Woof. Well, that was a lot more gruesome than I expected.
After riding for this girl for ten episodes, I was obviously disappointed to find that Isabella was the evil murderer after all, but can we at least agree that Luke’s death was ultimately a team effort? Megan implies that Izzie masterminded the plot to kidnap, drug, and interrogate Luke (considering that final scene, this tracks), but it’s not like Megan didn’t take part in the kidnapping and drugging, without which Luke might still be alive. And Brent did aggressively shove Luke on the edge of the dock — causing his baby bro to hit his head on the metal ladder before falling into the water — and was way too quick to assume Luke had drowned. Couldn’t he have run straight to the police? Or at least woken Steve up immediately rather than waiting until the morning? Isabella was the only person who killed Luke on purpose, but it’s not like she didn’t have help.
Don’t worry; this is not going to be an Isabella-apologist recap. I will be haunted by nightmares of Izzie pressing Luke’s face into the mud with her boot for at least as long as I will be wondering how she knew to look for him at the dock in the first place.
The Murdaugh-level series of events that led to Luke’s untimely demise went like so: After escaping the cabin and collapsing at the dock, Luke paged his brother Brent, who, to his surprise, actually showed up. But instead of just being grateful for the rescue, a very distraught Luke starts railing at his brother for turning him into a little MiniMe douchebag with a “sex tape†of his own. He confesses that he meant to humiliate Brent, Steve, and some other poor girl by playing one of Brent’s little home movies at the Christmas party but accidentally grabbed the wrong tape. But the bridge too far for Brent is when Luke says, “What we all know†about the car accident that killed their mother. She didn’t crash because she was distracted by 8-year-old Luke, which is the line Steve has been peddling to save family face, but because she’d been driving drunk. Brent accidentally shoves Luke off the dock in anger, can’t find him when he belatedly jumps in to save him, and then, I guess, goes home. Following this, Isabella arrives just in time to find Luke washed up on the bank, spluttering but still alive somehow; forces his head down into the water with her foot to finish the job; then kicks his body back into the bay. Amazingly, almost all of this was captured on CCTV. Meaning that even after finding Luke’s body, Sheriff Myer did not ever search the area surrounding the likeliest possible murder scene for surveillance footage.
Anyway, before we find out that Isabella is a probable teen serial killer with serious emotional-attachment issues (I see you Girl, Interrupted movie theater marquee), all we know is that Brent is pretty sure he killed Luke and that Steve is trying to help him cover it up by framing Isabella or, failing that, Ned. Unfortunately for him, Iz is on at least her second rodeo, and the idea for her and Megan to point the finger at each other was actually a legal strategy of her own devising. As long as they are telling conflicting stories, Sheriff Myer can’t put together a clear theory of the case and has to let them both go for lack of evidence.
Having thus temporarily evaded the long arm of the law, the girls decide to find the ~real~ murderer using Megan’s legendary coding skills to remotely access Ned’s surveillance footage. This is just like old times! Except it’s not, Slicked Hair Megan reminds Isabella, who is still flush with excitement from confronting Steve Chambers at his office. In August of 2000, Megan and Isabella are war buddies, not actual buddies, because Isabella still shot Luke in the face even if she says it was an accident. “You wouldn’t know real loyalty if it bit you in the ass!†Izzie tells Megan peevishly, and then she storms off to edit the video of them with Luke in the cabin so it looks like Megan was the one to shoot Luke in the face. By the time Sheriff “Why Look for Evidence When I Can Just Use Whatever Sketchily Sourced Video Tapes Have Been Literally Dropped on My Doorstep Recently†Myer is arresting Megan for Luke’s murder, Isabella is already on a flight to Ibiza and gushing to her seatmate about her best friend in Chatham. She’s also introducing herself as “Lisa†now, so make of that what you will because I’m still confused.
But even with Isabella having fucked off, Ned no longer answering her AIM messages, and Luke dead, Megan still has one best friend left, and it is, ironically, Brent. Brent does have a conscience, it seems, and he just can’t bear the thought of Megan going down for Luke’s murder. So he comes to visit her in the interrogation room and makes a full confession, leaving Megan free to go home and hack one more piece of vital CCTV footage: the one from the camera pointed directly at the dock where Isabella murdered Luke with her foot and kicked his body out to sea.
Good luck with that new coding job in Palo Alto, girl! But if that doesn’t work out, Chatham could clearly use a new sheriff.