Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Stranger’ demands the cost of secrets through the interconnected lives of various characters. What would you do to protect your secrets? Would you be ready to face your demons to save your loved ones? Such are the questions posed by the show, while it gives us a handful of mysteries to work through to get to the bottom of the one thing that started it all.
By the end, all the secrets are brought to light. While the lives of some are shattered, others try to hold on to what is left of theirs. If you haven’t yet seen ‘The Stranger’, head over to Netflix. SPOILERS AHEAD
Plot Summary
A woman walks up to Adam Price in a football club and tells him that his wife, Corinne, had faked a pregnancy to manipulate him into staying with her. She also warns him that the boys he has been raising might not be his own. While Adam is confounded by this encounter, he can’t help but find out if there is any truth in what the stranger told him. As he pulls at the string, one thing after another unravels, until all of it has fallen apart.
The Ending
In the final episode of the show, all the pieces fall into place. In seven episodes, the show toys with four mysteries, simultaneously. They all seem to be connected to each other, the link between them being the Stranger. However, as we remove one layer after another, we discover that there is much more to the whole thing than had originally appeared. The Stranger might not be the worst, or the most dangerous, person in this fiasco.
Dante finally wakes up from his coma and recounts the events of the night that led to him being naked and unconscious in the middle of the forest. With that mystery cleared away, Johanna turns back to the murder of her friend, Heidi. She visits Katz to apologise to him for the lash out at the restaurant. In the meantime, Wes comes to know about the truth.
Going through Martin’s stuff, Adam discovers the Stranger’s connection with him and tracks her down. He sends her location to Johanna, but Katz receives it because he has her phone. A showdown takes place at the apartment where Christine’s friend is killed and before Katz can kill her and Adam, the cops show up and take him away. Christine tells Adam everything about how she found him out, and finally, he comes to know what happened to his wife.
Is Corinne Dead?
Adam discovers that Christine had been looking into Corinne because someone had hired her to do so. She tells him that it was someone from the football club, which leads him to Bob Baime. Bob is the one who coaches the football team. Earlier, he had brought to light the theft of the funds from the football club. The blame was placed on Corinne who was not only the treasurer but had also gone missing since the scandal came to light.
Adam confronts Bob about it and he admits that he got a PI to dig up dirt on Corinne, but it was just so he could protect himself. Bob believed that Corinne had stolen the money and wanted to place the blame on him. Everyone would believe her because she had a good reputation at the school while he was considered a lowlife who couldn’t keep one permanent job. Christine did find the dirt but she didn’t share it with Bob. When Corinne went AWOL, Bob took the opportunity to expose her but didn’t succeed because he didn’t have any concrete evidence against her.
While Adam is enraged, he also wonders why Bob thought Corinne was the one stealing the funds and then framing him for it. Turns out, Tripp let Bob in on the whole thing. This is when everything starts to make sense. Corinne’s last call to Tripp, and him playing both Adam and Bob, convinces him that Tripp was the one who messed up everything, and he must be the one who knows where Corinne is.
Why did Tripp Kill Corinne?
To begin with, it was Tripp who had been stealing money from the fund. He made some bad investments and got entangled with the loan sharks that wouldn’t let him breathe until they got their money. With no other solution in sight, Tripp turned towards the fund. He had thought about paying it back, or at least, that’s what he told Corinne when she found out what he had been doing. Because they were friends, she decided to give him some time to sort out the mess and get the money back.
Tripp knew that it was too much for him to compensate for, so instead of coming up with the money, he started stacking the cards against Corinne. He led Bob to believe that she had been trying to frame him, who then employed Christine to look into her. When Adam confronted her about the fake pregnancy, she thought it was Tripp trying to use her secret to get out of paying back the money. Whatever time she had given him before, she rescinded it and asked him to get the money back instantly.
With his plan having backfired, Tripp lost control and killed Corinne. He buried her body in the forest, dumped her car near the airport and used her phone to text Adam about taking some time off. Then, he dumped her phone at the bridge, which Adam and the boys discovered. With Corinne out of the picture, he used the remaining time to frame her and remove any connection between him and the football fund. Because there was no trail, no evidence against him, even if Adam told the cops he had killed Corinne, no one would believe him.
Instead, the facts lined up against Adam and he would be blamed for it. Knowing that the law can’t touch Tripp, Adam kills him. This is when Johanna arrives there. She helps Adam in getting rid of the evidence against him. She also plants the gun at Katz’s place. As it is already his gun, he is linked to the murder and Adam goes free.
Read More: The Stranger Review
