Warning: This article contains spoilers for “Disclaimer.”
Apple TV’s “Disclaimer” is a lesson in narratives.
The seven-part series tells the story of Jonathan (Louis Partridge), a 19-year-old boy who dies on vacation in Italy after he gets caught up with Catherine (Cate Blanchett), a married older woman.
Jonathan’s widowed father, Stephen (Kevin Kline), seeks revenge against Catherine for the part that she played in his son’s death. Only at the very end of his mission does Stephen realize that he may have gotten the wrong impression about his son.
In an interview with TODAY.com, “Disclaimer” creator and director Alfonso Cuarón opened up about the end of the series, saying it’s important to pay attention to all clues.
“This is something that I worked very closely on with Cate,” Cuarón says. “We always say that this show should be seen twice because on the second view, you’ll see a completely different story.”
“You will see a story of a woman who’s trying to speak and she’s she’s always interrupted, even by the audience in many ways with their judgements. So it was very important to never give false clues because in the end, you see how it all comes together and makes sense. Catherine is telling everything with her behavior,” he adds.
Read on to see how “Disclaimer” ends.
Is the story about Jonathan’s death true?
Not quite.
At the beginning of “Disclaimer,” the audience learns about Jonathan’s death in “The Perfect Stranger,” the book his mother, Nancy, wrote about his life — but it doesn’t tell the real story.
In the book, Nancy says that Jonathan had an affair with Catherine, an older woman, after she enticed him during her family vacation to Italy. Their rigorous night of lovemaking is preserved through explicit pictures that Jonathan took of Catherine that night. The next day, Jonathan dies rescuing Catherine’s 5-year-old son, Nicholas, from drowning.
Jonathan, according to the book, wants to follow Catherine home to London and be with her romantically. His girlfriend had gone home early due to an emergency and he is entranced with Catherine. Catherine, meanwhile, is less enthused — and in the drowning, she sees an opportunity to solve her problem.
Though Catherine sees Jonathan struggling in the waves, she decides not to tell any of the bystanders who flocked to the beach to save Nicholas. By the time someone notices Jonathan in the water, it is already too late. He is declared dead on the scene. Nicholas is safely brought back to shore by two onlookers nearby.
Once Nancy hears about Jonathan’s death, she becomes obsessed with learning how her son truly died. Nancy gives up anything that used to bring her joy and spends her time hiding away in her late son’s bedroom, where she ultimately writes “The Perfect Stranger.”
Did Nancy know about Jonathan’s violent nature?
Seeing that Nancy died long before the events unfolded in “Disclaimer,” it’s hard to know exactly how much she knew about her son.
However, it is clear that Nancy chose to only believe certain parts of Jonathan’s life. As a mother, she was enamored by her son and appeared to be taken aback once she learned why Jonathan’s girlfriend, Sasha, left him alone on vacation in Italy and returned home to London just days before he died.
In “Disclaimer,” Nancy receives a phone call from Sasha’s mother, Emma, after her daughter has already returned home aggravated. In the call, she’s told that Sasha and Jonathan had some kind of falling out.
When Emma gives Nancy more details, Nancy appears to lose her patience and says, “Well, I think it’s up to them to sort out their differences. Let’s not aggrandize things here, Emma. We don’t know what went on down there.”
“Nancy’s impulse to write ‘The Perfect Stranger’ was a way for her to protect her son and change the narrative of her son.”
Alfonso Cuaron
Nancy even goes as far as to say that Sasha has been “exaggerating” about her and Jonathan’s split and what she told her mother is “nonsense” that sounds “very extreme.”
Although the show does not share what Emma said on the phone, it’s clear that Nancy knew her son might be dangerous to some degree and she chose to ignore the signs.
When Stephen asks Nancy about the phone call, Nancy simply tells him that Emma said their kids had an argument and that’s why they are no longer together. Without questioning it, Stephen believes Nancy and then calls Sasha “a mess,” which Cuarón says further demonstrates the show’s message that you should “beware of narrative and form.”
Cuarón explains that Stephen is a “very weak person” who has been “undermined” by Nancy and Jonathan and that’s why he was “in denial” for so long.
“He’s just afraid to confront anything, and he just takes Nancy’s point of view as his own. So, he was in denial,” Cuarón explains. “It’s true that we don’t want to think those things of our children, but when it comes to Stephen, he is completely submissive to his wife’s version of reality.”
As for whether or not Nancy knew about Jonathan’s violent nature? Cuarón says, “I would almost be certain of that.”
“In many ways, Nancy’s impulse to write ‘The Perfect Stranger’ was a way for her to protect her son and change the narrative of her son,” he explained. “Thanks to the book, she could turn her son into this naive, heroic, romantic figure, which is very different from the reality.”
Does Nicholas die?
At the beginning of “Disclaimer,” Stephen makes it clear that he published his wife’s book, “The Perfect Stranger,” simply to torture Catherine. He wants her closest friends and family members to know the part that she played in Jonathan’s death.
Stephen creates a complicated catfishing scheme to tell Nicholas his role in the story. Distraught by his mother’s representation in the novel, Nicholas overdoses and ends up unconscious in the hospital.
Once in the hospital, Stephen tries to kill Nicholas by injecting him with an unknown substance. However, Catherine stops him just in time.
He then tries again once he spikes Catherine’s tea, which puts her into a deep slumber. At the hospital, Stephen tries to give Nicholas the deadly injection, but he stops once he sympathizes with a confused Nicholas, who is calling out for his mom.
What does Stephen see in the photograph?
After the truth comes out about Jonathan, Stephen then decides to burn all the explicit photos that his son took of Catherine on the night he raped her.
As he places the photos into the fire, Stephen sees a small but important detail he missed — Nicholas was there in the room when Catherine got assaulted.
A photograph shows a young Nicholas looking on at his mother from the reflection in the mirror. It’s at that moment that Stephen realizes his journey for retribution hurt more people than he realized.
“Revenge and retribution are just going to end up in the same way because it’s just like the saying — ‘He who seeks revenge should dig two graves,’” Cuarón says.
At the end of the show, Catherine opens up to Nicholas about what happened to her in Italy. Nicholas starts crying and says he doesn’t remember the trip or that she was raped. While feeling remorseful, he hugs his mother and they both take the opportunity to get to know one another better on a clean slate.
“Very often, we don’t remember traumatic episodes that we witness. But the fact that we don’t remember them doesn’t mean that they are not stored inside us and come out in different behaviors. This is shown with Nicholas and his addictive behaviors,” Cuarón says.
