‘Wolf Like Me’ Season 1: Ending, Explained – Does Emma Accept Mary As Her New Mother?

Published

Fate wants us to meet a person and love them, but we don’t want to reveal our true selves or get vulnerable. We all have fears, misconceptions, and doubts that the person concerned will not accept us once they know our real identity. But the universe gives us all an equal opportunity to love and be loved. In the Australian series, ‘Wolf Like Me,’ fate schemes a chance encounter between a widowed father and an unusually mysterious woman. But now, it’s up to them whether they will accept the signs of fate, explore the possibility of love, or move on toward their separate paths and never see each other again.

Created by Abe Forsythe, “Wolf Like Me” Season 1 consists of 6 episodes of approximately 22 minutes each. The series tickles one’s funny bone through some incredibly situational comedy scenes. Isla Fisher and Josh Gad give stellar performances, and their adorable chemistry on-screen brings forth innocent humor that is slowly fading from modern sitcoms. However, the supernatural element in the series adds fun to the narrative and has been skillfully explored by the captain of the ship, Abe Forsythe. Without any further ado, let’s explore further.


‘Wolf Like Me’ Plot Summary

Gary Fletcher (Josh Gad) is a 40-year-old widowed father who lives with his 11-year-old daughter, Emma (Ariel Donoghue), in Adelaide, Australia. Emma was only four years old when her mother, Lisa, died of cancer. Her mother’s death has left a void in Emma’s life, which Gary rigorously tries to fill, but fails miserably. Gary meets new girls through an online dating app, but he has convinced himself that none of these women will be suitable for Emma. He tries to play the role of both mother and father in Emma’s life and, in turn, sacrifices his own existence, which Emma very well understands. She blames herself for her father’s loneliness, which feeds her trauma and anxiety. While Gary and Emma are stuck in this chain of thoughts, suddenly, a woman enters their lives and turns their lives upside down.

The series begins as Gary rides Emma to her school, where she has to present her science model of Earth’s solar system, but due to heavy traffic, Emma forces her father to take another route. As Gary breaks his usual pattern, his car meets with a fatal accident. A woman named Mary (Isla Fisher) breaks the red light and rams her car into Gary’s vehicle. However, when Gary runs towards the passenger seat to check on Emma, he finds Mary talking to Emma. After a long time, Gary looks at his daughter, laughing and smiling, and gets curious about what this strange woman has told Emma or said to her.

Sometimes later, Mary visits Gary’s house and brings Carl Sagan’s contact to Emma to apologize for the accident. Mary gets to know the family a bit, but when Gary starts asking questions about Mary’s life and past, she creates a diversion and tries to run away. Gary follows her and convinces Mary to have a lunch date with him. But even on the date, Mary runs away from the underground bar before the night sky can take over. She locks herself in her fortified house, and the mystery surrounding her identity gets thicker as Episode One ends. The series further explores how fate constantly orchestrates a chance encounter between Mary and Gary, but Mary’s secret identity holds her back from sparking a new relationship with Gary. She doesn’t want to harm him or his daughter. What is the secret that Mary is hiding behind those four walls?


Major Spoilers Ahead

What Was Mary Hiding?

As the universe conspired, Gary met Mary again while he was on a date with another woman. Mary and Gary sat on a beach outside a park and shared their traumatic pasts and the baggage they had been carrying for a long time. Mary told Gary that her husband, David, died while they were vacationing in Europe, and thus she came to Adelaide to forget her past. However, being true to her nature, even at this time, Mary ran away from Gary as the evening approached. But this time, she accidentally took Gary’s car keys, which made Gary follow her to her house.

At the house, Gary found out that Mary was a werewolf who turned into a wolf on every full moon night.

The following morning, Gary confronted Mary, who finally revealed the truth about her secret identity. Mary was bitten by a wolf (which she thought was a dog) while she was vacationing in Prague with her husband. On the last night of their vacation, which was probably the full moon night, she turned into a wolf and ate David. She didn’t remember much about this incident as she woke up in the woods in complete shock. However, Mary finally found out about her secret identity when she ate with an Italian family in a Holiday Inn car park in Rome.

To protect her loved ones, Mary left Chicago and came to Adelaide, where no one knew her. She constructed a fortified house and locked herself in the cellar room on every full moon night, feeding only on disabled chickens to satisfy the hunger of the beast hidden inside her body. However, the inevitable meeting with Gary complicated her life and unraveled her secret, laying a conflict in front of her.


Did Emma Accept Mary?

From the beginning of the series, it was established that Gary hadn’t dated any women until now because he believed none of these women were suitable for Emma. Protecting Emma became Gary’s sole purpose in life, but inevitably, he fell in love with a woman whose secret identity could not only harm, but butcher him and his daughter. Thus, Gary stopped seeing Mary for Emma’s protection, but fate had something else in store for them.

Mary had told Gary that their chance encounters were not mere coincidence but a sign from the universe that wanted to bring these two lovers together. When Mary first struck Gary’s car, she was listening to David’s favorite song because it was David’s death anniversary. Coincidentally, it was Lisa’s death anniversary too, and that was the first sign that made Mary believe that they were meant to be together. Yet, Gary refused to entertain the thought. Later, he struck his car into Mary’s car while leaving an Italian restaurant with Emma. In his denial to prove Mary wrong, Gary accelerated his car and crashed into the cafe, while Emma saw Mary there and approached her. Emma struck up a conversation with Mary and invited her for dinner at their house.

Emma wanted Mary to be close to her, but Gary knew her secret identity and wanted Mary to stay away from their lives. However, a moving gesture from Mary made Gary believe that only Mary could bring happiness into Emma’s life and save her from the prolonged trauma and despair that had even made her child suicidal. Finally, Gary accepted Mary and began a relationship with her, in which she even got pregnant.

Gary and Mary planned a trip to reveal to Emma that Mary was a werewolf, but Mary got scared at the camping site. She feared that her perfect world would be ruined forever if Emma refused to accept Mary’s secret identity. However, fate intervened again. The family had decided to leave the camping site the next day, but Gary’s car battery died unnaturally. The family had to spend another night in the deserted land, which unfortunately was a full moon night. Mary ran away from there for Gary and Emma’s safety, as her werewolf transformation would have killed them.

Later that night, Gary locked himself in the car with Emma when two passing predators found their car and forced Gary to unlock the car doors. Gary and Emma’s lives were saved when the werewolf Mary came to the rescue and ate up these two wicked men. Finally, to ease Emma’s panic attack, Gary sang a song for her, which he had stopped because he thought Emma had grown up and didn’t want her father to sing for her. Gary also revealed Mary’s identity to Emma, which she accepted without a fuss. In the morning, Mary came back to the car, and on their way back to Adelaide, Emma looked at Mary and smiled, suggesting her acceptance towards her.


‘Wolf Like Me’ Season 1: Ending Explained

Through its narrative, “Wolf Like Me” explored the theme that suggested that one doesn’t necessarily need to be a wolf to become a beast. This underlying message was explicitly made clear in a scene when a heartbroken Mary visited a patient, Gwen, in an old age home. Gwen explained to Mary that we all have wolves in us, but we do get a choice to make sure that we feed the right one. The message was thematically depicted in the last scene when two predators attacked Gary and Emma in the wilderness. They didn’t look like wolves or any other wild creature. Yet, their actions were more savage than a monster. Emma did understand that people always hide their true animal behind a human mask, and for her new mother, it sometimes gets out of hand, mainly during the full moon night.

However, there is still one question that worries us: what if there weren’t those two men on the deserted land that night? Hence, would a hungry Mary the werewolf attack her own family, i.e., Gary and Emma? The question is important because, by the end of the series, Mary was pregnant with Gary’s child, which she later decided to keep. But she feared that she might end up eating her own human child during her pregnancy, and if it was a werewolf, she feared bringing one more werewolf into the human world. These two questions weren’t dealt with by the end of the series, and probably a second season of “Wolf Like Me” will be able to clear the air around the mystery.

Nevertheless, if this ends here, then it means Emma was mature enough to understand that there is always more to a person than what meets the eye. If you love someone on their sunny days, then you implicitly make a vow to accept them on their dark days too. The smile on Emma and Gary’s faces, and a subtle teardrop from Gary’s face, said it all. Thus began a new chapter in the life of the Fletcher family that suggests that from that point on, they will face all the obstacles together.


‘Wolf Like Me’ is  a 2022 Comedy Thriller Television Series created by Abe Forsythe.

- Advertisement -
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Shikhar Agrawal
Shikhar Agrawal
I am an Onstage Dramatist and a Screenwriter. I have been working in the Indian Film Industry for the past 12 years, writing dialogues for various films and television shows.

Must Read

DMT Guide

More Like This