Prime Video’s We Were Liars ended on a puzzling cliffhanger where we saw Carrie, the eldest daughter of Harris and Tipper Sinclair, interacting with her son, Johnny. But, spoiler alert, Johnny is dead, so the lad sitting on the kitchen counter wasn’t Johnny but a figment of Carrie’s imagination. In reality, Johnny died a year ago during the arson at the old Clairmont House on Beechwood Island. However, throughout the show, the first grandkid of the family, Cadence or Cady, kept hallucinating about her three dead mates, Gat, Johnny, and Mirren, after an extremely traumatic and disturbing event that took place during her 16th summer. One could even say that it was Cady’s brain injury or PTSD because of which she was seeing her dead friends, but it doesn’t explain why Carrie started seeing Johnny’s ghost.
It’s Drugs Laced With Pain And Loss
The ending scene obviously leaves room for a second season of Prime Video’s We Were Liars, which will primarily focus on Carrie Sinclair and the delusions of her troubled mind. And for those who have read the prequel book in the series, they are already aware of Carrie’s long-held secrets that had taken a toll on her mental health. However, I don’t think I need to bring up those spoilers from the book to explain the reason behind Carrie’s hallucinations, as the last two episodes of We Were Liars season 1 gave us enough material to understand what really happened to Carrie after she lost her son in the fire. And I guess the simplest way to approach it is to chalk out the similarities between Cady and her aunt, Carrie. Both had lost someone really precious in their lives and hadn’t been able to get closure for their deaths. They both had been taking heavy doses of pain-numbing drugs that toyed with the wiring of their brains. And last but not least, they both had some unfinished business with the dead. In fiction, it’s usually ghosts that return to the land of the living so they can deal with the things that have been troubling them in the afterlife. But because there are no ghosts in real life, it will be safe to assume that in the case of the Sinclairs, it was they who summoned the ghosts from their graves so that they could see to their own unfinished business or finish the conversations they had left midway. And it wasn’t the first time Carrie started seeing the ghost of a dead family member after getting addicted to mind-numbing drugs, so you can see the pattern here. Carrie has always been the troubled Sinclair, and that’s saying something.
Johnny wanted an answer
In We Were Liars episode 7, when Carrie was searching for her mother’s pain medication, the Percocet tablets, that was the last time she had seen her son. The young lad knew that his mother had a relapse shortly after she left Ed and chose her father’s wealth instead. It was Ed who had become Carrie’s support system and helped her recover from the addictive drugs she had been taking since her teenage years, but Carrie’s father never cared about his daughter’s mental or physical health. He only cared about his family’s pride and honor and didn’t want Carrie to make babies with an Indian guy. Johnny knew that his mother had started taking drugs to calm her nerves because breaking up with Ed had indeed caused her a lot of pain, which she didn’t want anyone to notice, especially her father and her children. But Johnny knew. The thing is, Johnny wasn’t accusing his mother of being an addict, like her sisters were. He just wanted her to see the root of the problem and address it instead of running away from it and seeking an escape. Johnny was really expecting an explanation from his mother, but she had to leave for the hospital to see her father, who had hit his head and lost a lot of blood. So, Carrie didn’t try to defend herself or present her side of the story. She just took the pills and left, telling Johnny that they would talk about things tomorrow; unfortunately, that tomorrow never came. Johnny died in the fire, and Carrie never got a chance to finish the conversation.
Carrie Will Eventually Find Closure
It could be further speculated that no one knew about Carrie’s relapse except for Johnny. I mean, her sisters could tell, but they were never really bothered. So I guess it would be safe to assume that Carrie’s codeine addiction went unchecked for a year, and she kept popping those pills until things got out of hand. Even in We Were Liars’ ending, before leaving the island, Carrie went back to Clairmont House to take a pill, as she couldn’t resist leaving without them, and this was the exact moment when she saw Johnny again, dressed in the same clothes she had seen him in on the day of the arson. I am quite certain that Carrie had replayed that last conversation with her son a million times in her head, which meant this wasn’t the first time she’d seen Johnny’s ghost. We never actually found out how the grieving mother had been coping with the loss of her young son, as the narrative had been pretty busy telling Cady’s story.
In the closing shot, Carrie told her son that she thought he’d left, to which Johnny replied that he didn’t think he could. Truth be told, it’s not in Johnny’s hand when he randomly appears or disappears. It’s Carrie’s mind that’s playing games with her, and the only way to exorcise Johnny’s ghost is to conclude the conversation she left unfinished. Carrie always wanted to tell Johnny her side of the story: how she became an addict, when the first time she took drugs was, and the tragic memories that she had been struggling with since childhood. And that’s what she’s going to do in the next season: have an honest and unfiltered conversation with her son, telling him all the dark secrets of the Sinclair family. She believes Johnny’s soul will not rest in peace until she has confronted the horrors of her past and taken responsibility for things she has done. She has to find closure and move on so she can live her new life with her son, Will, and her husband, Ed.
