'The Hunting Wives' Ending, Explained

Cosmopolitan

6 days ago

If you managed to rip through Netflix's latest drama, The Hunting Wives, then welcome to the club. The Big-Little-Lies-meets-Texas-Republican series is filled with plenty of juicy secrets and shocking twists that keep you wanting more. It follows the story of Sophie O'Neil (played by Brittany Snow) who moves from Boston to Texas with her husband and son. As she gets pulled into the world of socialite Margo Banks and her uber-rich husband, she gets tangled up in lies, affairs, and even a murder case.
We're left for episodes on end trying to figure out who is responsible for the death of Abby, a high schooler and the girlfriend of the son of one of Sophie's new friends. The finale finally reveals the murderer and so much more, so let's get into all the twists and turns in the last episode of The Hunting Wives.
We go through quite a few suspects for Abby's murder. Of course, Sophie is immediately a suspect since it was her gun that was used to kill Abby. And then there's Pastor Pete, who, in the penultimate episode, is found to have drugged and kidnapped two other teenage girls. One of the victims tells police that Pete had Abby's sweater in his possession and that he seemed to have an interest in her. This leads Officer Salazar to think Pete's guilty, but as it turns out, he was in the drunk tank the night of the murder, so he couldn't have done it. The focus then comes back to Sophie, and the cops arrest her and put her in jail.
Meanwhile, Margo and Callie go over to Jill's house and find that she's killed Abby's mom, Star. She says Star, who believes Jill killed Abby after finding out Jill's son, Brad, got Abby pregnant, showed up with a gun and was threatening her, so she killed Star in self-defense. Jill then points her gun at Margo. Callie tells her to put the gun down, but when she doesn't listen, Callie shoots Jill, killing her.
Of course, the cops (and seemingly everyone else) now think Jill is responsible for Abby's murder. Sophie is released from prison and heads back home to see her husband, Graham. She tells Graham she needs some time alone to figure out who she is and what she wants. She then heads over to Margo's house and she soon becomes not so sure that Jill is the murderer.
It wasn't Pastor Pete, Sophie, or Jill who killed Abby—it was Margo. Sophie, while looking for a moisturizer in Margo's bathroom, finds a box of tampons. She asks Margo why she has them when she told Sophie the first time they met that she can't use tampons. Margo denies saying that, but when Sophie leaves, she Googles what would cause someone to not use tampons and one of the top answers is an abortion.
Sophie goes to talk to Brad and he tells her that he never specifically told Pete that Abby had gotten pregnant and had an abortion. He just said "my girlfriend," but turns out he didn't mean Abby. Sophie, having seen Margo and Brad hooking up before, is even more suspicious of Margo. After doing some more digging, she discovers that Margo's biological father is the doctor in town—the same one who provided her alibi the night of the murder.
Now sure that her suspicions are right, Sophie goes to confront Margo, who admits she did it. She says Abby threatened to ruin her life and that killing her was a drunken mistake that she never meant to happen.
Margo doesn't get caught by the end of the series, but she's not exactly in a great position either. She admits to her husband, Jed, that she broke their rule and had slept with another man (Brad). She tells him about the pregnancy, the abortion, and Abby finding out, and he doesn't exactly take it well. He slaps her and tells her to get out of the house.
With nowhere left to go, Margo goes back to the trailer park where her brother still lives to stay with him. The next day, she heads out to see Callie and tells her she wants them to be together again. But it all seems to be a ploy so that she can see whether Callie's husband (the chief of police) has spoken to Sophie since Sophie found out she killed Abby, the answer to which was no.
Sophie may have figured out who did it, but she's not in a great spot at the end of the series. Her marriage is basically in the toilet, and her former best-friend-turned-lover is now officially a murderer. But things get worse when Margo's brother, trying to take things into his own hands to silence Sophie, follows Sophie as she leaves her home at night, cutting her off on a remote road, and demanding she get out of her car. Sophie tries to back away, but as she sees Margo's brother seemingly reach for a gun, she runs him over.
She gets out of the car and sees he's very much dead, so she drags his body into the woods and pushes him off a ledge into the lake down below. And that's where the show ends, with Sophie and Margo now in some very precarious positions, both responsible for a death but not having been caught.