Diksha Sundriyal
Apple TV+’s comedy-drama ‘High Desert’ stars Patricia Arquette as a private investigator who finds herself falling in too deep in case. To Peggy Newman, looking into the disappearance of Guru Bob’s wife was a way to get money to solve her problems while establishing the reputation of the private detective agency she recently started working in. However, she seems to have landed into a mess beyond what she initially thought she knew about the case. In this episode, titled ‘This Doesn’t Have to be a Tragedy,’ the situation gets more grim as she has to fight for her life while wondering if all this trouble was worth it. Here’s what the ending spells for Peggy and this season’s finale. SPOILERS AHEAD
High Desert Episode 7 Recap
The episode opens with Peggy calling Denny and apologizing for being too hard on him. She wants to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he really is trying to change rather than go back to his criminal ways. Denny is glad to hear it, but he cannot continue the conversation because he is in the middle of robbing a store. While the DNA test results on the finger are still pending, Peggy and Carol find another way to figure out who the finger belonged to. Carol’s stepdaughter uses her drone to scour the area where the finger was found and discovers a dead body. Convinced that Bob killed Donna and buried her dead body in the desert, Peggy has enough to claim the reward.
When she goes to Nick Gatchi with the information, she discovers that he is having her tailed. Even though her secret is out and Gatchi confronts her about stealing the painting in the toilet, Peggy shows him the fingernail and demands the reward in return for telling them where Donna is. Gatchi, who is already suspicious of her, doesn’t trust her and demands to see the dead body before giving her anything. Still, when she demands some money upfront, he gives her a cheque and Donna’s parrot.
Peggy drops off the parrot at Carol’s and takes the cheque to her siblings to show them she can afford to stay in their mom’s house even now. She wants them to see how hard she has worked to turn her life around, so she invites them to the detective agency. But it turns out to be the wrong day to have done so because Bruce is heartbroken. He fires several shots from his window at the cars.
Peggy discovers that the woman he wanted her to tail in the last case was his wife. The confirmation of her affair with a woman has devastated him, which is why he is acting so irrationally. Peggy demands he calms down because her siblings are there, and she doesn’t want them to think she has returned to her old ways. However, it’s too late. Scared of the firing, Peggy’s siblings run away. But that’s not the worst thing to happen to her that day.
High Desert Episode 7 Ending
The last time Peggy got in trouble was when she showed up at Bob’s house and was threatened by the father-daughter duo to whom Bob owes money. She assured them she would get them their money in about two or three days. Two days have passed, and Arman and Heather show up at Peggy’s house. They are convinced that Peggy is fooling them because there is still no sign of the money. She could have found a way around it and banked on that third day, but it turns out that Bob has skipped town.
Arman cannot wait for Peggy to run away too, so he and his daughter show up at her house. If she cannot pay them instantly, they will ransack her house and get whatever they want. When Peggy tells them to steer clear of her mother’s room, Heather becomes interested in finding out what’s there. Peggy attacks Heather, but Arman ends the fight by pointing a gun at her. With no other option in sight, Peggy leads them to Denny’s trailer.
Peggy hoped that Denny would protect her and drive away Arman and Heather. However, she finds him counting bills with his mates and immediately realizes he robbed someone. Luckily, the money distracts the father-daughter duo. It is half of what they were promised, and they claim Denny’s trailer for the other half. An argument ensues between Peggy and Denny, where each blames the other for getting them into a dangerous bind.
While Peggy patches up herself in the house, she gets a call from her estranged son, Ethan. He tells her his father was arrested after being stopped at customs. When Peggy asks him to come to her, he refuses and reveals that he only called because his father asked him to. Previously, it was established that Denny isn’t Ethan’s father. This conversation confirms that Ethan’s father is James Kachel, the man whose name Peggy had been using as the buyer of Bob’s painting.
Given Peggy’s sketchy past and her conversation with Kachel in the last episode, it is clear that he deals in forgeries and might as well as bought Bob’s painting. This also explains why Peggy is so well-versed in art; she has dealt in forgeries before with Kachel. No matter her relationship with him now, Peggy’s heart is broken after Ethan refuses to come to her. She misses her son, whom she hasn’t seen in a very long time, and she wants to talk about him with her mother.
A distressed Peggy takes a hallucinogen to calm her nerves and sees her dead mother. They talk about what’s going on in Peggy’s life and what she’s done. She asks for her mother’s forgiveness, who seems very understanding of Peggy’s situation and actions. Their conversation is cut short when the Gatchis show up at her house. They want to know where Peggy found Donna and tell her it’s time to go.
Finding Donna was supposed to have brought Peggy 70k. However, the Gatchis showing up at her house in the middle of the night and their sketchy behavior when Peggy told them she’d found Donna means that it might not be such good news for Peggy. Forget about 70k; Peggy might land in more trouble with the brothers because she doesn’t yet know who killed Donna. She assumed it was Bob, but no evidence supports that theory. What if the Gatchi brothers killed Donna? If they think Peggy is the only one who knows where Donna is, they might want to get rid of her too. Peggy might have escaped the father-daughter duo, but how will she escape the Gatchis?
Read More: Is High Desert’s Peggy Newman Based on a Real Investigator?
