If you’ve decided to spend the hot summer days journeying to the heart of Texas by binge-watching all eight episodes of The Hunting Wives, you’re not alone. And, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of the show and have questions about the big finale, you’re also not alone.
Adapted from May Cobb’s novel, Netflix’s The Hunting Wives has it all: buried secrets, open-carry guns, bisexual affairs, kidnapped teens, questionable parenting, swinging politicians, and corrupt clergy. The show, which TIME’s critic described as “the wildest, silliest, and soapiest wife show ever made,” is such addictive fun that it’s easy to go with the Netflix flow and let the episodes roll. By the time the credits appear on the final episode, though, there may be a few bigger questions to answer. We’re here to help.
The show starts when Sophie (Brittany Snow), her husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit), and their young son arrive in the Lone Star State with liberal ideas, a Tesla, and the hope of a new start. Graham is there to start a job working for Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney), one of the most powerful men in Texas. His socialite wife, Margo (Malin Akerman), quickly takes Sophie under her wing, introducing the wide-eyed waif to her gaggle of girlfriends, including Jill (Katie Lowes), the wife of the megachurch’s reverend, and Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), the sheriff’s wife. Soon, they have the sober, non-driving, gun-hating, Cambridge girl with a dark past downing tequila shots, doing donuts in the parking lot, shooting a boar, having hot extramarital sex with Margo, and, ominously enough, buying a gun.
It’s all fun fun fun until a high school girl, Abby (Madison Wolfe) turns up dead in the woods. Turns out that Abby was dating Jill’s son, Brad (George Ferrier), and it’s revealed that not only did she no longer have her purity ring on, but Sophie’s gun is identified as the murder weapon. Despite the clear lack of motive (she didn’t even know the girl!), Sophie becomes the prime suspect in the murder. Now shunned by her new friends and her truly terrible husband, Sophie sets out to find the real killer. Along the way, she unearths some of the town’s darkest secrets.
The Hunting Wives finale brings everything to a head
In the last episode, titled “Sophie’s Choice,” the clues and the bodies start piling up, and Sophie, the political PR-turned-girl-detective, realizes that the real killer has been right in front of her the whole time. She just didn’t want to see it. The big clue? It all started in the ladies’ room. Back to that in a minute.
The show did a good job with the build-up, because in Episode 7, the penultimate episode, it felt like the crime had been solved when youth Pastor Pete (Paul Teal) was busted for preying on his flock. He kidnapped one young woman and was behind the disappearance of another missing girl mentioned earlier in the season. He even gave Abby a ride to a party on the night she died and he had her sweater in his car. But though he looked guilty as hell, but he did not kill Abby. The other false lead was Brad’s mom, Jill. She openly disliked her son’s girlfriend, calling the girl a gold-digger and accusing her of leading her precious boy down a path of fornication and sin. She acted very suspiciously, too, wiping her GPS, changing all her passwords, and furiously cleaning one spot on her car. She was also downright eager to provide Brad with an alibi for the night of the murder, which just so happened to give her an alibi, too. Jill looked even more guilty after Pastor Pete told Sophie that Brad had confided in him that he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and she had gotten an abortion, despite the difficulty accessing one in Deep Red Pro-Life Texas. Even her own son started to suspect the good pastor’s wife when it was revealed that she was one of Abby’s last outgoing calls—and she happened to have Abby’s phone. Sophie believed Jill found out about the abortion and killed Abby to keep her quiet. However, it’s revealed that Jill didn’t do it either. Why she wiped her GPS and passwords and what she was doing the night of the murder is unclear, but she didn’t kill Abby— and soon wound up dead herself. Her death meant Sophie was cleared of the crime and was finally out of jail.
Who really killed Abby?
Sophie goes back to her life as best she can, including reconnecting with Margo—and finding out what really happened to Abby. What finally cracks the case for Sophie, though, was an offhand remark Margo made to Sophie in the very first episode of the series. The two women first met when Sophie walked in on Margo in the bathroom, digging through the cabinet looking for a menstrual pad. Sophie offered her a tampon, but Margo explained she couldn’t use one of those. That comment came back to haunt her, though, because after a long, lusty round of afternoon delight in the bedroom, Sophie uses Margo’s bathroom. She is hunting through the drawers looking for some lotion, when she happens upon a box of tampons. Margo denies having ever said she couldn’t use tampons, but Sophie remembers it perfectly. Since Sophie is already on high alert because Margo herself has already betrayed her, and Margo’s friends had her jailed, she bolts. The moment she is alone, Sophie researches why someone might not be able to use a tampon, including one spicy little item: “after having an abortion.” Sophie quickly realizes that her friend-turned-lover has been lying to her.
Margo has been having an affair with Brad, Jill’s son, and Sophie realizes that it wasn’t Abby who had the abortion that Pastor Pete mentioned, but Brad’s other girlfriend, Margo. When Margo found out she was pregnant with her teenage boyfriend’s baby, she had returned to her own dark past for help. Specifically, Margo née Mandy had gone to her biological father for assistance. As a doctor, he not only terminated Margo’s pregnancy (despite Texas state law), but also provided her an alibi, claiming that Margo was with him at her brother’s near-death bed on the night of the murder. Sophie gets the doctor to admit he lied and then gets Brad to corroborate the pregnancy story. She then goes to confront Margo about her many crimes. To her credit, Margo quickly admits them all. She explains that when a furious Abby confronted her about the affair, pregnancy, and abortion, Margo grabbed the nearest gun—Sophie’s—and killed Abby. She then let Sophie take the fall, because she didn’t want to jeopardize her husband’s run for governor and wanted the beautiful new life she had built for herself to continue.
Unsurprisingly, Sophie is unimpressed with Margo’s reasoning. Similarly, when Margo tries to tell her husband the truth about it all, he chucks her out of the house. After all, he had already helped her overcome her past as an escort, given her a life as a rich swinger, and was about to make her the first lady of Texas. While killing an innocent young woman was bad, it seems sleeping with another man was the bridge too far for this relationship.
Despite murdering a girl and obstructing justice, Margo is not overly concerned about being jailed. She had gone to talk to her drug-addicted brother Kyle (Michael Aaron Milligan) and he told her to get her head on straight. After all, her sometimes-bestie and sometimes-lover Callie is married to the sheriff and he and the DA have closed the case, blaming Jill for the crime, so Margo has nothing to worry about. Plus, Kyle has decided to take care of Sophie for her. He tries to run Sophie off the road and winds up on the highway in front of her car, threatening her with a gun. That’s when Sophie hits the gas, and Kyle dies on the hood of her car. The season ends with Sophie dragging Kyle’s body through the woods and to the edge of a cliff, dropping it in the water below. Before his body disappears into the water, though, Sophie accidentally answers his phone. It’s Margo. Sophie doesn’t say anything and instead just breathes heavily on the line. Margo knows something has gone very wrong and Sophie is undoubtedly really wishing she had stayed in Boston.
As Kyle’s body goes over the cliff, viewers are left to wonder, is this an actual cliffhanger? Is a second season of this Texas soap opera on its way? It’s up to Netflix now.
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