Harlan Coben's latest series adaptation, Run Away, is captivating and thrilling for its first seven episodes, only to completely lose all its excitement and momentum in the finale, as the show's main mystery about Paige's disappearance comes to a glaring, anticlimactic conclusion.
The protagonist, Simon Greene (James Nesbitt), is the most sympathetic character, desperate to uncover the truth about where his daughter has gone, only for his determination to result in the shooting of his wife, Ingrid (Minnie Driver), who remains in a coma for a majority of the series, leading Simon to team up with the show's other heavily relied on ensemble character, Elena Ravenscroft (Ruth Jones), a private investigator.
Run Away has several different perspectives running at once, from Simon and Elena to assassins Ash (Jon Pointing) and Dee Dee (Maeve Courtier-Lilley), as well as detective duo Isaac Fagbenle (Alfred Enoch) and Ruby Todd (Amy Gledhill). This show is jam-packed with characters and storylines, but it all falls apart when revealing the truth about its biggest plot point.
In this limited series, every main storyline somewhat connects, but mostly acts in parallel lines. The Shining Truth cult assassin's plot line is integral to the story, but is simultaneously almost entirely separate from Paige's disappearance. Ash and Dee Dee are even too late to be responsible for Aaron's death, even though he is on their murder list. The Shining Truth does end up being relevant to Paige, Ingrid, Aaron, and Simon later, with the massive reveal that Aaron, Paige's supposed drug-addict boyfriend, was actually Paige's half-brother.
This plot twist conclusion allows the series to feel worth the journey. Yet even those aspects undercut Paige, as if she were more of a tool to uncover the truth about The Shining Truth than to tell the story of a young woman who had gone missing, mostly because she was never missing at all.
Perhaps one of the biggest plot twists the story tries to tell is that Ingrid had known where Paige was the entire time. The only reason for all the mysteries surrounding Paige was that several characters actively chose at various points in time to just not tell Simon anything of significance. These decisions led to Simon being completely unaware of big events in Paige's life, including that while Simon was looking for her, she was in rehab, and that Paige had discovered Ingrid's first child was alive.
Granted, this is also where plenty of the momentum issues fall into place, as many of the red herrings about Paige lead absolutely nowhere and are nearly all irrelevant.
Basically, this story exists for the main purpose that several characters, including and most especially Paige, decided that Simon did not need to know, or should not know, vital pieces of information. All of this is not even suggested as being relevant to the overall plot, as Run Away never paints a convincing reason why Paige and Ingrid, among others, would feel uncomfortable telling Simon about any trouble they were in, as the series never shows him as a particularly dark character that anyone was afraid of.
While there were claims that Simon was controlling, there were never really any scenes that show that, which undermines using that statement as a valid reason to keep Simon in the dark.
Otherwise, the various other plot threads work well in the background. Elena's investigating does the necessary job of trying to tie Aaron to the missing Henry and other recently murdered victims who were killed by Ash and Dee Dee. Isaac Fagbenle and Ruby Todd also follow a mostly compelling narrative as they aim to uncover who killed Aaron and why he died, even if they are not the ones to learn the real truth. Still, this show, for all the build-up it had leading to its conclusion, does not live up to the hype that it promises.
There are plenty of positive takeaways from the show, such as that it will likely hold the audience's attention as they try to unravel the truth about what happened to Paige, why, and how her life at college or introduction to Aaron played a role in the lead-up to her supposed disappearance. But, ultimately, viewers may find that whatever exciting conclusion they build up in their heads will be more exciting than the show's given ending.