Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Missing You’ follows the story of a police officer named Kat Donovan, whose world turns upside down when her ex unexpectedly comes back into her life. Josh unceremoniously left Kat about eleven years ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Then, one day, Kat finds him on a dating app, Melody Cupid, which makes her question the circumstances of his departure. Around the same time, Kat discovers that the man who killed her father is on his deathbed. When she talks to him in the hopes of getting some answers, she discovers that she has dug up the things that were kept hidden for a reason. Meanwhile, strange disappearances happen around the city, leading Kat and her fellow detectives to discover some shocking things. SPOILERS AHEAD
Who is Parker? Was Kat’s Father Gay?
The investigation into her father’s murder leads Kat to the discovery that he had been keeping some terrible secrets. Not only had he been on the payroll of the criminal kingpin Callahan, but he had also been cheating on her mother with someone named Parker. To get the full picture, Kat has Parker tracked down, but when she meets the person, she is shocked to discover that it is a man and not a woman. It turns out that her father’s dark secret was that he was closeted gay, and it was to protect this secret that he did all the bad things that he did in his lifetime. Parker tells Kat that he and Clint had been together for fourteen years, and they were deeply in love right until the end. While Parker knew that Clint was married and had a daughter, he also loved Clint too much to let go of him.
Clint tried to keep his sexuality a secret because he knew it would ruin his career as well as his family. When Callahan found out about it, he used it as leverage, forcing Clint to do the dirty work for him. This threw Clint into another turmoil, and after years of working for the bad guy, he eventually decided that he had done enough. When he refused to continue to be on Callahan’s payroll, he also knew that the criminal would retaliate by exposing all his secrets. Preemptively, Clint decided to break up with Parker, telling him that things needed to end between them because he couldn’t deal with all the lies anymore. Still, he loved Parker, and even after they’d broken up, he came back. This confused Parker, but before the issue could be resolved, Clint left midway through their conversation and died the same night.
Who Killed Clint Donovan?
A major conflict for Kat in ‘Missing You’ is to find the truth behind her father’s death. According to the cops, he was shot to death by Monte Leburne, who confessed to the crime while he was already in prison for two other murders. But on his deathbed, Monte reveals that he was paid not to kill Clint but to take the fall for his murder. Kat’s first guess is that the underworld mob boss Callahan had her father killed, but when the criminal refuses any ties to the murder, the only logical explanation that remains is that it was someone on the inside. Callahan points out that for someone to offer Monte better conditions in prison, they’d have to be someone working within the confines of the law, which brings Kat to Stagger. When she confronts him, he confesses that he made Monte take the fall, but that doesn’t mean he killed Clint. The truth is much worse.
It is when Kat finds out about Parker that she realizes that Callahan had blackmailed him for it, which is why he worked for the criminal. He wasn’t really corrupt; he was forced to be it. It is much later that she discovers that the night of his murder, when he left Parker, it was to chase after Aqua, who had seen him and Parker together on the street. Terrified that Aqua would out him to Kat, Clint chased after her. He called Stagger to get him Aqua’s address. While Stagger did send him the address, he also got a bit concerned and decided to find Clint. By then, a scared Aqua had called Josh, who also made his way to Aqua’s house. Clint was the first one to reach there. He begged Aqua not to mention anything to Kat, and she agreed, but she also told Clint to do it himself so he could be free of the lies he has been telling all these years.
Clint almost calmed down, but then Aqua received a call from Kat, and he thought that Aqua had already done the deed. Worried that he was going to lose everything now, Clint lost his mind and attacked Aqua. She tried to defend herself using a knife, but in the tussle, the knife went out of her grip. When Josh arrived on the scene, he saw Clint holding the knife while his terrified and bleeding friend lay on the floor. To save Aqua, Josh tried to take the knife out of Clint’s grasp but ended up fatally stabbing him. This is when Stagger entered the scene. In his dying breaths, Clint told Stagger to bury the whole thing and never let the truth come to light because it would tarnish his reputation, particularly for his family.
Stagger did as asked. He took care of the crime scene, and he made it look like Clint was stabbed by someone from the criminal world. He thought that things would go away on their own, but when Kat became adamant about finding the killer, he decided to rope in Monte Leburne to take the fall. This is why he and Josh went to prison to see him. By the end of it, Stagger had so successfully manipulated the situation that everyone, including the people in the police department, thought that Leburne was the real culprit. While they all thought Callahan was behind the murder, they couldn’t tie him to it, so they had to drop any hope of arresting him and let things be.
While everything was taken care of, Josh couldn’t silence his conscience. He felt terrible for what he had done to Kat, and one day, when he couldn’t take it any longer, he decided to disappear from her life completely. Knowing that she could easily track him down, he changed his identity. Aqua and Stagger were the only people who knew why he had to leave, but because of their complicity in the whole thing, they decided to stay quiet, and none of them ever spoke a word of it to Kat. With Leburne’s death, the case would have been buried for good, but then Kat went ahead and talked to him, which opened a Pandora’s box of secrets and lies.
Do Kat and Josh End Up Together?
When Kat finds Josh, she has very mixed feelings. Still, she loves him, and while she still doesn’t understand why he had to leave her so suddenly, she decides to give him another chance. She welcomes him back into his life, bringing him home to her mother and bringing him back into her friend circle. By now, Josh has spent eleven years away from her and in a self-imposed exile, and he thinks he has repented enough. So, he allows himself to be happy again. He thinks that Kat has resolved whatever she needs and she will not go back to her father’s death again. But he doesn’t know that she had sent the murder weapon, the knife with which her father was killed, for fingerprints. The second fingerprint on the knife was never identified, but because Kat wanted to know for sure, she had Charlie run it for prints again. He reveals that the match has come out to be of a person who was in a bar fight in Scotland eleven years ago.
When Josh left Kat, he was in a bad space, and he got in a bar fight in Scotland. This is the last thing Kat could find out about him before he changed his identity. She immediately realizes that Josh killed her father, which is when he tells her the whole truth. Kat is shocked to discover that she has been lied to by the people closest to her all this while. At the same time, too many things have come to light, especially the part about her father’s corruption and the lies he had told over these years. In some ways, had he been more truthful to his family, things would never have taken this turn. We see all these things swirl in Kat’s mind as she tries to process the fact that the man she loves is the one who killed her father. She is shocked and disgusted at the discovery, but at the same time, she has been through too much to make a hasty decision, and that’s what makes the last scene so interesting.
Under any other circumstances, Kat would have immediately cut ties with Josh and maybe even brought his crime to light, but in this case, it would mean dragging Stagger and Aqua down with him. Moreover, the truth about her father’s death doesn’t change the fact that she loves Josh, and hasn’t she already spent a lot of time away from him? Her father died because he longed to be with the man he loved, but he couldn’t, and the lies sucked the life out of him. With Kat, everything is now out in the open, and she has to decide whether she will be able to live with the fact that Josh killed her father. In the end, she touches her finger with his, showing that she isn’t entirely devoid of emotion about him and that there is still hope for them. She might need some time to process things, but in the end, whatever happened was an accident, and everyone involved in it has already done a lot to try and make things right. From the looks of it, Kat might finally be ready to forgive and move on.
Is Titus Dead? What Happens to Dana and Brendan?
In trying to trace Josh’s whereabouts through the app, Kat discovers that someone made a fake profile of him to trap people. One of the women trapped through the app was Dana Fells, whose son Brendan comes looking for Kat after he discovers that Josh is her ex. It turns out that the fake app was created by a man named Titus, who runs a dog farm, but that was just for show. What he really did was trap people through the app, kidnap them, and keep them on his farm until they transferred all of their money to his account. The fake accounts were made by his associates, who used pictures of people who were either not too active on social media or who would not seem too suspicious. A man named Rishi Magari is also trapped this way, but before he can find the truth or escape, he is killed.
Dana is also snared in through the app, as she believes she is talking to someone who looks like Josh. When she is kidnapped and taken to Titus’ farm, her acquaintances are sent messages showing that she has eloped with her new boyfriend, whom none of them have met. The only person to find this suspicious is Dana’s son, Brendan, who does his best to find Josh, which is where Kat comes into the picture. After a daring escape attempt, Dana succeeds in freeing herself as well as the other people who were kidnapped by Titus and his men. Realizing that she may have alerted the authorities, Titus decides to burn down the whole place. Before this, he has Brendan kidnapped to use him as leverage against his mother.
Despite trying to turn the situation in his favor, Titus finds himself cornered by Dana and Kat. He shoots Brendan in the leg to show that he is ready to kill if that’s what it takes to get what he wants. By this time, all the people he had kidnapped are gone, which means he has no one left to extort. When Kat arrives on the scene, he shoots at her, knowing full well that she is a police officer. In the end, Kat shoots at him when he refuses to throw his weapon and almost shoots at Kat and Dana. With him dead, the whole operation comes to an end. The backup was already on its way. As soon as the cavalry arrives, Titus’ remaining accomplices are captured, and Brendan is sent to the hospital to get treated for the bullet wound in his leg. His mother, finally reunited with him and completely out of danger now, reunites with him, and the case of her disappearance, along with Rishi, is closed.
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