Netflix have been spoiling fans over the last year, giving us epic shows and movies like Squid Game, Don’t Look Up, The Unforgiveable, and The Witcher. It seems Stay Close is yet another gem that Netflix had hidden up their sleeve.
The crime drama, based on the novel under the same name, was available to stream on Netflix on New Year’s Eve, and instantaneously rocketed to success.
Stay Close primarily focuses on mother of three, Megan, who initially appears to hide a dark secret pretty well. Seemingly all innocent, her wedding awaits her, and life couldn’t be any more perfect. That is until, plot twist: a familiar face appears across a tennis court that sends her picture-perfect world spiralling out of control. A coffee date teaches us that the familiar face is Lorraine, and Megan’s actual name is Cassie, all adding to the cryptic plot that keeps creating questions for us to eagerly wait to get the answers to. This is certainly not a show that you can just have on in the background — full attention is constantly required.
The eight-episode series is based on a collection of novels written by Harlan Coben, an American author who signed a multi-million-dollar five-year deal with Netflix that would see 14 of Coben’s novels be developed into either Netflix films or series. The title that kicked off this collection was The Stranger, released back in January of 2020.
The beginning of the show starts with a bit of background teasing us with the disappearance of Carlton Flynn, a fantastic cold open which as expected, gets us wondering. It later unfolds that this missing person case is linked to another one from years earlier, and at this point, we have so many questions.
To conclude this captivating series, Netflix gets us gasping once again, just like we were when Cassie beat the living hell out of the guys that tried to steal her jewellery. The big shocker of the finale, however, was Lorraine amazing us all by taking the fall for the deaths of a number of men, including Flynn and Green. She explains herself by saying she was an “avenging angel”, killing men that threatened the life of women.
We later learn that Lorraine wasn’t being entirely honest, and eventually find out that it was Megan’s husband Dave that was behind the death of Flynn. Previously in the drama series, we see Dave pushing Flynn’s car into a body of water to protect his daughter. Shockingly in this finale, we see that she hit him over the head and trapped him in the boot of his car. He was still breathing and very much alive before, as we already know, Dave pushes the car into the water.
The show’s conclusion could not have been predicted by anyone and left fans utterly speechless. Of course, with the way the show ran its course, we knew that there would be a great effort to shock fans in the epic way that it did, but how Netflix did it? That was an effort that no one could have expected.
