Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s ‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox’ comes to an end with its seventh and final episode. After spending years in an Italian prison, fighting for her freedom, and then years back at home, trying to make sense of what happened to her, Amanda gets stuck on the why of it all. After giving a lot of thought to the matter, she decides to reach out to the man who became her nightmare while she was in Italy. This episode begins with Giuliano Mignini receiving her letter through Don Saulo. As difficult as it was for Amanda to send the letter, it isn’t easy for her prosecutor to read it either. SPOILERS AHEAD.
A Communication Through Letters is Established Between Amanda and Mignini
When Mignini first receives Amanda’s letter, he doesn’t read it right away. He keeps it tucked away, but it claws at his mind, and eventually he does read it. She sends him three more letters before he finally responds. Meanwhile, she meets Chris, marries him, and gets pregnant, while dealing with the trauma of her time in Italy and the hatred from the people who think she is guilty. Mignini’s letters reveal a different side of him to Amanda. She previously confessed in her letter that she saw him as a monster who was out to get her during the trial, but in finding out more about him outside of his work as a prosecutor, she discovered that he was a family man and just another normal person whose image was largely decided by the media.
In his first reply, Mignini doesn’t outright apologize to her, but he does tell her to watch Maigret, the fictional French detective, who discusses how a detective must create a story through the evidence in front of him to theorize how a crime may or may not have occurred. In a way, this is Mignini’s reasoning for why he needed to invent a story to explain Meredith’s death and why it was important to place Amanda at the center of it all, once she was established as a prime suspect. After a while, when Amanda’s daughter is born and all seems normal in her life, she tells her family that she plans to return to Italy to meet with Mignini, hoping to gain some closure. All of her family members, especially her mother, try to dissuade her from it, reasoning that she has finally moved on, has a family, a daughter, and a good life. They don’t see any point in meeting with Mignini, while also expressing their doubts about him and believing that he could set a trap to have her imprisoned again.
Only her husband, Chris, supports her decision wholeheartedly. The part about Rudy Guede going free is also revealed, which is also one of the things that prompted Amanda to make this decision. The other thing was the birth of her daughter, Eureka. Amanda reveals that when Eureka was born, she apologized to her because she knows she has also dragged her daughter into the mess. There will come a time when Eureka discovers the case, and she will have questions that Amanda may not be able to answer. This is why she wants to meet with Mignini to find some sense of explanation for everything that happened to her. Amanda’s sister chides her for being selfish and inconsiderate of her parents’ feelings. She reveals that their mother and stepfather’s relationship struggled deeply during the trial, and even after Amanda was back home, and by going to Italy, she will be putting them through torture again.
However, this does nothing to change Amanda’s mind, and later, her father decides to support her decision, even if reluctantly. While her mother doesn’t approve, she decides to go with Amanda because the last time she let her daughter go to Italy alone, their lives were changed forever. This brings us back to the opening scene of the first episode. Amanda hides in the back of the car while Chris drives them to the safe house where Amanda and her mother had spent the night she was released from prison. Amanda has a nightmare of Italian police barging into the house and dragging her back to prison, which shows that her fear hasn’t left her even now. The next day, they go to Don Saulo’s place, where Mignini shows up and Amanda gets to talk to him face-to-face.
The Conversation Makes Amanda and Mignini See Each Other in a Different Light
Amanda had thought about letting Mignini speak first, but due to Don Saulo’s prompt, she becomes the first one to put their perspective on the table. Her nervousness shows in her physicality, anticipating which, she wrote down all the things she wanted to say to him in a notebook. She uses the notes to speak about her perception of him, how his image changed for her in recent years. She talks about the years she lost because of the case and how, despite being exonerated, she still has to deal with people’s hatred because a lot of them believe that she is the murderer. Mignini stops her, pointing out that she’s already said most of these things to her in her letters. Speaking of being hated by the public, Mignini reveals that he,too, has been villainised and has had to suffer hateful things from people. Still, he calls her courageous for reaching out to him and talking to him.
He expresses his surprise at her calling him “my prosecutor,” and how strangely endearing it felt, considering the circumstances. She reveals that it was never supposed to be endearing. She wrote it because there is no substitute for the English expression in Italian, just as there is no Italian substitute for “see you later.” Mignini realises that she is talking about the text she sent to Patrick Lumumba. But instead of responding, he takes a break to call someone. Amanda becomes nervous that maybe he is calling the cops, so she tells him to come clean and tell her if she will be arrested. He feels offended at the accusation of laying a trap for her, pointing out that she’s the one who wanted to meet. The call that he made was to his wife to remind her to take her pills. The conversation continues as Mignini tries to explain how he tried to do the best with what he’d got, claiming that he was not wrong in believing that she had something to do with the murder.
She tries to counter his argument, citing that there was never any concrete DNA evidence. He blames it on the cops ruining the crime scene and not following the protocol. He talks about the motive and Amanda’s alleged connection to Rudy Guede, which she immediately denies. At the end of it, he asks her what she wants from him, and she breaks down, asking him why, when he looked at his daughters, did he not see her, Amanda, as she, too, had suffered all those years. She asks him why he came after her, and yet again, he says that he believed he was right back then. But now that he knows her, he wouldn’t prosecute her. When she asks him if he thinks she is innocent, he stands by his position in the past, but he does admit that he could have been wrong. He tells her that at the end of the day, there are two truths, one of which is the one that is proven in the court of law.
She retorts that there is only one truth, and it is that she is innocent. Mignini tells her that today is his father’s death anniversary. He remembers his father as an honest man of the law who was killed in an accident by two people who didn’t follow the rules and ended up killing him. This led him to develop a thing for rules and how they must be followed or how people should behave under any given circumstances. He tells her that she is not alone in her suffering, as he, too, has suffered greatly, and she acknowledges his suffering. Their meeting is cut short when Chris asks Amanda to tend to the baby. Before she leaves, Mignini expresses his happiness for her becoming a mother and says that motherhood transforms people. Amanda says that she was not transformed by motherhood. She has always been the same.
Amanda and Raffaele’s Reunion Brings a Sense of Closure
When the meeting ends and Amanda comes out, her mother is glad that nothing untoward happened. She asks if Mignini apologised, but from what Amanda tells her, she becomes even angrier about the whole thing, especially when her daughter begins to defend Mignini. However, this isn’t the only meeting Amanda had in mind. Later, she meets Raffaele Sollecito in Gubbio. This is the place they were supposed to go on the day that Meredith was found dead. Now, after all these years, they are finally here together. Before catching up about their lives, they have a little chat about Mignini. Then she asks him about his life, and he reveals how the past has cast a shadow on his relationships and his career. Then she talks about a concert she attended with Meredith, which is also where she met Raffaele for the first time.
Both remember that encounter fondly, which prompts Amanda to ask if he ever regrets meeting her. He confesses that he did sometimes, but not anymore. He wishes that she’d stayed at his place that morning, and all the other what-ifs that he has thought about over the years. She reveals that the only reason she went home that morning was because she wanted to wear a skirt for their trip to Gubbio. She wanted to look nice for something nice that he’d done for her. Later that evening, Amanda and Edda have a chat at the safe house. They discuss how difficult the prison visits were. Edda speaks of the guilt she would feel whenever she smiled or felt happy while her daughter was still in prison. Amanda commends her for braving that storm because, being the mother of a daughter now, she doesn’t know how, if at all, she would be able to bear it if her daughter were to go through something like that.
Amanda talks about why she wanted to come to Italy. She thought she’d find some explanation or closure related to the case, but the experience has taught her that things are more complicated than that. Before leaving Italy, Amanda stops by the house. She looks at it from a distance and thinks about Meredith, about all the sides of Meredith that she got to know, and all the sides she didn’t. At the end of the day, Amanda believes that she was the lucky one for not being in the house that night, and how unlucky Meredith was for the fate that befell her. While still processing her thoughts and feelings, she returns to her life, accepting that there will be people who believe her and those who don’t, and that there is nothing she can do about what anyone thinks. So, all she can do is live for herself.
Why does Mignini Cry?
After Amanda gets in the car and drives away, the scene shifts to the church, where Don Saulo sits in the confessional, preparing to hear the person on the other side. We don’t see this other person, but it is Mignini, and we don’t get to hear what he has to say, but we do hear him crying. Does this mean that he feels guilty about prosecuting Amanda? Does he feel guilty for throwing an innocent person, or two, to prison? Are the tears for himself or for Amanda? The ending suggests that Mignini’s meeting with Amanda has changed his thoughts about her and about how he approached the investigation and its prosecution. Part of that is true for real-life Mignini as well.
Reportedly, after he met Amanda, with whom he is reportedly still in touch, he told her that she was not the person he thought he was prosecuting. He confessed that she was a much different person than the one to whom all the tags like “Foxy Knoxy” were attributed. However, he remains steadfast about his actions during the investigation and the trial. He has maintained his belief about Amanda being present at the house that night, and that while she may not be the murderer, he believes that she was present at the crime scene when the murder took place. Thus, a person can interpret Mignini’s sobs in the show in a myriad of ways, but there is no way to confirm if the prosecutor really has changed his mind, at least not until he confesses so publicly.
Read More: Madison Paxton: What Happened to Amanda Knox’s Best Friend?
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