a chance to soak in everything and peace with whatever had happened.
