Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Last Thing He Told Me‘s finale.
Apple TV+’s The Last Thing He Told Me ended its season Friday with an episode that largely followed the closing of the Laura Dave novel on which it was based. After Jennifer Garner’s Hannah figured out why her husband had created a false life for himself and his daughter Bailey years before, she made a deal with Bailey’s Mobbed-up maternal grandfather: If Hannah promised never to see Owen, her whistle-blowing husband (and the grandfather’s ex-son-in-law), ever again, Grandpa would make sure that the mafiosos for whom he worked would leave her and Bailey alone.
And that seems to have been the case… until a flash-forward at the end of the episode. In the show’s final moments, Hannah is at her gallery when a nearly-unrecognizable Owen comes in, brushes her hand in passing and whispers, “The could-have-been boys still love you” — an in-joke referring to a conversation they’d had years before. Though Hannah is shaken by the briefer-than-brief encounter, she says nothing to a grown-up Bailey when the young woman shows up with her boyfriend moments later.
When TVLine spoke with Garner about the closing scene, we wondered if she thought Hannah would spend the rest of her days wondering when and if Owen might make another appearance.
“How could she not?” Garner said incredulously. “It must have taken everything in her power to not just sprint after him!”
As viewers know, Hannah’s love for Bailey, coupled with her desire to keep the young woman safe, trumped Hannah’s desire to live the life she’d planned with Owen (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). And that choice paid off: In the final scene, the once-prickly Bailey (played by Angourie Rice) calls Hannah “Mom” — a name she hadn’t used previously in the season.
Still, Garner says, “All of the questions [Hannah] had, how lonely she had to be for him, how much she’s had to imagine — there he was to fill in the blanks, and she can’t let herself go after him.” She sighs, then chuckles. “Yes, very much, I have thought about that a lot for her.”
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This story originally appeared on TVLine
