Anxious People – Season 1 Episode 6: Recap, Review & Ending Explained

You Should Know, It’s Not Your Fault

Episode 6 of Anxious People begins with a big reveal. Jim arrived at the house the day of the hostage situation, aware that Liv is the robber, who sobs in his arms. This is when he has a change of heart and decides against incriminating her.

What drove Liv to rob a bank?

Off the back of Liv and her partner Lasse breaking up, Liv was actually on the verge of getting an apartment but time is of the essence. Liv needed 6500 in order to pay the deposit and rent on her apartment upfront, made even worse by the looming possibility of losing custody to her children unless she paid up. This is what prompted her to take drastic action and rob the bank.

One thing lead to another and that’s what drove Liv to end up in the escalating hostage situation. This also explains why Jim deleted the surveillance footage too. He decided to look upon her compassionately and decided to give her a chance, blaming her actions on extreme stress.

Who was the man on the bridge?

When Jack finds out what his father has done, banding the law to his will, he’s livid. As he starts investigating more of Liv’s life, his hostility soon starts to wane. In fact, he’s crushed when he finds out Liv is slumming it in a storeroom. Her landlord isn’t exactly kind either, complaining about her “whinging” over the rent and her accommodation.

When Jack shows up at the estate agents, determined to grill Zarah for information, he notices the same blue letter he saw all those years back.

Jack realizes that the man who commit suicide, a guy by the name of Gustav, is the same one from the apartment. Gustav is also Estelle’s son too. Everything is connected. Zarah hasn’t opened the letter yet either, with the memories too painful to endure.

When Jack asks Estelle about this same situation, he learns that Gustav had incurable cancer and decided to end his suffering. Estelle was actually aware of this, but wasn’t aware of Jim being there at the bridge. Jack’s guilt at failing to save him is ill-conceived; Jack was never going to save his life, even if he stopped him from jumping.

How did Liv escape the apartment that night?

Flashbacks reveal more about what happened that fateful day during the hostage situation. All the hostages agreed to make a pact and keep Liv’s ordeal a secret. They concocted a plan to pretend they’ve been through a horrific ordeal together and feign ignorance when asked questions.

In their absence, Estelle left a key to the adjacent apartment, which Liv used to sneak in and hide while the police raided Estelle’s apartment.

Does Jack arrest Liv?

Upon learning all this, Liv’s fate hangs in the balance and it all falls to Jim to make the decision over whether she’s incriminated or not. When Jack arrives at her apartment (the one she’s given by Estelle) and sees the kids there, he has a change of heart and decides not to follow through with this.

What’s in the letter?

The big mystery of the letter is revealed later on when Zarah and Lennart head out together. It turns out Gustav wrote to Zarah, reassuring her that she’s not to blame for what happened to him. It’s a good bit of closure for her and ironically if she’d actually opened this all those years ago, she may not have been consumed by guilt or even been at the apartment that day!

How does Anxious People end?

What begins as a meeting of strangers soon ends with all our different characters forming a bond. That goes for Jack and Jill too, who meet up in hospital and patch up their differences.

The Episode Review

So Anxious People bows out without much aplomb, with an indifferent shrug from an episode that showcases a community of people coming together to share a secret for the greater good. It’s a nice way to round things out but also a little unbelievable, especially after brining in the big dogs from Stockholm. Surely they would have kept at this case and tried to solve it rather than leaving it to the father/son duo to figure out?

That aside, most of the characters here have been pretty archetypal and there’s not much in the way of depth for anyone beyond Jack. And even he doesn’t get a wholly convincing arc, with the whole drama involving Jill swept under the rug in the wake of this mystery.

Anxious People has been a pretty disappointing venture overall and what started as a bit of a chaotic mishmash of ideas, ends in sorta the same way. It’s not a bad show, but it’s certainly no a great one either.