Warning: Spoilers ahead for the ending of Prime Videoโs โWe Were Liars.โ
In the last three episodes of โWe Were Liars,โ Prime Videoโs new psychological-thriller series, the long-running mystery finally unravels, and Cadence Sinclair Eastman learns the truth about what really happened on Beechwood Island during the summer of her accident.
As her memory returns, so does the unbearable reality: Her three closest friends โ Mirren, Johnny and Gat โ died in a fire that they started together.
โIt was a complete shock,โ actor Shubham Maheshwari, who plays Gat, told TODAY.com. โIn all the directions the story could have gone, it just completely made me a fool.โ
Though the series is adapted from E. Lockhartโs bestselling young-adult book published in 2014, Maheshwari and his co-star Emily Alyn Lind, who plays Cadence, read the novel while auditioning.
โWhile I was reading the book, I didnโt see it coming at all,โ Maheshwari said. โI think, or at least I hope, that the show kind of does that, too.โ
So what actually happened with the fire, and how did Cadence come to remember it? Hereโs how the ending of โWe Were Liarsโ went down.
What Happens At the End of โWe Were Liarsโ? The Twist, Explained
In the final stretch of the series, viewers see Cadence piece together what happened to her two summers ago, when she experienced an accident โ one she couldnโt remember โ on her familyโs private island off the coast of Massachusetts.
In the penultimate episode, the timeline from two summers ago shows Cadence and the Liars around a fire, sifting through her grandfatherโs will and the ways heโll be distributing his wealth when heโs gone. Cadence then ponders a world where the โpetty, materialโ things tearing the Sinclair family apart were just โฆ gone. Cut to present-day Cadence, as the rest of the memory becomes clear to her.
โThere was a fire,โ she tells Mirren and Johnny. โWe burned this place to the ground.โ
The finale shows viewers what happened: Cadence, in a drunken stupor with the rest of the Liars, suggests they gas up every part of the house with fuel from the boathouse, light a match and get out of there. So they do just that โ but the fire moves quicker than the Liars. Mirren and Johnny are trapped, Gat goes in to save them, and only Cadence escapes. Just when she realizes none of them made it out, the houseโs gas line explodes, sending Cadence cascading into the ocean.
And all that time in the present day when Cadence was conversing with Gat and her cousins โ it was in her head. Sheโs no longer simply a privileged teenager on a summer getaway; sheโs a girl haunted by guilt.
Series creators Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie said they leaned into both the mystery and emotional fallout.
โItโs a complicated story,โ Plec told TODAY.com. โCadence has this jarring event, this terrible thing that happened to her. โฆ It makes her unable to understand her truth.โ
And, despite their privilege, the Liarsโ choices are messy and real.
โYou start with characters that the audience is going to want to reject and hate just for existing,โ MacKenzie said. โAnd then you have to give the audience a reason to stick around and to pull back the layers on their pain and their trauma.โ
At the seriesโ end, Cadence chooses to leave her family behind.
โLoyalty means doing one last thing to mourn โ and also pay respect to her friends that are gone,โ Lind told TODAY.com. โItโs the least that (Cadence) can do after everything that they have had to endure.โ
As Cadence walks away from Beechwood Island, sheโs not free of guilt โ but she is reclaiming her voice.
Lind hinted that this isnโt the end of Cadenceโs story: โHer grandfather threatens her and says, โIf you do (leave), I will expose you for everything.โ And she decides to do so anyway.โ
Whatever comes next, โWe Were Liarsโ ends its first season on a chilling, cathartic note โ where truth, memory and loss collide.
