Warning: Spoilers ahead for Netflix’s Obsession. Have someone blindfold you until you’ve watched the full series!
As everyone with a Netflix subscription knows by now, the streamer does a great job of both making sure that viewers have a wealth of content to watch among many different categories and genres, and seeing to it that barely a day goes by without something new for us to feast our eyes on. It’s now been less than a week since the steamy thriller, Obsession, hit the service as part of the 2023 TV premieres, and made an impact by landing in the Top 10.
If you’ve watched the four-episode limited series (which is based on the 1991 novel, Damages, and stars The Hobbit’s Richard Armitage, Charlie Murphy of Happy Valley, Game of Thrones cast member Indira Varma, and Ms. Marvel cast member Rish Shah), then you know there’s lots to dissect when it comes to what happened and where the show left our main characters. So, let’s get into exactly that, and see where everyone (who was left alive) ended up.
How Obsession Ended
The show doesn’t give us a specific timeline, but seeing as how Anna (Murphy) and Jay (Shah) are very close to their wedding date, it’s likely been at least a few months since she’s been having an affair with his father, William (Armitage). The finale begins where Episode 3 ended: with Jay covertly following his dad after the older man left his son’s bachelor party.
He, of course, leads Jay right to a building very familiar to Jay, because he knows that Anna’s best friend, Peggy (Pippa Bennett-Warner), lives there. He’s originally locked out (Anna had, not long ago, given the building key to William, but Jay had no idea that Anna stays there when Peggy’s out of town), but after making a quick call to his mom, Ingrid (Varma), another resident leaves, which allows Jay to enter and head up to Peggy’s apartment.
When Jay gets up many long flights of stairs, he can hear that someone is having sex from outside. The door is locked, but he forces it open, and the sight of his father and his fiancée having sex is what greets him. This causes him to back out of the door as William tries to stop him and, I suppose, explain/apologize, but before he can really say much Jay has backed up to the railing over the stairs, his hand slips when he tries to stop and he falls to his death on the steps below.
William immediately runs down, naked, to see about Jay and is cradling his son’s dead body as Anna, who calmly dressed and left the apartment, gives the two a passing glance as she leaves the building.
William's 'Unfathomable' Behavior
As tragic as this already is, it gets worse for William, as (after spending all night with the police) he has to face Ingrid and their daughter, Sally (Sonera Angel) back home. When he arrives the young woman is trying to comfort her mother, who’s on the floor near a cabinet crying and bashing her face into the furniture. Sally yells at him until Ingrid tells her to leave them, while William quickly apologizes, she says he’s not sorry and asks, “What did you think it was? Some kind of love?” At the funeral, Ingrid makes it clear that she will never see him again, partially because it’s clear that he’s really only hoping to see Anna there.
When Anna doesn’t show, he tracks down Peggy, who lets him know that she took her honeymoon trip, and he eventually finds her. Anna has been trying to lose herself in sex with strangers (which doesn’t go well), and she soon sees that William has found her and agrees to let him take care of her after an attempted assault.
It’s later, over coffee, that Anna tells a smiling William (who’s clearly hopeful for a future with her) that she doesn’t think “we can ever separate who we are from what we’ve done.” He replies that they also shouldn’t let the affair and damage it caused be “for nothing,” and after she pointedly notes that Jay died because of them he says, “Still, I wouldn’t change it.” That leads Anna to tell him not to try and find her again as she gets up and leaves.
While Anna is clearly surprised at William's words, she doesn’t seem to judge his desire to continue their relationship too harshly, probably because she understands how strong their attraction had been. But, when speaking about the show to BT, Armitage admitted that many wouldn’t be as gentle as Anna after what he admitted, because:
I mean that's kind of unfathomable based on what he knows and what's happened.
Unfortunately, his “unfathomable” behavior continues, because the last time we see William, he’s bought Peggy’s recently vacated apartment (in the building where Jay died horribly), and is sitting there alone reading Anna’s diary, which she’d hidden in the fireplace and left behind.
Anna's 'Growth'
During Anna’s last conversation with William, it’s obvious that she feels profoundly guilty for what happened (telling him, “We caused so much pain,” after he admits he doesn’t regret the affair) and would like to stop the pattern of her own behavior that began with her being molested by her brother when she was a child. After Anna leaves William, she abandons the honeymoon altogether and heads home. The final moments of the finale see her talking to a therapist, which Murphy told BT:
There's a real growth for her. It only takes a death to get there, but it must have been monumental.
It’s the first time she’s done this, and explains to him that she doesn’t “know the rules,” to which her therapist asks if having “rules” would help her. Instead of simply being grateful for his assistance, though, Anna seems to think about the rules in her dom/sub relationship with William, and possibly notices that her new therapist happens to look a bit like an older version of Jay, who also looked like the late brother who molested her.
What Really 'Destroyed' Ingrid
Despite Ingrid’s initial reaction, William was able to calm her down enough to stop literally beating herself up, and get her into bed. As he was sitting by her bedside, she told him that he should have just killed himself when he realized he “was lost to” Anna. She also yelled at him right after the funeral, making her position on what he did and how he destroyed their family very clear. When talking to Newsweek, Varma said of Ingrid’s thought process after her son’s death:
I think losing William [to] another woman she could live with whether or not they would have patched it up. I think their maturity would have allowed for reconciliation or mending; healing. But the fact that he has destroyed her son, and essentially the life he had to come, is what I think destroys her.
We don’t see Ingrid again after the funeral, but it’s clear that she’ll have a lot of healing to do before she can fully move on.
Obsession didn’t hold back when it came to twisty relationships, sexually explicit fare, and giving fans a shocking ending that they’ll probably be thinking about for days to come.
