What exactly happened in the ending of Bodies, the new Netflix crime thriller?
The answer is actually pretty bonkers, as is on par for the course for a show involving time travel – but we’ll do our best to break down the pretty out-there ending to the detective drama, which leaves quite a few questions up in the air. So, let’s discuss the Bodies‘ bonkers ending – and what comes before it, to the best of our abilities.
How Did Bodies Season 1 End?
Bodies is an eight-episode Netflix series that revolves around four detectives who end up investigating the same murder across four different time periods. And when we say the same murder, we mean it’s the exact same body. Detective Iris Maplewood (Shira Haas) is in 2053, Detective Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) in the present day, Detective Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) in 1941, and Detective Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) is in 1890, all in London. The reason they all come together is Sir Julian Harker or the second Sir Julian Harker.
A man called Elias Mannix (Stephen Graham) travels back in time to steal Harker’s identity in a very long-term plan to set off a bomb that will destroy London in the future. Gabriel Defoe (Tom Mothersdale) is the Body in Bodies. He is part of a group determined to thwart Mannix. And, he, of course, also dabbles in time travel. Doesn’t everyone? Maplewood, who works for Mannix, ends up shooting Defoe as he steps into his time-travel device, which is how his body ends up in four different years. That’s our setup.
But after that, Defoe and Hasan, of course, convince Maplewood to turn on Mannix. The finale picks up right after Maplewood throws herself into The Throat, Defoe’s time-travel device, and ends up in 1890. There she manages to give information to Hillinghead that ends up changing everything, even if it doesn’t change Hillinghead’s immediate fate.
Hillinghead dies, but not without telling Mannix enough to make him reconsider a message he’s leaving to his younger self. Ultimately, that message will push Mannix to not detonate the bomb, erasing his own existence, and changing the lives of each of the detectives along the way. That breaks the time loop they were all stuck in and sets their lives on a different course. The finale ends with all of them starting over in vastly different places than they started at the beginning of the show.
Related: Netflix’s Bodies is a Time-Travel Thriller About the Soul of London
Will There Be a Bodies Season 2?
Netflix hasn’t announced a second season of Bodies and at this point, it seems like with the loop closed there really isn’t a need for anything else. Though, considering the success of the first season and the many dangling plot threads the end of Season 1 left, it’s hard to say never. Netflix loves to capitalize on success.
Bodies is available to stream now on Netflix.
