Netflix’s The Stranger season 1, episode 8 recap

The truth about the Stranger finally comes out and Adam discovers what happened to Corrine, but the truth is not always freeing.

Katz is distracted when Olivia’s mom turns up on his doorstep, allowing Joanna to escape. Katz takes his ex-wife’s car and escapes himself before Wes and the police show up on The Stranger.

Ed’s private detective is able to find Christine Killane’s work and home address from her tax returns and Adam sets out to find her. He calls Joanna, but Katz is the one who has her phone. Adam gives Katz a message for her, saying that he’s found the Stranger and that he’ll text the address when he arrives.

But when Adam gets there, Chrissy knocks him out and ties him up. When he wakes up, he’s confronted with Chrissy and Ingrid who are understandably wary of this tall, aggravated man. He just wants to know where his wife is, but they don’t know anything about it.

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Chrissy tries to explain her mission to expose lies. When she was a child she believed her mother left her, but as she grew older she began to question things. That’s when all these life-shattering lies came out. Not only did she discover that her father, Martin Killane, killed her mother all those years ago, but that Killane wasn’t even her biological father. It turns out, of course, that Ed Price is her biological father and that she’s Adam’s half-sister.

Adam begins to understand, but that’s when Katz bursts in and threatens everyone with a gun. Adam is able to free himself and there’s a struggle. Ingrid gets shot and then Chrissy gets shot as she takes a bullet for Adam. The police arrive and arrest Katz while Chrissy and Ingrid go to the hospital.

Adam talks with Chrissy at the hospital where she realizes that her fanatic mission caused someone to die. She didn’t know she would be causing so much pain by revealing secrets, she thought she would be freeing people. She really does think of Adam as a brother and just wanted to protect him from lies by telling him the truth. She doesn’t know where Corrine is and she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Chrissy was hired to find dirt on Corrine by the local football coach Bob Baime. But when Adam confronts him, it turns out he was only trying to blackmail Corrine because Tripp told him that she was trying to pin the embezzlement on him. So why was Tripp trying to stir up trouble by pointing fingers?

It’s pretty obvious at this point that Tripp embezzled the money and was trying to cover it up by pointing fingers and throwing red herrings. Corrine found out about it and gave him an ultimatum, that’s what her last phone call was really about.

Adam is desperate and so close to the truth. Chrissy took Katz’s gun from the scene and sneaked it to Adam and now he uses it to force Tripp to take him to Corrine.

Joanna hears about Adam attacking Bob Baime at the sports club. She knows something serious is up and begins trying to track him down. She talks with Thomas and asks him to help her by using the phone tracking app. By the time Tripp shows Adam where Corrine is, she’s not far behind.

Unfortunately, Corrine is buried in the woods. Adam doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand at first, but you can tell he certainly suspects she’s dead the closer they get to where Tripp buried her. His devastated reaction is absolutely heartbreaking.

Tripp explains that he didn’t mean to kill her, but once she told him his time was up and that she had to report the theft, he grabbed the closest thing to him and hit her with it. He couldn’t let it come out or he would lose everything.

Of course, Tripp thinks he’s untouchable. He killed Corrine in her own garage with a hammer from Adam’s toolbox and buried her with one of his shovels. The most likely suspect in the murder of a wife is her husband and there’s plenty of evidence linking Adam to the crime.

Adam shoots Tripp to death. He can’t allow Tripp to get away with it, but he can’t allow himself to be implicated in a murder that could leave his children parentless. Joanna is nearby and hears the shots.

What happens next is left unclear as the next time we see Adam it’s six months later and he, Thomas, Ed, and his young boys watch over Ryan as he plays in a football match. It’s nice to see Ed participating in Adam’s life like he said he wanted to.

Joanna stops by to see how he’s doing. Adam used Katz’s gun to kill Tripp, so it was easy for Joanna to plant the gun and blame the murders on Katz. He already killed Heidi, so what’s two more murders pinned on him?

Chrissy Killane absconded after being released from the hospital, but she’s still watching over her family. As Joanna takes her leave and Adam and family celebrate a game winning goal scored by Ryan, we see that Chrissy is there watching from a discreet distance.

Overall, the Netflix version of The Stranger was much more twisted and convoluted than Harlan Coben’s original novel, but the core mystery remained the same and the actors magically portrayed the characters exactly how I envisioned them while reading the book. The Stranger’s mission makes a lot more sense once you give her a connection to Adam Price and his family, which was totally lacking in the book.

But the Stranger is still out there, so could there be a season two? And if so, what would it be about? And does there really need to be a second season?