Brand New Cherry Flavor Finale: Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Bodies

What’s in the trapdoor in Lisa’s apartment?

The finale of Brand New Cherry Flavor begins five months ago. Boro ends up reading tarot cards for a woman, while suffering from strange visions of Lisa and the jaguar in the basement.

Back in the present, Boro looks down the trapdoor and notices the sofa. She tells the couch to stay away from Lisa, reminding it that Lisa belongs to her. As she staggers away, Lisa patches herself up with Roy after being shot. She still has a bullet wedged in her chest it seems but for now she’s on the war path.

Does Lisa get revenge on Lou?

Lisa is consumed with revenge, determined to kill Lou before finishing things with Boro. When she heads over to his house, she finds the guy a complete mess. He’s slumped on his sofa, suffering from horrific visions next to his deceased son. Lou is broken, dropping to his knees and begging for forgiveness.

It turns out the turning point for Lou was Lisa rejecting him when he tried it on with her in the opening episode. As Lou himself admits, it “made him feel small”. It’s pretty pathetic in truth, especially after Lisa opened up to him about how much this film meant to him.

Anyway, as they talk Lisa notices there’s something in Lou’s eye. It’s a disgustingly long ringworm, and something she helps pull out. As it curls around the knife she wields, Jonathan nonchalantly eats it off the tip of the blade when Lisa is done. After calling in medical assistance, Lisa heads back to Boro’s.

What happened during the filming of Lucy’s Eye?

With the zombified guys just lurking about, Ralph shows up to confront Lisa. Only, Mary suddenly appears and slits Ralph’s throat without a second thought. Mary stand before Lisa and the pair discuss the past.

It seems like something was possessing Mary at the time she gouged her eye out, especially given she’s speaking in the third person at this moment in time. Lisa meanwhile, seems to be possessed by Boro and after her eyes go white (at the same time as Boro’s) Lisa restrains from the enticing pull and leaves.

It turns out this was all of Boro’s plan, with Mary used as a distraction to try and bide some time so Boro could make the jump across to Lisa’s body. Given how cracked and twisted Jennifer’s face is now, it seems the spirit is running out of energy and is grooming Lisa to be her replacement.

Who is the spirit haunting Lisa?

When Lisa finally does confront Boro, it all starts to make sense. That entity following Lisa is not actually trying to hurt her. Instead, it’s trying to help Lisa and seems to be the remnants of her Mother. Despite looking incredibly menacing, it’s been trying to warn Lisa away from Boro.

This matches up to the moments during the opening episodes, with Boro convincing Lisa not to pay any attention to these spirits. In a way, it seems like she knew this would happen and was trying to stop Lisa from making contact.

Boro has been grooming Lisa to bee the perfect vessel for her to jump into all this time. After helping her out, somehow healing her from the bullet wedged in her lung (which she spits out) Boro tries to convince Lisa to allow the jump. The only way this works is through a willing victim – but Lisa is in no mood to agree.

After Roy is viciously killed in front of her and Mary remains determined to stay by Boro’s side, Lisa’s list of allies grows thin as she hurries out the front door.

Does Lisa end up Directing her movie?

In the morning, Lisa shows up to meet with Alvin. She’s back Directing her own film and Lou isn’t involved in the project at all anymore. Roy is also out from the lead role too (for obvious reasons). Just before taking the job, Lisa stops by the hospital where Lou is very-much alive but completely blind. He wishes Lisa luck as she leaves his office.

Time passes and Lisa blanks Alvin, deciding against shooting her movie and heading home to Brazil. Meanwhile, Boro jumps into Mary’s body as a consolation prize and leaves.

Why does Lisa go home?

A lot of this season’s big issues have stemmed around Lisa’s familial issues and her estranged relationship with her Mother. After being abandoned as a child, Lisa has had a pretty tumultuous time and filmmaking has been her way of reaching out to her Mum. The moments meeting the jaguar and facing her fears can be seen as a way of Lisa herself facing up to her own insecurities and fears about her Mother.

Now that she’s faced this, she’s no longer burdened by the past and can make a fresh start. Given she grew up in Brazil, it seems only fitting that she fly across to South America to do this.

The Episode Review

Brand New Cherry Flavor ends with a pretty decent finale in hindsight, one that manages to explain away most of the big plot points while leaving plenty to the imagination.

The morbid body horror with the kittens can be directly attributed to symbolizing witchcraft and darkness, while the menacing spirit and the trapdoor are manifestations of the ghosts Lisa has been carrying around with her. To be fair, this is quite literally confirmed when Lisa’s Mother rocks up.

The fact that Boro was the evil spirit all along is perhaps a little obvious and the quirky Santa Clarita Diet-esque segments involving Jonathan and Lou definitely stand out here as the worst parts of the series.

However, the revenge comes full circle in the end and the empowering way Lisa gets her revenge but then decides to go back home rather than chase glory is a really nice way to end her character. The moments prior to this also confirm that Lisa and Mary were being possessed in their student film, which explains why the latter gouged out her eye and ate it.

The lack of police intervention at any moment in this series is pretty disappointing though and is otherwise a black spot on what’s been a really stylish and enjoyable series. It’s definitely had its rough patches but overall Brand New Cherry Flavor has been a fascinating and memorable dive into a horrific vision of Hollywood’s underbelly.