Season 2 Ending, Explained by Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer (Exclusive)

The Last Thing He Told Me ended with a showdown between Hannah (Jennifer Garner) and Quinn (Judy Greer). In another attempt to free her husband, Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), from living a life on the run, while also assuring safety for herself and his daughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice), Hannah went straight to the person who was really running things in the Campano family. Warning: Spoilers for The Last Thing He Told Me Season 2 finale ahead!

Hannah and Owen had already suspected that Quinn was “at the heart” of the Campano family’s crimes, which were the reason for Owen being on the run in the first place; he began encrypting files for the family via his father-in-law Nicholas (David Morse) years earlier. But Bailey had a harder time believing that Quinn, her late mother Kate’s friend, was involved.

“Bailey is looking for answers and she does want the truth, but obviously she has her own idea about what the truth is going to be. I also think Quinn is charming in a kind of cool way,” Rice explains. “Quinn seems to be the only one who’s actually telling Bailey the truth. I think she is telling her the truth, and all those details about her relationship with Kate, that’s all very real.”

However, when Bailey was finally able to sort out the full scope of a memory that had been percolating throughout the season, she understood that Quinn wasn’t being entirely truthful. Bailey realized that the flashback to her childhood, which featured Quinn, was actually from the day her mom died, which meant Quinn was there on the day of the hit-and-run that killed Kate.

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Bailey went with Hannah to approach Quinn about her new revelation, and Hannah eventually pieced together that Quinn was the one who inadvertently had Kate killed. Quinn knew Kate had information to take down her family and was ready to share it with a U.S. Attorney, so she had to stop her before she did so. Quinn insisted that the driver of the car was only supposed to scare Kate, but when Bailey ran out into the street, the car swerved to avoid hitting her, and ultimately struck Kate instead.

In the end, Bailey was able to forgive Quinn because she found a new mother figure in Hannah. “I think where we leave Bailey, that kind of speech she says to Quinn at the end, she’s like, ‘I have a family who loves me. I have a mother who cares about me, I have a father who cares about me, and I can forgive you. I can let this go. You need to let it go, too.’ I think that takes an immense amount of strength and I think that was true for her in the moment,” Rice shares. “But forgiveness and letting go is also kind of an active practice that maybe happens every day, so I imagine that for her, after that moment, it would still live with her. But I think that’s just something that she would have to think about every day and make a decision to kind of forgive herself, forgive Quinn, let it go.”

Hannah and Bailey did agree to let all of it go if Quinn would come clean and let Owen come home, which she did, resulting in a (seemingly) happy ending for Bailey, Hannah, Owen, and Nicholas.

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“I think that they’re crazy to trust that Quinn will just let them go,” Garner admits. “I think they feel like everything is out of the bag. The family history, the family secrets, have been unraveled and exposed and they think, OK, Quinn’s apologized, she means it, we have this on her. Really, if they do trust her, it’s a fool’s errand. But I do think Hannah is smart enough. Here she is in the netherworld, we don’t know where she is right now, and I think she’s preparing for whatever happens next.”

Rice adds, “I think that final moment where Bailey asks for, I don’t know, empathy, for forgiveness, for Quinn to let go, I think Bailey really trusts Quinn in that moment. I think whatever happens after that moment, I felt that the way that we played it, that that is real and true. That can exist, this kind of forgiveness and acknowledgement of safety and just a coming together and understanding. Then, also, once that magic spell lifts, it can be different. I do think Bailey really believes in Quinn and believes in the humanity and empathy in everyone. I like that quality about her.”

Unbeknownst to them, though, Quinn still had something brewing. The finale concluded with Greer’s character making a phone call to Maris Anderson (Michael Hyatt), the U.S. Marshal secretly working for the Campanos. “We have a few loose ends we need to tie up,” Quinn told Anderson.

As for what those “loose ends” are, co-creator Josh Singer says, “I’m going to leave that to the viewers to decide,” and Greer adds, “I think it’s meant to be open-ended, but as an actor, I have to decide what I mean, you know? I know what I was thinking, but I don’t know what everyone else is thinking. I read all of the episodes before we were shooting, but that one part of the very end, I either didn’t read or didn’t remember, because when that happened, I was very shocked. I was like … oh! The star is Quinn! Especially after the scene with [Bailey] in the hotel room, it’s like, wow, Quinn, come on!”

The Last Thing He Told Me, Streaming Now, Apple TV