The ending of Echo Valley dealt with Kate framing Jackie for Greg's death and preventing the drug dealer from extorting her. Kate's daughter, Claire, and her boyfriend, Ryan, were in cahoots with Jackie. While supposedly messing around with Ryan's things, Claire had accidentally dumped $10,000 worth of drugs into the river. Claire came to Kate for help. Kate had that kind of money, thanks to her ex-husband, Richard, but she needed it to fix up the ranch that gave the book its name. So she refused to part with her money to help her daughter with a problem of her own making.
A few days later, Claire showed up with a body in her car: Ryan's body. After Claire confessed to murdering Ryan, Kate disposed of the body in Marsh Creek Lake and told her daughter to stick to a narrative that didn't place her at the crime scene. Kate and Claire believed that chapter of their lives was over, but Jackie continued to threaten him because he still hadn't received his money. Kate had no choice but to pay her.
Director: Michael Pearce
Writer: Brad Ingelsby
Stars: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson
As soon as the transaction was completed, Claire disappeared. So Kate tracked her down and drove from Chester County to Lumber Street, where she got the shock of her life: Ryan was alive. Instead of explaining what had happened, Claire and Ryan fled. To top it all off, Jackie showed up at Kate's door again, demanding piles of money because she knew what she had done with Greg's body.
Jackie sat down with Kate at her house to discuss the truth and the story she'd been told to get her to shell out $10,000 to take care of a body. So, the story about Claire accidentally disposing of Jackie's drugs and owing her money was true; everything else was pure lies. When Kate refused to give Claire the money she needed, she and Ryan began manufacturing and trafficking drugs. One of the batches Ryan had prepared contained an extremely lethal mixture of fentanyl. Therefore, when a boy named Greg consumed it, he overdosed and died. Claire and Ryan rushed to Jackie for help. Once everyone calmed down, they devised the plan to trick Kate. Claire knew that, if the right key was pushed, Kate would be willing to do anything to save her only child from going to jail.
Through Claire, Echo Valley tried to show how difficult it is for queer women to challenge stereotypes. It was a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation. If Kate didn't help Claire, she would be labeled as a lesbian woman who had not only managed to "lose" an "honest" husband like Richard, but had also failed to save his wife, Patty, after a freak horse accident and ignored his daughter when she needed her mother. If Kate helped Claire, the same label would apply to her, except for ignoring her daughter, because in that case, she would be allowing her daughter to do horrible things. Ideally, Claire should have known how society views queer women, how much they longed to see her fail after her divorce and the death of her wife, and would have helped her subvert expectations. Instead, she chose to exploit her! Claire knew that, given Kate's already-felt vulnerability, she wouldn't be able to avoid helping her daughter if she showed up with a bloody corpse. And unfortunately, Claire was right, because Kate moved heaven and earth to get rid of Jackie, only to find herself in a whole new mess.
Because Jackie had seen that Kate was a very resourceful woman, she wanted more than $10,000; she wanted $100,000. Kate didn't have that kind of money, so she flatly refused Jackie's request. With that, Jackie reminded Kate that there was a body in Marsh Creek Lake. If Jackie made an anonymous call to the police, they would thoroughly investigate the back of the vault, link it to Claire, Ryan, and Kate, and send them all to jail, effectively ruining all the hard work she'd put in. Just to be on the safe side, Jackie even ruled out going to the police by drugging Kate. Yes, maybe she also did this to calm her down, since she was pretty wound up after information overload. But I'm guessing she also did it to put Kate at a disadvantage. Now, if Kate decided to go to the police and tell that convoluted story about being extorted by a drug dealer, the police would ask her things like how she came into contact with a drug dealer, and might even ask her to take a blood test.
The Echo Valley finale revealed that after Kate confirmed she was ready to burn down the barn and two of her horses with a flare, she called Les, her closest confidant, who knew everything about Greg's body. In the middle of the night, while Jackie slept, the two went to Marsh Creek Lake, extracted Greg's body (which Kate had previously located while swimming), brought it back to the ranch, and froze it. Kate ordered the hay that would be used to spread the fire.
Secretly, she called Emma, one of her clients, to the ranch to pick up the saddles, knowing full well that Jackie would decide to confront her instead of letting Kate do it, because she didn't want to risk allowing her to seek help. Thus, Emma became an eyewitness to the arrival of a new "stableboy" at the ranch. The same theory applied to the purchase of the flare used to burn down the barn. Kate knew Jackie wouldn't allow her to go to a store to buy the flare if she tried to call for help. As he was, his face was caught on the security camera purchasing the flare that would be used to destroy Kate's property. Jackie's final mistake was not standing idly by until the entire barn was in flames. He only saw the first moments of the process and took action because he was sure Kate would carry out the plan he had laid out for her.
As soon as Jackie disappeared from view, Les reappeared, placed Greg's body in the room where Jackie was staying, evacuated the horses, and Kate threw the wire rack that comes with flares into the burning barn for authorities to find later. So, the next day, when the fire marshal came to assess the situation, he told Detective Ballard that the incident was no accident; it had been intentionally committed with a flare. Kate, of course, scoffed at the suggestion that she had set fire to her own barn to get the insurance money.
That said, when Greg's charred remains were found in the ashes, Jackie's name came up, as he was the one who had recently been living in that barn and the one who had purchased the flare. When Jackie was questioned, he claimed to have never been to the ranch. However, the money Kate had secretly sent to Jackie's account as her "salary" as a stablehand and the fact that Emma had seen Jackie at the ranch contradicted his claim. Since all the evidence pointed to Jackie being the one who killed Greg, placed his body in the barn, lit the flare (forgetting to remove the wire stand to make it look like an accident), and fled, he was arrested. Meanwhile, Kate regained her freedom.
Michael Pearce used the Kuleshov effect to give meaning to the crack in Kate's bedroom ceiling. We never knew for sure what caused that crack. Perhaps it was due to lack of maintenance, as Kate didn't have the money to regularly care for her property. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps Kate had thrown something onto the roof. The point is, it didn't matter what caused it; the important thing is to understand what it represented. We first saw it in the very first scene, where Kate wore a sad expression as she looked at it, having woken up from a dream in which she was cuddled up with Patty.
During the third act, Kate wore a determined, slightly anxious expression as she stared at the crack while Les flashed his headlights just outside her window to signal it was time to pull Greg's body from Marsh Creek Lake. And by the end, Kate was almost smiling at the crack, having successfully punished Jackie for her sins. So, I think it wouldn't be a stretch to say that the crack in the ceiling reflected Kate's need to fix everything broken in her life. She thought the pain she felt after Patty's death would go away with time, but it didn't.
She thought Claire would get better with time, but she didn't. She thought Jackie would simply disappear after receiving that $10,000, but she didn't. While the problem with Jackie was solvable, he understood that the pain caused by Patty's death and Claire's betrayal wouldn't go away. Even the psychological scars of Jackie's horrific actions were indelible. Therefore, he accepted it and decided to move on. And that's a lesson we should all practice in our lives instead of looking for easy, temporary solutions that will only exacerbate the problem instead of solving it.
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