Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s ‘Saint X’ follows the mystery of the death of a teenager named Alison Thomas. She arrives on the titular island to spend a week with her family. It is supposed to be a fun vacation before they go back home and Alison resumes college. On the night before their departure, Alison goes missing. Her dead body is found days later, at a nearby cay, with none the wiser about how she got there. Because it’s been days she’s been in the water, it is difficult to ascertain how she died.
Twenty years later, this mystery haunts Alison’s younger sister, Claire, who now goes by Emily. The search for the truth leads her down a dark path. She becomes so obsessed with it that she loses control of her life. In the end, the truth is more shocking than she’d imagined. Here’s what the ending means for Alison and the people whose lives were impacted by it. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Saint X Episode 8 Recap
At the end of the previous episode, Clive and Emily go to a club where things get a little awkward between them. A nervous Emily returns to the habit of writing on her hand with her finger, and Clive remembers it as Claire’s habit at Saint X. He realizes that Claire is Emily, and he confronts her about it. She claims she did all this because she wanted to know the truth, so Clive tells her what happened that night.
Propelled by the excitement of her last night and the need to set herself apart from other girls Edwin has been with, Alison decides to stir things up by having a threesome with Edwin and Clive. She doesn’t realize that things have already been tense between them ever since Clive found out that Edwin deliberately kept Sarah away from him. He believes that his best friend loves the mother of his children. However, Edwin tries to assure him he has no feelings for Sarah.
After partying for a while at Paulette’s, Edwin invites Alison to a secluded place, and she insists that Clive accompany them. After drinking a little alcohol, Alison kisses Edwin and Clive and then demands that they kiss each other. While Clive is surprised by this, Edwin gives in to the demand and kisses him. An inebriated Alison falls asleep, and when she wakes up, she finds Clive and Edwin kissing. The men are taken by surprise, and Edwin tells Alison to leave. Clive tries to follow her, but Edwin tells him to stay, believing Alison can find her way back to the resort.
Saint X Season 1 Finale Ending: How Did Alison Die?
When Alison disappeared, every witness placed her with Edwin and Clive. She was seen leaving the resort with them and then at Paulette’s. They claimed they’d left her back at the resort, but no one else corroborated that. Moreover, Alison’s body was found at Faraway Cay. The police investigation concluded that Edwin and Clive couldn’t have been responsible for Alison’s death because the timeline didn’t match. However, the suspicion was good enough for the rest of the world to find them guilty.
When Emily ran into Clive Richardson all those years later, she believed that Clive was one of the people who killed her sister and knew what happened to her in her last moments. She wanted to find out about her sister’s final moments and became so obsessed that she let go of her own life. She believed that if she heard the truth just one time, it would give her the closure she needed and solve everything. But Clive’s answers raise more questions.
Alison believed she was not like other girls and wanted an authentic experience of the island. This was one of the reasons why she was attracted to Edwin. A connection with him was a validation for her, to prove that she was different from her family and other rich people. When she realizes that Edwin might have flirted with and had a connection with other girls like her, she decides to do something that he might never have done before. It prompts her to initiate the threesome; however, seeing Edwin and Clive kiss is a revelation for her.
Seeing them together makes Alison realize that she is not the protagonist of this story. She thought it was all about her, but in fact, there is an entirely different side of Edwin and Clive that she doesn’t know about. She realizes that Edwin would never see her as a girl that stood out, and there would never be a connection between them like the one she saw between him and Clive. Everyone around her had been telling Alison she was special, which is why it is devastating for her to find out that she doesn’t matter in Edwin’s story.
After she ran away from Clive and Edwin, Alison returned to the resort and found Tyler. She thought being with him would change her mood, but even after they had sex, she didn’t feel any better. She ran away from Tyler, who followed her to her room and left when he heard Alison and Claire fighting. That night, Alison had promised to spend time with Claire, but because she left, Claire didn’t sleep. She was angry with her sister, which further infuriated Alison.
Alison knew that her sister revered her, which is why she couldn’t stand the disappointed and angry look from Claire. She was desperate to do something that would prove that she really was different, so she decided to go to Faraway Cay alone. It wasn’t far from the beach, and Alison was a strong swimmer. She’d proposed the idea of going there to Edwin, who thought it wasn’t safe.
Alison thought if she could go to Faraway Cay alone, Edwin and the others would see her as daring. She sought their validation, which pushed her to swim to the cay in the middle of the night. She reached the cay and found the waterfall. However, she slipped, hit her head on a rock, and fell into the water. It was either the impact from the rock or drowning in the water, but Alison’s death was an accident. No one murdered her.
After her conversation with Clive, Emily talks to Tyler, who confesses he lied to the cops that he hadn’t seen Alison at the resort later that night. This revelation is shocking for Claire, who had suppressed the memory of being the last to see her sister. Before Alison left, she said she was going to Faraway and told Claire not to rat on her this time. Devoted to her sister, Claire kept her mouth shut when Alison didn’t show up the next day. At first, she thought Alison would turn up, and she didn’t want to get her sister in trouble, so she didn’t tell anyone about where Alison had gone. When she realized it was serious, she couldn’t tell everyone she had lied as she didn’t want to face their judgment.
Does Edwin Die?
With the revelation of the truth about Alison’s last night, the real reason behind Clive’s decision to stay away from Edwin becomes clear. It wasn’t because they did something to Alison or because Clive was arrested for the drugs that Edwin gave him. Clive felt betrayed by Edwin’s feelings for him and how the latter kept it a secret all this while. Because of his feelings, Edwin also kept Sarah and Clive apart. When Edwin kissed him, Clive didn’t get the time to process things. Before they could talk about it, the news of Alison’s disappearance came out, and the whole world came crashing down on Clive.
Clive believed that their kiss and the fact that they didn’t stop Alison led to her death. He thought they were being punished for their sins, so he decided never to see Edwin again. Meanwhile, Edwin’s devotion to his best friend led him to marry Sarah and take care of Clive’s son after he went to New York. Edwin tried to patch things up with Clive, but he wasn’t ready to do it until he received Edwin’s letter from Bery. In it, Edwin wrote about his declining health and hoped to see Clive one last time. Sarah tells Clive that Edwin doesn’t have much time left. When Clive sees him, Edwin is bedridden and doesn’t look very good. This means his health has been worsening, and he will die soon.
What Happens to Clive?
Apart from the Thomas family, the person whose life was completely obliterated after Alison’s death was Clive. Even though it was never proven that he had anything to do with her disappearance, the world treated him like a murderer. It became difficult for him to get a job on the island, which forced him to leave his home and go to America. Clive was torn apart from his family and didn’t get to see his son again for the next two decades.
Clive tries to live with whatever is thrown at him, but when Claire forces her way into his life, he revisits the trauma of the aftermath of Alison’s death. It all comes back to her, forcing him to talk about things he didn’t want to discuss with anyone. After he tells Claire the truth, he decides to find closure for himself. After discovering that Edwin is dying, he returns to Saint X to meet his friend before he dies and make peace with him. He reunites with his family, meets Sarah, and finally sees his son after all these years. Patching up with Edwin also helps him close the chapter of his story that started with Alison Thomas’ death.
Read More: Do Clive and Edwin End Up Together?
