Breaking down “Sugar”’s massive season finale cliffhanger

John Sugar suddenly has an arch-nemesis — and a much bigger case to solve.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for all eight episodes of Apple TV+’s Sugar season 1.

That’s a wrap.

Sugar finished its first season on Apple TV+ with its eighth episode Friday, and the finale prompts as many questions as it answers.

The genre-bending noir saw Colin Farrell’s mysterious private detective John Sugar attempt to track down Olivia (Sydney Chandler), the granddaughter of Hollywood mogul Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell). Sugar finally located the missing girl at the end of episode 7, so the finale opens with the detective helping Olivia out of captivity and driving her home.

Unfortunately, it's a case of winning the battle and losing the war, as Olivia was being held hostage by the psychopathic son of a powerful man — a senator who threatened to expose Sugar’s covert community of aliens on Earth if the investigation continued. Now that the case is (mostly) closed, the Polyglots-slash-aliens have no choice but to leave Earth due to the danger of exposure.

On his way out of town (out of planet?), Sugar visits Melanie (Amy Ryan) and tells her about his sister Djen. “She was taken by somebody a long time ago,” he reveals. “We never knew who or — It’s kind of, it’s kind of why I do what I do.”

Related: Colin Farrell and Kirby break down their soft-boiled noir series Sugar

Later, Ruby (Kirby) warns that humans are hunting down the Polyglots. “They want us gone so no one can ever learn about our pact,” she says.

On top of his community’s existential crisis, Sugar is also troubled by a loose end: an audio recording of kidnapper Ryan torturing a victim. Sugar replays a clip wherein Ryan says, “Don’t you agree?”, suggesting that he had a collaborator in his crimes. Olivia confirms Sugar’s hunch, but says the co-conspirator never spoke, and only wrote notes while in the torture dungeon.

In reviewing the recording, Sugar realizes he’s heard one of Ryan’s quotes before — Henry, a doctor and fellow Polyglot played by Jason Butler Harner, previously shared an eerily similar sentiment about “seeing a thing and feeling like I just had to have it.”

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Sugar arrives at Henry’s house to discover it’s completely empty, aside from a ringing rotary phone. “So now you know,” Henry says. “Once you started listening, I imagined it was only a matter of time.”

“You sat there and you watched? You sat there and did nothing?” Sugar furiously asks.

“Observe and report on every aspect,” Henry says. “I sat and I learned. I know that sounds cold to you, but how else do we learn?”

Henry suddenly reveals that he’s been a fitting foil for Sugar the entire time they’ve been on Earth, as both characters are keen observers of human behavior. He also says that he’s not going to leave with the rest of the Polyglots. “This place, the messiness, the confusion, the anger, the darkness — I belong here. So do you.”

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From there, Sugar discovers the only other thing in Henry’s empty house: a robe that belonged to his missing sister Djen. This leads Sugar to realize that Henry was Djen’s kidnapper, and that she may still be alive — maybe even on Earth.

“I’m gonna find Henry Thorpe. However long it takes, I’m gonna find him,” Sugar resolves.

He says goodbye to Ruby as she prepares to leave Earth (at the airport — I guess interplanetary travel still uses runways). “Henry’s alive and he’s here and we brought him here,” he says. “Now he’s looking for human beings like him. People he can learn from, people he can teach.”

Related: Colin Farrell talks Los Angeles in exclusive Sugar clip

So Sugar is staying on Earth, and has an alien kidnapper to find, without any of his Polyglot allies around. Although he knows he’ll miss his home, he seems at peace with his decision to remain in human society. “I like being here. How I can feel, hurt, taste, touch, dream, love, hate,” he says. “These people — for better or worse, I like them. I’m like them.”

The ending leaves the door open for Sugar to explore new cities, take on more cases, and help additional people in potential future seasons, all with a clearer underlying mission: to locate his sister’s kidnapper and either avenge her death or return her to safety. And he’ll get to watch a lot more movies.

All eight episodes of Sugar are now streaming on Apple TV+.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.