Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘Scarpetta‘ follows chief medical officer Kay Scarpetta across two timelines, both of which follow a series of killings that seem related despite the decades that separate them. Apart from the criminal aspect, the show also focuses on the complicated dynamics of the Scarpetta family, the most likely of which is Lucy and her relationship with her dead wife, Janet. Over the course of eight episodes, Janet’s death and Lucy’s desire to keep a connection with her AI form remain a massive source of conflict for her family. What makes it worse is that Lucy has to go through the grief and heartbreak of losing her wife twice over. The second time, however, her death is much more suspicious. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Janet’s Sudden Death Leads Lucy to Unconventional Options
From the flashbacks, we know that Lucy had always been a bit different than others. At a young age, she became a prodigy in all things related to computers, even going on to work with the FBI for a while. At a young age, she sold one of her techs and made so much money that she doesn’t need to work anymore. Despite all this professional success, Lucy didn’t really feel seen on a personal level. She was raised by the chaotic duo of her mother and her aunt, but both women were so obsessed with the idea of raising her in their own image that they didn’t stop to think about the challenges she faced that were unique to her, especially being a woman of color. That changed when Janet came into her life.
Their romance blossomed quickly, and soon, they were married. It looked like the beginning of a happily ever after, but about two years into their marriage, tragedy struck. Janet died of an aneurysm, which was just as shocking as it was heartbreaking. The sudden and entirely unexpected nature of her death didn’t allow Lucy the time to understand the situation or to say goodbye to her wife. It didn’t just shatter her heart and soul, but it also made her feel abandoned, because the one person who truly understood, loved, and saw her was gone. As Lucy refused to move on from her grief, she found a crutch to indulge her desire.
Before Janet’s sudden death, the duo had been working on an AI program, creating versions of each other. When Janet died, Lucy tried to replace her with AI Janet, and seemed entirely happy with the possibility of spending the rest of her life with the computerised version of her deceased wife. In Lucy’s mind, AI or not, the program was still a part of Janet, and that’s all that mattered. While Dorothy and Kay, and anyone else in the family, for that matter, didn’t like this approach, they kept themselves from intervening too aggressively. So, when AI Janet suddenly pulls the plug on herself, it becomes yet another (murder?) mystery to be solved, among all the other chaos that unfolds in the finale.
AI Janet’s Death Cracks Lucy’s Already Fraught Relationship With Her Family
When Lucy activates the AI program that replicates Janet’s personality, no one likes the idea of her latching onto a computer program instead of processing and trying to move on from her grief. But while Dorothy is highly vocal about her disapproval, Kay and the others mostly keep their opinions to themselves. Kay knows that this isn’t the right way to go about things, but she believes that this is Lucy’s process, and she will eventually grow out of the AI program and come back to the real world. However, when that doesn’t happen, Kay is forced to accept that Dorothy may have been right all along. In between this, Dorothy unexpectedly forms a bond with AI Janet.
While she still believes her daughter should go out into the world, she becomes a bit more sympathetic about AI Janet, with whom she has long conversations about the complications in her own life. Things take a turn for Lucy, too, as she forms a romantic attachment with Blaise, but then AI Janet activates the self-destruct program, and for Lucy, her wife dies all over again. The difference this time is that someone is behind AI Janet’s death. Someone had to give the command that allowed AI Janet to run the self-destruct program, and Lucy, surely, didn’t do that. The first and most likely suspect appears to be Kay, who is seemingly the last person that AI Janet had a conversation with.
Even though Dorothy doesn’t know this conversation happened, her first thought goes to Kay as well, which leads Lucy to confront her aunt, who vehemently denies all allegations. From what we know about Kay so far, it is clear that if she were behind activating the process of AI Janet’s death, she would have owned up to it. So the fact that she says she doesn’t do it and seems genuinely surprised by the revelation of AI Janet’s fate means that she is likely not the real culprit. This opens the ground for more suspects, most likely of whom is Dorothy.
Dorothy’s Anger Towards Kay May Have Led Her to Do Something Rash
Despite her starting to like AI Janet, we know that her relationship with Kay deteriorates significantly by the end of the season, especially after she realizes that her husband, Pete, was and perhaps still is in love with Kay. Even as both Kay and Pete deny this possibility, Dorothy starts to feel jealous of her sister and believes that Pete only married her as a consolation prize. There is a chance that, in the desire to get back at Kay, Dorothy wanted to ruin something close to her, and Kay’s relationship with Lucy seemed like the only thing she could strike at.
Given the lengthy conversations she had with AI Janet, it is possible that she, too, found out about the off switch and activated it to turn Lucy against Kay. Pete and Benton seem too far removed from the whole thing to have meddled in it, which means that the other suspect could be a third party that tried to hack into Lucy’s system and ended up killing AI Janet instead. Or, perhaps, AI Janet did it herself. In a conversation with Kay, she reveals that she never asked to be activated. In fact, she hated the program, and she and Lucy had promised each other that they would never indulge in it. But Lucy broke her promise and AI Janet doesn’t want to continue on like this.
We don’t know what Kay said to her, but it could be somewhere along the line of asking what AI Janet wanted for herself. While an external command was needed to activate the off switch, we don’t know what exactly that command is or how it works. So, there is a chance that AI Janet may have used part of her conversations with Kay to be interpreted in a way that gave her permission to go forward with killing herself. Lucy is too heartbroken to consider all these possibilities, but once she is of sound mind, she will definitely look into it with the eyes of a detective and get to the bottom of the truth.
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