Stay Close – Season 1 Episode 8: Recap, Review & Ending Explained

The Killer Revealed

Episode 8 of Stay Close starts with Ken stalking Lorraine from afar. Given he’s wanted by police, no one bats an eyelid as he heads into Vipers and orders a drink. He also pretends to be Carlton’s friend and questions Lorraine over what she knows. When she refuses to give up much, Ken bides his time to strike.

What happens to Barbie?

Meanwhile, the forensic team show up at the hidden compartment, sectioning off a small area. As they bring up the charred remains from underground, they learn 15 different bodies have been found. Some of those remains are very old and it could well be that Stewart Green is one of the deceased down there too. Does that mean Ray is the main killer here?

Megan receives another call from Frances, claiming a woman was in her room asking about Cassie. After heading over and reassuring her that everything is okay, Megan leaves and is blindsided by Barbie outside. She stabs Megan, dragging her out in the car park… and eventually receiving a knife to the gut for her troubles. An unremarkable end for an unremarkable assassin.

Is Ray the real killer?

Megan is rushed to hospital while the police show up on the pier in Megan’s place. They chase after Ray, who tries (and fails) to run away. Warning shots are fired, eventually leading to his arrest.

At the station, Ray tries to strike a deal with Broome. He wants to talk to Megan. In exchange for 10 minutes with her, he’ll open up and reveal absolutely everything he knows. Broome agrees to his terms, while simultaneously rushing out to stop Ken, realizing that he’s heading to Vipers – and Lorraine.

The meeting between Megan and Ray goes ahead in Broome’s absence. It turns out Megan received a note to head into the woods that fateful night. She believed it was Ray who left this note, but it appears someone else was responsible. Ray followed Megan, leading to him discovering Stewart’s body. Now, he didn’t want Megan to go to jail so he moved Stewart, taking him to somewhere remote and using his axe to chop the man to pieces. He then put those pieces into plastic bags, weighed down with stones, and dumped them all in a lake.

Who is the real killer?

When Broome arrives at Lorraine’s house, he finds blood staining the carpet and the walls, along with Ken dead on the floor. Lorraine nonchalantly appears with a knife and calmly asks Broome to cancel backup, which he does. It turns out Lorraine is responsible for killing everyone and the real killer. She’s angry at the world, and as a way to quell that anger, she’s decided to kill one person every year when the carnival rolled into town. She’s doing this for revenge and hitting back against abusive men.

Lorraine too is a victim of abuse and after being beaten badly, learned that she was pregnant. Things improved, at least for a little while, until the pair had a fall-out about dinner. It’s such a trivial thing but unfortunately when he hit out at her, he ruptured Lorraine’s uterus.

What started Lorraine’s killing spree? Why is she killing these men?

When the carnival came around, he tried to sleep with Lorraine. Obviously she was still grief-stricken and in no mood for this but when she said no, he forced himself onto her. Lorraine took a knife and killed him. In exchange for killing Lorraine’s baby, she killed her partner.

When she moved to Vipers, seeing men trying it on with vulnerable women made her snap. She decided to try and gain revenge for herself, luring different men out into the woods. Once there, she’d kill them and burn the bodies in the bunker. Lorraine was the one who killed Stewart Green, and also left the note for Megan too.

So why bring everything back up? Well, when Megan showed up at Vipers one night, curiosity got the better of her. Lorraine wanted to find out what happened to Stewart’s body, not realizing that it was Ray who actually moved his body. This is why she dug up the past, determined to find out how Megan did this. Stewart was not alive after all, and Lorraine lied.

What happens to Lorraine?

After taking the knife from her hands (without gloves I may add, tampering with the evidence!), Lorraine is taken away by other police officers, who show up and arrest her. Off the back of this, Ray points out where he dumped the pieces of Stewart’s body, while Lorraine admits everything, including how she set up Jamal to take the fall. As for Carlton though, she’s not actually sure what happened to his body.

So what happened to Carlton?

The fateful night Carlton went missing, Dave drove out and picked up Kayleigh and Bea from the woods. The orange car parked up there at the time belonged to Carlton and after seeing it show up on the news several days later, Dave was convinced that Kayleigh could be involved in some way. So naturally, he head back to the woods, moved the car and dumped it in the lake. This explains what Dave’s part to play in all this was.

The thing is, Kayleigh does know more than she’s letting on. That night in the woods, while they were being chased, Kayleigh stole Carlton’s keys. She ran back to where his car was parked, where Carlton blindsided her. She bundled Carlton into the trunk, who’s clearly groggy from the drugs he tried to spike her with. Kayleigh and Bea pushed the car together, eventually leading to Dave driving down to the car and dumping it in the lake.

How does Stay Close end?

As the series closes out, Megan comes to the shocking realization that Dave actually murdered Carlton, who somehow remained unconscious and out of it all that time.

The Episode Review

Stay Close bows out with all the plot points resolved and the killer finally revealed as Lorraine. This was certainly a nice little twist, and her motivations do make sense in the grand scheme of things. What makes less sense however, is how Lorraine managed to kill so many people without arousing any suspicions from police or the victims’ loved ones, as well as the actual woods not once appearing with bits of blood – beyond that stone we saw in the picture.

This alone should have ben enough for forensics to scour the area, but this whole show has been a really awful showing of shoddy police work.

The twins, Barbie and Ken, ultimately serve no purpose either. Del Flynn clearly hired these guys to do a professional job but they’ve been anything but. In fact, if I hired these guys as assassins, I’d want a refund. They’re sloppy, cartoonish and really quite incompetent. They’re basically a live action version of Team Rocket from Pokemon.

With the mystery finally revealed though, Stay Close mercifully coms to an end after a poor showing all round. The series has struggled to justify its 8 episode run-time, and some of the jumps in logic have certainly been tough to watch.

It’s unlikely this one will return for another season though, with everything wrapped up neatly with a little bow. One final twist is just enough to place a cherry atop this lop-sided cake, but not enough to go in for seconds. A disappointing showing all round.