SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Apple TV+’s “Presumed Innocent” Season 1 finale titled “The Verdict.”
Since David E. Kelley’s “Presumed Innocent” debuted on Apple TV+ last month, the series has taken viewers on a ride filled with shocking clues and troubling revelations, all while diving into the minds of narcissistic and obsessive men. Over eight episodes, “Presumed Innocent” followed former chief deputy prosecutor Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal), who was on trial for the murder of his lover and colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve).
In the “Presumed Innocent” finale — an episode that was not provided as a screener ahead of time to journalists —viewers learned that Carolyn’s killer is Rusty’s teenage daughter, Jaden (Chase Infiniti). After Rusty was found not guilty, this is how audiences found out who did it.
From the beginning, there were four major suspects. Rusty, of course, was obsessed with Carolyn. Throughout the series, their intense and passionate relationship was revealed in flashbacks. After Carolyn broke off their affair, Rusty sent her dozens of frantic texts that varied from declaring his love for her to threats. However, throughout the series, Rusty has maintained his innocence. Presenting him as the actual murderer would seem all too obvious, especially considering the outcome of HBO’s “The Undoing,” another Kelley series, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant.
Viewers have also suspected that Rusty’s long-suffering wife, Barbara (Ruth Negga), was the true culprit. After all, in Scott Turow’s 1987 novel — and the 1990 film adaptation of it, which starred Harrison Ford — Rusty’s wife struck the fatal blow that killed Carolyn, something that wasn’t revealed until the film’s shocking final moments. But since “Presumed Innocent” began, Kelley has woven a narrative wholly distinct from the film and Turow’s novel. More than anything, Barbara seemed desperate to get her family back on track, and Carolyn’s death had obviously done the opposite of that.
There were two other likely suspects. First was the icky, loathsome Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard), who took over Rusty’s job as a chief deputy prosecutor, and eviscerated him on the stand in the penultimate episode, “The Witness.” Not only was Tommy envious of Rusty’s professional success, but he was also obsessed with Carolyn, so much so that she had filed a formal complaint against him before her death. It seemed possible that Tommy tried to leverage the fact that Carolyn had buried evidence in a case to force her to date him, and it all went badly. Moreover, in the final moments of “The Witness,” Tommy returned home to see that his house was in disarray. On his kitchen countertop laid the missing murder weapon, a fire poker with a note attached that read, “Go Fuck Yourself.” It seemed that either Rusty or Barbara was toying with him.
Finally, and perhaps least obvious, was Eugenia Milk (Virginia Kull), another colleague in Chicago’s prosecuting attorney’s office. She had long-held a crush on Rusty, and had a barely veiled disdain for Carolyn, whom she felt was ruining Rusty’s life. While Eugenia seemed like a long-shot to some, she was a character who always observed a lot more than she let on.
There were also runner-up suspects, Carolyn’s angry, estranged son, Michael Caldwell (Tate Birchmore) and Kyle Sabich (Kingston Rumi Southwick) — Rusty and Barbara’s son — who knew about his dad’s affair. Yet both boys seem more curious about their parents’ private lives than actually capable of such a heinous and carefully curated act.
But in the end, none of these suspects — all of whom seemed guilty at different points throughout the series — turned out to be the killer.
The finale opens with the police combing through Tommy’s house to find DNA evidence or fingerprints of whoever left the fire poker. When no evidence is found, Tommy and Rusty decide to proceed with the trial, culminating in two riveting closing arguments — and an eventual not-guilty verdict for Rusty.
As all of those affected by the Rusty-Carolyn affair — and Carolyn’s subsequent murder — try to resume their lives, Rusty confronts Barbara one evening as she is exercising on the spin bike in their garage. He tells her, “I actually knew from the beginning, then I didn’t know, then I knew again for sure.” Floored by his accusations, Barbara tells him he’s sick. Rusty reveals that he went back to Carolyn’s apartment the night she was murdered. When he realized she was dead, and that Barbara was likely the culprit, he tied up her body to try to make it look like convicted murderer Liam Reynolds (Mark Harelik), who had previously threatened Carolyn, had committed the crime.
When Barbara tells Rusty that he’s gone insane and is wrong, he reveals that he’s been tracking her car, and he knows that she planted the fire poker at Tommy’s house. Overhearing her parents’ conversation, Jaden enters the garage and admits that she went to Carolyn’s house the night of her murder. Jaden explains that she told Carolyn to stay away from Rusty, but when Carolyn revealed her pregnancy and that Rusty was the baby’s father, the teenage girl snapped. Fleeing the scene, she drove home in a daze, cleaning the car and burying the fire poker in the backyard. She says she planted the fire poker at Tommy’s only because she was angry he was accusing her father of something he didn’t do.
With Barbara too stunned to speak following her daughter’s revelation, Rusty takes charge. He declares that the three of them will never speak of the incident again, and that Jaden acted to defend their family. In the end, he says that this entire ordeal has been all his fault.
“Presumed Innocent,” though a limited series, has already been renewed for a second season, revolving around a new case. According to Apple TV+, the legal thriller been been the streamer’s most-watched drama since its 2019 launch.
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