There’s one episode recap per page, so dig in!
And believe it or not, it’s still unclear who will walk away the victor.
The third (and final?)
Credit: Helen Sloan/Netflix
With multiple people fighting for their lives, Stella is left to fight for her job.
Or rather, Burns does it for her.
When Burns is called to HQ, he assures them that Stella should remain the lead on this case.
He also assures them that he can “manage her,” which we all know is a lie.
(Key word: could.
We’re not sure yet.)
But it’s not his career that Tom wants to discuss.
“Why did you run to him,” he asks Stella.
So that should be fun.
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, things get … weird.
Stella sits next to her and holds her hand but says nothing.
Are we to believe this is Stella’s mother?
I’m so confused.
Translation: He’s not only awake, but he’s already scheming.
Let round three truly begin!
(Translation: How easy is it actually to bring a killer to justice?)
And I love it.
Let’s start with the first question, which takes a closer look at police conduct.
As Burns reminds Stella, her every decision is going to be analyzed in this case.
So yeah, you’re looking at a jealous man.
As Stella puts it, “We’ve chosen to work in a masculine paramilitary patriarchal culture.
Let’s not let it beat us.”
(Or is Paul faking?)
Long story short, this is the episode where Paul wakes up.
But we’ll get back to her in a moment.
According to Paul, he believes he was in a car accident and the year is 2006.
Even Sally can’t tell him when she stops by with Olivia.
It seems once Olivia told her mom what she’d read, Sally caved.
After all, in his mind, she’s still “small.”
Whether Paul is telling the truth or this is a long con is yet to be determined.
Either way, I’m loving the twist it puts on this season.
Elsewhere in the ICU, Rose catches a glimpse of Paul and decides she wants to go home.
By the end of the episode, she’s reunited with her daughter and discharged from the hospital.
They need to know if they’re alive or dead.
With someone new accessing him, Paul’s doing his best to answer questions about his life.
Yes, he’s heard of Facebook.
As he puts it, “I think I might be different, but I don’t know how.
I feel like I’m an alright person.”
The therapist (?)
tells him that he can relearn anything that he’s forgotten.
But as he so brilliantly says, “But the ownership is gone.”
So the ownership over his crimes is gone, but could he still go to jail for them?
The case is currently founded on memory-based evidence, which will pose problems.
But Burns doesn’t see it that way.
Quite frankly, he’s surprised Stella would want to “treat her paternalistically.”
For now, they’re moving forward with Sally’s charges.
They take him through all of his victims, one by one.
He recognizes no one … until they show him Rose’s photo.
He doesn’t recognize her.
According to her memory, he never sexually assaulted her.
He never did anything other than record those videos.
She simply informs him that “Paul Spector is a violent sexual sadist.”
Back at the hospital, Paul asks his nurse, Kira, why she’s so nice to him.
She believes that’s why he cried.
And right now, she’s on Team Paul.
Meanwhile, Team Stella might have found something.
Tom brings a murder case to Stella.
Then there’s Katie, who’s clearly planning something as she all but stalks Paul’s trial.
Translation: He remembers everything.
He’s still playing the game.
Steam slowly rises from the sudsy water.
Hands reach out and begin caressing and massaging hers.
She opens her eyesit’s Paul.
He lunges forward and begins to drown her in the tub.
It’s clearly a dream sequence, but is it Stella’s or Paul’s?
At this point in time, they have no evidence to place Paul Spector/Peter Baldwin in London in 2002.
They decide to sequester the dream journal of Stella’s, in which Paul left his own message.
When his lawyers arrive to hear the results, the doctor delivers a screed of medical jargon (infarc?
), none of which really explains Paul’s memory loss.
(So, perhaps, more support for him faking it.)
But a passerby caught sight of the family car being engulfed by the waves and rescued them.
“What frame of mind was she in to think they’d be better off dead?”
Stella asks Burns, in a rightful I-told-you-so moment.
Stella goes to the hospital to check on Sally Ann and the children.
Stella asks Olivia how she is, and instead of an answer, Olivia reaches out for a hug.Heartbreaking.
Of course, he doesn’t “remember” any of it, and looks ill.
Frustrated and disgusted, he begins to hit himself in the headrepeatedly.
That is, until his lawyers call for Kira, who eventually soothes him.
But she’s intercepted by a police officer before she can hand it off to his lawyers.
Paul is finally discharged and thanks Kira for everything.
(We can’t have seen the last of her, right?)
Stella has arrived at the psychiatric unit ahead of Paul, to brief his new doctor on the case.
She shares his disturbing journal entries and warns the physician not to underestimate him.
Did I miss someone handing that to him?
Where did he get it?
He flings it out of his palm right before he crosses the facility’s threshold.
Stellahaving seen him drop it on the security footagepicks it up on her way out.
The episode concludes with another (and perhaps final) interview between Stella and Rose Stagg.
Rose relays the final moments of her captivity, before asking to speak with Stella in private (i.e.
with the tape recorder turned off).
Apparently, their bondage activities became more and more intense as time went on.
She recalled Paul wanting her to play dead.
Paul wanting her to put a plastic bag over her head.
And Paul, ultimately, reviving her after a particularly rough interaction.
“And women?”
“I think so.
I can’t really explain it.”
Rose concludes that after she and Paul broke up, she believes he moved to London.
are something of a motif in this third and final season ofTheFall.
And the two opening scenes in “Wounds of Deadly Hate” serve as an interesting juxtaposition.
“So you see dreams as a kind of problem-solving?”
“I think maybe the sleeping brain makes connections more quickly than the waking mind,” she explains.
Cut to Paul standing precariously at the edge of a very tall building looking down at the traffic below.
He leans forward and lets gravity takes its course.
Once again, it’s a dream.
What connections has Paul made?
His guidance is to approach Paul with “respectful skepticism.”
No amount of her mother’s pleading can keep Katie from ultimately being sent to a juvenile facility.
(He may have known about all her inter-office dalliances, and she wanted to silence him.
Insert patriarchy-shattering eye roll here) Regardless, evidence continues to mount against Paul.
You guessed it: Paul Spector.
In Belfast: Another clue.
There’s no longer any denying Paul lived in London in 2002.
After debriefing Stella via Skype about all he’s uncovered in London, Anderson’s phone rings.
It’s Burnssloppy, drinking, and breathing heavily.
He needs to tell Anderson something, something about the children’s home in which David and Paul lived.
Real sick, fed up sh.
Burns tells Anderson this as a sort of litmus test for Alvarez.
If David was indeed there with Paul, he’ll know about this.
And the information proves vital.
Alvarez does recognize the image of Paul (Peter), but he’s hesitant to reveal much more.
Until, that is, Anderson mentions the dining room at the children’s home.
And how he felt like he owed Paul.
Back in Belfast, Paul has been having regular meetings with Dr. Anderson to unfurl his past.
We learn howjust days after his eighth birthdayhe found his mom hanging from belts, having killed herself.
We get an explanation for his voyeuristic tendencies, which began around the age of 13.
It wasn’t just to catch a glimpse of a naked neighbor.
He looked into those houses to see real, warm homes.
And it only made him feel more lonely.
But, this time, Stella remains mute.
She and Anderson call Paul in for questioning about the contents of the recently discovered storage unit.
Stella continues to just stare at Paul.
And the few times they do make eye contact are interesting.
Nonetheless, Paul is caught off-guard by the line of questioning.
Eastwood then comes in to arrest him for the murder of Susan Harper.
Outside of the interrogation room, Paul’s lawyers want answers from him.
“The police are being clever,” he says.
“They have something on me I can actually remember.”
EPISODE 6: Their Solitary Way
This is not how I imaginedThe Fallconcluding.
Especially after the cliffhanger season 2 finale in which Paul Spector’s life hung in the balance.
Why bring him back from the brink of death only to have him meet his ultimate fate weeks later?
(Albeit at his own hands.)
It’s both futile and poetic, I suppose.
And surprisingI’ll give creator and executive producer Allan Cubitt that.
All of that isn’t to say, however, that this was a bum finale.
No, in fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit despite a few out-of-step twists and turns.
We open with Paul explaining to his lawyers how he was involved with the death of Susan Harper.
She and David had sex while Paul watched.
When David left to find more alcohol, Paul invited Susan to “try something a bit different.”
Which, if we know anything about Paul, can’t be good.
He explains it was a sex game gone too far and Susan’s death was accidental.
His lawyer cautiously asks: “Have you remembered more in regard to the other charges?”
He then cleaned up the scene and left.
Like,really left.
It’s here that Stella addresses Paul for the first time.
“He said he felt in your debt,” she says to him.
“She speaks,” he replies sardonically.
She not only speaks, she pushes.
“No one escaped,” she continues.
He even had a pet name for you.
He called you “pretty boy.”
He chose you to be his favorite for a whole year.
When it came time for you to choose your successor you looked right past David Alvarez.
You chose another boy and for that he was eternally grateful."
Paul is agitated, and so he pushes too.
He says that when people first began telling him what he did as Paul Spector, he was horrified.
But little by little, it started to intrigue him.
He’s clearly relishing his rapt audiencesomething Stella soon points out.
“Rose Stagg was so right about you,” she says.
“She saw right through you.
Your infantile desire to have a captive and captivated audience.
You just want to be noticed.
To be the center of attention.
To have special treatment.
To make your mark.”
She concludes by telling him: “It’s time to grow up.”
Is it weird to say I thought better of this serial killer?
Punching Stella seems out of character for him, honestly.
I would have thought him above that.
Nonetheless, she’s left bloody on the ground while Paul turns to Anderson and breaks his arm.
It takes four guards to finally subdue Paul.
(Who, remember, just went through several surgeries not too long ago.
Is this man super human?)
In the hospital, Stella’s prognosis is better than you’d expect.
A few lacerations and perhaps a mild fracture.
She’s loath to stay overnight, but the doctor insists.
He even comes in to keep her company later, in a nice little moment.
Dr. Larson continues to do his due diligence, though.
He asks if Paul has any happy memories.
He cites one: a moment in which his infant daughter fell asleep in is arms.
Having a daughter filled the black hole in his heart, he says.
(An intentional reference to Stella’s earlier remark?)
“Do you think I’m treatable?”
“Of course,” Larson says.
“That’s different.”
She pays her a visit to check in.
She tells Katie that Paul doesn’t care about her.
That he doesn’t even know she exists.
It’s then that Stella’s phone ringsshe’s told of the horrible incident at Paul’s psychiatric unit.
As it turns out, Paul’s creepy friend Mark does end up playing an integral role.
A very integral role.
(Sorry for having doubted you, Mark!)
It looks as though he’s trying to escape but that’s not his ultimate goal.
He collides with Dr. Larson in the hallway and does to him what he did to Stella.
Paul first uses the belt to choke Mark to death.
Then, Paul puts a plastic bag over his own head and loops the belt around his neck.
And just like his mother, he affixes the belt to the back of a door and hangs himself.
By the time the nurses stumbled upon Larson and track down Paul, he is dead.
Stella arrives at the facility, takes a look at Paul’s dead body, and leaves.
Burns is the one to deliver the news on TV that Paul is dead.
He concludes by thanking Stella and delivering his own resignation.
Stella arrives home to an empty flat.
