[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Mare of Easttown.]
It’s been nearly five years since Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) and her Delco accent set out to uncover what happened to teen Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny) in HBO‘s riveting seven-part series Mare of Easttown, which is especially rewatchable amid the release of creator Brad Ingelsby‘s latest drama Task.
The sole detective in Easttown, Pennsylvania, Mare has the weight of the world on her shoulders when introduced to viewers in the premiere, which originally debuted in April 2021. Living with her mother, Helen (Jean Smart), daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice), and next door to her ex, Frank (David Denman), Mare opes the series dealing with the loss of her son to suicide, and bogged down by the fact that the case of missing girl Katie Bailey (Caitlin Houlahan) remains unsolved, roughly one year after she went missing. The catch? Katie’s mother, Dawn (Enid Graham), is a former classmate of Mare’s.
The tension between the women and Mare’s unraveling life is apparent from the very first episode, and Ingelsby tells TV Insider that he was interested in writing, “a woman who has to investigate crimes that involved people she has a rich history with and how hard that is to do your job while also trying to be kind and respect the experiences you had with these people.”
Michele K. Short / HBO
Up until Mare, Ingelsby hadn’t written a series before, sticking to features like Out of the Furnace and The Way Back, but he notes when it came to the TV format, “I just found it to be a fertile soil for conflict, really… I was very interested in telling the story of Mare, but I was really interested in giving them the time.”
A film format simply wouldn’t have allowed for the richness the series has across seven installments. While the premiere episode sets up the struggles of Mare’s daily life, it also sets the stage for a tragic murder that leaves teen mom Erin dead, as questions and suspects pop up throughout the show’s run.
“I’m not a good outliner,” Ingelsby admits with a laugh, “I know that’s going to sound kind of funny, but I don’t really write out beats. I usually just have what I would call anchors in an episode, and then I start to craft the episode around those anchors.” As Ingelsby points out, the first installment of Mare begins and ends with the titular character receiving a phone call, bookending a day in her life.
Michele K. Short / HBO
That format is resonant in Ingelsby’s latest project, Task, particularly in the standout fifth installment, “Vagrants.” As Ingelsby explains, “I have scenes in mind, and then, while also trying to be mindful of the overall arc of the show and the clues laid out along the way. So I think it’s a lot of torturing myself.”
What’s done so masterfully in this series is the number of suspects Ingelsby puts the audience onto, as viewers are left to wonder who killed Erin; they’re unknowingly being led down a path of discovery to uncover what happened to Katie. Ingelsby admits he paid attention to some suspects more than others, especially Deacon Mark (James McArdle) and Guy Pearce‘s character, Richard Ryan.
“We felt like, ‘Oh, let’s lean into the priest,’ and especially because the priests in the parishes are such a huge part of these communities.” And while Deacon Mark, who was revealed to have given Erin a ride the night she died, and had a previous accusation of misconduct against him, Ingelsby notes that he wanted to point the attention back to the Ross brothers, John (Joe Tippett) and Billy (Robbie Tann).
Michele K. Short / HBO
“As it got on, I felt like let’s lean into Billy and John as much as possible and really make it about the brothers, always using Guy [Pearce] as this kind of obvious red herring.” As viewers will recall, Pearce’s character took an interest in Mare when they met at a local bar. An outsider, Richard was a professor who was an early suspect in viewers’ eyes.
Much of the show’s magic comes from the unlikely pairing of Mare and detective Colin Zabel (Evan Peters), who is brought on to help Mare find out who killed Erin, following the community’s upset around Katie’s unsolved disappearance. The young up-and-comer had recent success with a case, leading to his appointment, but that didn’t do much to soften Mare towards Zabel right away.
That came during a bar conversation where Peters undeniably delivers some of the best drunk acting ever seen on TV. “That bar scene’s one of my favorites of all time, of anything I’ve ever written, because I just remember just being in the edit and being like, ‘This is so good,’” Ingelsby recalls. “The acting is so good. The music is right. It doesn’t happen often where you feel like all the pieces come together… this is one of those.”
While that scene may have been the sum total of its parts, Ingelsby also credits Peters with infusing a specific warmth into the character with some great ad-libs. “Evan’s so funny and so charming in the show, and so many of those lines that I think are so good in the show, Evan came up with,” Ingelsby reveals.
Michele K. Short / HBO
“What I liked about Mare as a character was here’s a character that was embraced by the community as a kid, and now the community is starting to turn against her, and in addition to that, everything in her family is so fractured, and then now this guy’s going to come in and help me solve the case.” While Zabel may have been brought on to solve the murder of Erin, he played the most vital role in helping Mare find Katie, and another missing girl taken by a serial kidnapper and likely murderer.
“He softened her in some way, and he gave us access to a different side of her,” Ingelsby further explains of Zabel’s involvement in the story. “What I also loved about it was she’s still so driven to solve the case that she ultimately, against protocol, goes to Zabel’s house that day and says, let’s go do this thing… and that ultimately leads to [Spoiler] his demise.”
“It just continued to put Mare through this gauntlet, right? She gets this little balm in her life, Colin likes her, and he kisses her. And for a moment, she thinks, maybe there could be something here. And that her own eagerness to solve the case is what gets Katie Bailey saved and what gets Collins Zabel killed,” Ingelsby explains. “There are no wins. In saving Katie Bailey, she’s gotten Colin killed, and it is always this battle of the gray zones of life.”
As mentioned, Mare and Zabel manage to find the missing girls, which they believe could be connected to Erin’s death, but ultimately, the confrontation leads to Zabel being shot in the head, and Mare is forced to combat a menacing criminal as she enters a space that elicits difficult emotions. In order to access Katie and the other missing girl, she has to enter the attic space, which has remained haunted in her mind after her son’s suicide.
But in a weird way, that’s the thing to push Mare forward in continuing to unravel Erin’s death. When she uncovers that John Ross is the true father of Erin’s baby, he is arrested after confessing to her murder. John is the husband of Mare’s best friend, Lori (Julianne Nicholson), which makes the case that much more complicated, not to mention that John is Erin’s second cousin through her father.
While Lori’s life has seemingly been torn apart by John’s arrest and the embarrassment of his incestuous affair being uncovered publicly, Mare is on the upswing in the final episodes as she pieces her life back together and reconnects with her family. It’s a seemingly benign call from a neighbor that reveals to the audience and Mare that Erin’s case hadn’t been fully solved.
Apparently, Lori and John’s son Ryan (Cameron Mann) had pulled the trigger, stealing a neighbor’s gun that was stored in his shed after having mowed the lawn for the old man. Ultimately, Ryan returned the gun, but he used it to threaten Erin to stay away from his dad and family. A back-and-forth struggle over the weapon caused it to go off, and Erin was killed, which led John and Billy to help cover up the mistake and take the fall for the boy.
HBO
Mare’s exhale as she watches the neighbor’s security camera footage is devastating, because you know what’s about to happen as she seeks out Ryan at his school and, without rushing, follows the boy home. Lori knew the truth, but she’d hoped that Mare would let it go for her son, who’d made a mistake. “My whole family’s gone now because of you,” Lori laments to Mare as they talk in her car after Ryan’s been taken into custody.
Taking that into account, Lori’s words put into contrast the see-saw motion of her and Mare’s arcs as Ingelsby says, “Here’s Mare, whose life has been in the abyss. She’s really been climbing out the whole season, and Mare goes through it. She has the power to take the first step towards healing, and Lori’s in the abyss now. She’s lost.” After the dust has begun to settle on life in Easttown, Mare revisits Lori, not asking for anything, but just embracing her in one of the show’s most shattering moments. Lori collapses in Mare’s arms as the detective holds onto her.
“What was so important to me was for her to say, ‘I’m here. I’m going to be here. I’m not going anywhere. And not that it’s going to be easy and not that you’re going to come out of it completely, but I’m going to be with you,’” Ingelsby reveals of capturing the intense moment with Winslet and Nicholson’s characters. “I want the audience to leave with the sense of a friendship that’s always going to be there. And it’s going to be hard. There’s going to be so many complicated emotions there, but there’s nothing you can really say in those moments of unimaginable tragedy except I’m here.”
Thankfully, Mare of Easttown, as a series, is also here anytime for fans to rewatch alongside Ingelsby’s latest show Task. Revisit Mare of Easttown anytime, and let us know your favorite moments from the show in the comments section below.
Mare of Easttown, Streaming now, HBO Max