Warning: main spoilers forward. So, you simply completed We Were Liars on Prime Video, and also you’re unsure whether or not you want extra tissues, a therapist or a rewatch. Completely legitimate. The eight-episode adaptation of E. Lockhart’s best-selling YA novel dropped simply in time for summer time, and it’s already grow to be a must-watch.

However it’s that ending—the one-two punch of emotional devastation and a brand-new twist (that was’t within the unique e book!)—that’s left followers reeling. Let’s break all of it down.

Cadence’s Fact Comes Crashing Again

Cadence Sinclair Eastman (performed by Emily Alyn Lind) spends most of Summer season 17 making an attempt to piece collectively what precisely occurred the earlier yr, when a mysterious accident left her with migraines, reminiscence loss and a obscure sense that one thing went very unsuitable.

By way of fragmented recollections, surreal conversations and time together with her three closest companions—Johnny, Mirren, and Gat (aka “The Liars”)—Cadence slowly uncovers the reality. The group had set Harris Sinclair’s mansion, Clairmont, on fireplace as a symbolic protest towards their poisonous, money-obsessed household dynamics. They thought it will shake up the grown-ups’ inheritance drama and cleanse the Sinclair legacy. What really occurred? A tragedy.

Cadence made it out alive. Johnny, Mirren, and Gat didn’t.

Because it seems, Cadence has been hallucinating—or presumably communing with—their ghosts all summer time. The Liars died within the fireplace: Johnny and Mirren had been trapped upstairs, and Gat died making an attempt to avoid wasting Cadence after she delayed escaping to retrieve her grandmother’s black pearl necklace. The similar necklace that had lengthy symbolized the Sinclair girls’s twisted obsession with legacy and appearances.

So sure, Cadence’s reminiscence loss was defending her from the insufferable actuality: she was the one one who survived.

The Closing Selection—and the New Twist

As soon as Cadence absolutely remembers, her grandfather Harris confronts her. He is aware of the reality concerning the fireplace however desires to publicly blame defective wiring and title her his inheritor—on the situation that she retains her mouth shut. She declines. In a symbolic second, she tosses the black pearls into the ocean and tells a TIME reporter she’s “simply actually not into fairytales anymore.”

However then the present provides one final intestine punch that’s not within the unique e book.

We leap to Carrie (Mamie Gummer), Cadence’s aunt and Johnny’s mother, who’s alone at her home on the island, Purple Gate. She pops a capsule after which—shock—sees Johnny’s ghost. “I believed you left,” she says. “I don’t suppose I can,” he solutions.

It’s a haunting second that not solely deepens the present’s emotional stakes but additionally teases what could be coming subsequent.

What It Units Up for Season 2

This ultimate scene is definitely a significant clue: it mirrors the start of Household of Liars, Lockhart’s 2022 prequel novel. That e book takes us again to Beechwood within the Eighties and facilities on a 17-year-old Carrie as she offers with love, loss, and the unique cracks within the Sinclair household basis. And now that Carrie can see ghosts, too? The door to the previous is vast open.

As Lockhart instructed TVLine, “That ultimate scene with Carrie and Johnny may be very near the opening of my second e book within the We Were Liars universe… it’s a tip ahead into Season 2.”

Showrunner Julie Plec confirmed that the collection has already woven in components from Household of Liars, saying, “We’ve achieved all of the foundational work with the grownup characters,” which units up the following chapter completely—if it will get picked up.

Love J-14? Make sure you (*1*) for enjoyable, unique movies together with your favourite stars.