Netflix viewers are calling The Watcher's ending the "worst ending" ever

18 October 2022, 16:11

Watch Netflix’s The Watcher trailer

By Katie Louise Smith

"The ending of The Watcher might be hands down the worst ending to any piece of cinema I’ve ever had to see."

Have you finished watching Netflix's new thriller series The Watcher yet? Yes? Good – you'll probably have a lot of thoughts about that ending then... (If you haven't finished it yet, there's major spoilers ahead!)

The Watcher was created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brenner and is based on a true story that was published by New York Magazine back in 2018. The original article detailed the New Jersey-based Broaddus family who were terrorised by threatening letters sent by an anonymous person to their new house – 657 Boulevard.

The Netflix series follows that story, adding several Ryan Murphy-shaped embellishments along the way. And for the most part, the ending is pretty similar to what happened in real life.

However, people who tuned in to watch the show without knowing it was based on a true story – and without knowing how the saga ended in real life – are now overwhelmingly disappointed by the ending.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for The Watcher ending.

How does The Watcher end? Who is The Watcher?

The Brannocks eventually move out of the house before Jennifer Coolidge's realtor Karen Calhoun moves in and receives her first letter. She quickly moves out after a particularly terrifying night, and another family move in. As the days go on, the neighbours sit and watch the house as usual.

Lacking closure, Dean is still low-key obsessed with the house. He pulls up outside of the house one day, meets the new owner and watches as he takes his mail. It's unclear if he's checking to see if The Watcher has sent them a letter, or if Dean himself has written one for the new family. As Dean drives away, we see that Nora has been following him.

At the end of the series, The Watcher is never revealed. The finals that flash up on-screen are: "The Watcher case remains unsolved."

Now viewers are complaining that the ending of the show – along with all the unanswered plot threads – was terrible, branding it one of the "worst endings" they've ever seen.

Just as the show tells viewers, The Watcher was never caught in real life either. Originally, the police suspected that neighbour Michael Langford was guilty of sending the letters, but there was not enough evidence to arrest him.

DNA reports suggested that The Watcher was a woman, and police began investigating Michael's sister Abby and Maria Broaddus herself. Neither were a match.

The family who lived in the house before the Broadduses had lived there for 23 years, and had only received one letter just before they moved out. Some of the neighbours reportedly believed that Derek and Maria actually wrote the letters to themselves in order to sell their story, but there is no evidence to suggest that they did.

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