The Boy from the Woods

The next morning, Hester wakes up hungover at Laila’s house. She vaguely hears Laila speaking to someone downstairs. Oren has left her a voicemail, apologizing for speaking callously about the car accident. Hester texts him back but intends to end the relationship. By the time she makes her way downstairs, Laila is alone. When Matthew appears, Hester asks him about Laila’s mystery visitor. Matthew identifies her as Ava O’Brien.

Hester takes an Uber to Maynard Manor, where protestors are gathered at the gate. Oren is there for crowd control; their encounter is awkward. Wilde updates Hester on Naomi’s phone call, noting that she sounded upbeat rather than distressed. Hester gives Wilde her own update about Ava. Wilde drops her off at the mansion and then heads off to find Ava. Saul intercepts him and promises new information, but only if Wilde goes with him.

Saul takes Wilde to Sing Sing Correctional Facility. On the way there, Saul demands a briefing on why the tape was leaked. Wilde tells him that Crash is missing and that he has to be back at the Maynards’ mansion before the noon deadline. Saul astutely notes that the leaked video footage is not as damaging as he assumed it would be because of Rusty’s public relations team.

The prisoner they visit is in a wheelchair. He is a Black man named Raymond Stark, who was framed for the murder of a wealthy white Capitol Hill intern named Christopher Anson in 1986. The murder weapon was planted under his bed by a corrupt cop, but no one wanted to touch his case because it was too high profile and Anson’s family had already accepted him as a scapegoat. Anson, Rusty, Dash, and Delia all interned at Capitol Hill together.

As they leave Sing Sing, Wilde checks in with Rola, who has found information about Pia. In the car, Wilde deduces that Saul believes that the incriminating footage contains a confession that Rusty killed Anson. Saul elaborates: As interns, Rusty and Anson didn’t get along—they competed and fought. On the night of Anson’s murder, they argued. Dash separated them, and Anson left first, with Rusty leaving soon after. The case report says that Anson left to buy drugs and that Raymond was either his dealer or an opportunist who killed and robbed him. Anson’s body was dumped at the crime scene postmortem. The case, the rumored footage, and Rusty’s cold personality all support Saul’s theory.

Saul also explains Raymond’s wheelchair. Raymond was attacked in prison by a gang of men who broke his spine as retaliation for Anson’s murder. The attack rendered him a paraplegic. Raymond has dreamed of getting out of prison for three decades, and he believes that his mother died from the stress of his unjust imprisonment. Wilde runs the rest of the way to Maynard Manor to calm down. He meets Hester, who is on her way to see Pia. He tells her about Raymond, and she immediately decides to take his case pro bono.

Since he still has some time before the noon deadline, Wilde returns home. PB, his relative from the DNA results email, has contacted him, offering possible answers for the blanks in Wilde’s memory. Wilde goes back to the mansion. He confronts the Maynards with the Capitol Hill intern photo; they are aware of the case and of Raymond Stark but insist that Raymond is the guilty party. Before they can ask why Wilde knows about Raymond, they receive Crash’s coordinates: It is the same location where Wilde was found in 1986.

Wilde and Rola leave immediately to retrieve Crash. The remote location and difficult approach suggest that it is a distraction. Wilde reaches the destination but finds only a red cooler. Inside is Crash’s finger with his skull ring on it.

Pia has married into wealth and has a son with her second husband. When Hester meets with her, Pia initially denies any connection with Naomi but eventually gives her side of the story. She tried to be a model but didn’t fit the industry. Bernard was constantly jealous; their inability to have biological children was because of his infertility, not hers. She insists that Bernard was the manipulative, abusive parent. Pia didn’t want children and couldn’t bond with Naomi. Eventually, she left, abandoning Naomi and all her parental rights. Recently, Naomi reached out to Pia and asked her to keep silent about her disappearance; Naomi hoped that the assumption that she was with Pia would buy her time and distract pursuers. Hester is unimpressed by Pia; she considers both parents to be scum.

In Westville, the Maynards see the finger. Dash collapses, and Delia falls apart. Wilde gives the finger to EMTs to preserve it. They receive another ransom note telling them that they have 30 minutes to send the proper footage or else Crash’s arm will be next. Police involvement will guarantee his painful death. Delia is confused, but Dash rushes to his computer. He reveals what he’s concealed the entire time: the murder tape.

The night Anson died, he and Rusty fought; Dash separated them. Delia was away. Later that night, Rusty summoned Dash. Dash took his pocket camera with him. Anson was already dead; Rusty, though panicked on the phone, was calm on camera. Rusty wanted Dash to help him transport the body in his car and dump it. He claimed that Anson was high and broke in; the murder was self-defense. However, given Anson’s wealthy connections and Rusty’s modest background, there was no way that he could tell the truth and be believed. Rusty threatened Dash with the bloody murder weapon. Dash agreed to assist him.

In the present, Dash explains what happened next: They dumped Anson’s body in an alley; Rusty cleaned the murder weapon and tossed it. He also made a deal with Dash: In exchange for Dash’s help with the body, Rusty would let him keep the video footage as insurance, and Rusty would break up with Delia, his girlfriend at the time. Delia is furious and orders Dash to upload the tape. Their happy marriage is over.

Rola and Wilde are on their way to find Crash. As they drive, Rola gently rebukes Wilde for not staying in touch with their foster family or acknowledging their family bonds. Wilde attempts to navigate them to a highway rest stop, but it’s closed, so they take the next exit and double back, finding an abandoned donut shop at the rest stop. As they approach, Wilde checks his phone’s GPS tracker, which confirms his suspicions. He breaks in. Crash is inside, chained to the wall; his hand is bandaged. Crash knows nothing about his assailants or about Naomi. Rola frees him and takes him to the hospital to reattach his finger. Wilde waits for the kidnappers to return to their hideout.

Wilde heads to the garage by the donut shop and sneaks in. Gavin’s car, bugged with a GPS tracker, is already there. Gavin is in the garage office, using the computer. Saul arrives in the second bugged car. Saul and Gavin discuss Dash’s murder tape, saying that it’s the one they’ve been waiting for. They leak it and then decide to return Crash to his family. Wilde confronts them at gunpoint.

Each side explains their journey to this point. Wilde deduced that Gavin was Crash’s kidnapper because it was implausible that Crash could have been kidnapped under Gavin’s watch. Saul knew too many things he shouldn’t and kept directing Wilde toward Naomi, implying that the teens ran away together, so Wilde deduced that he was also involved. Wilde tracked both their cars and found their hideout. Gavin explains that he became disillusioned with Rusty, and Saul recruited him to his side. Though they have different political stances, they agree that Rusty is their common enemy because he wants to turn everyone into extremists. Wilde observes the irony of this given the extremity of their actions, namely the ransom threats and Crash’s severed finger. Gavin and Saul try to convince Wilde that their actions are justified and then realize that Wilde let them leak the footage before confronting them.

Gavin and Saul prepare for a fight, but Wilde refuses. He only came to find the missing teens. Crash was rescued, but Naomi isn’t there, and Gavin and Saul aren’t connected to her disappearance. Wilde leaves.

Three weeks after Crash’s rescue, the fallout from the footage is beginning to clear. Hester is the only person besides Wilde who knows the full truth about the kidnappers, but she disagrees with his extrajudicial methods. Dash can’t authenticate the murder tape without implicating himself, and Hester can’t fight for Raymond due to her conflicts of interest with the Maynards. The media and the internet fight about the clip but have no proof either way. Crash’s finger was reattached, and his kidnapping was kept quiet. The Maynards plan to move overseas.

Delia visits Hester’s office. She has decided to stay with Dash, and she reveals one final secret: She killed Anson. He and Rusty often fought over her. Delia and Rusty were going steady at the time, and Rusty was moving up on the internship ladder. Anson was jealous and went to Delia’s home after the bar fight. Drunk, he raped her. Delia killed him out of self-defense and remained shell-shocked until Rusty found her and hid her in a hotel while he took care of the body. However, they broke up in the aftermath; Delia began seeing Dash, and Rusty soon lost his family in a car accident.

Though Hester tries to convince Delia to come forward with the truth, she refuses, even though her testimony could free Raymond Stark. Hester seeks out Oren.

Oren takes Hester to the site of David’s fatal crash. She has never been here before. Hester’s late husband would often visit in secret. Hester asks Oren for the truth of David’s death. Only Wilde truly knows, but Oren has a theory. One night, David was upset after an argument with Laila, so they went to a bar, and David got very drunk. According to official reports, Wilde was driving when the car crashed, and he had already removed David from the wreckage when the first responders arrived. However, Oren suspects that Wilde had left the bar early and found the wreckage before the first responders did. Wilde lied about the driver to protect David. However, David died, and Wilde has survivor’s guilt.

Hearing the truth, Hester cries. She confesses that she wanted to end things with Oren after the second dinner date because she will always associate Oren with David’s accident. However, she misses him more than she grieves David, so she asks Oren for another chance. He says yes.

Wilde travels to the Boston airport. He waits near the gate for an upcoming flight to Costa Rica and finally responds to PB’s message, asking to meet. Matthew calls. Crash is boasting about his repaired finger, and Naomi is considered cool and interesting now that she really ran away. Laila and her beau are serious, and Matthew likes him.

The Costa Rica flight begins to board. Wilde finds who he’s looking for: Naomi and Ava. He’s been tracking them with a GPS tracker he placed in Ava’s car—her attempts to convince him that Naomi had run away with Crash raised his suspicions. In truth, Naomi is Ava’s biological daughter from a teen pregnancy; she was given up for adoption, but later, Ava wanted to find her. Ava became a teacher at Naomi’s school and was furious to learn about Naomi’s bullies at school and abusive parents at home. However, the struggle to legally reclaim her would be long and arduous with no guarantee of victory. Ava told Naomi the truth after the challenge game and hid her in a hotel until they could start over. Rola is planning to take revenge on Bernard Pine for all the ways he mistreated Naomi. Wilde has come to say goodbye, but after Ava and Naomi board, he impulsively buys the final available ticket and joins them.