‘The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart’ Ending Explained by Showrunner: ‘Putting a Lid on it Isn’t the Way Forward’

The “Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” finale doesn’t pull its punches in clarifying the terrible trauma that June (Sigourney Weaver) and her granddaughter Alice (Alycia Debnam-Carey) have gone through, and showrunner Sarah Lambert felt it was important to drill down the effects of repressed trauma in the show’s finale.

In an earlier episode of the Prime Video series, based on the book by Holly Ringland, June finally revealed that her “Robber Baron” who she always told stories about as the love of her life, was a woman. Her son, Clem (Charlie Vickers), resulted from June getting raped by a stranger, and Clem developed violent tendencies as well. The first few episodes of the Prime Video show hinted at Clem’s abusive nature towards his wife and daughter Alice (Alyla Browne), but not until the finale do viewers learn that he was also violent towards his mother.

“I don’t think you can go through life without experiencing trauma. One of the things I was really interested in is when we do not talk about things, when we don’t tell the truth of our stories, whatever it is, it gets stuck. It’s this thing that can reverberate through our children, into our relationships and into everything,” Lambert told TheWrap. “With June, this horrific thing happens to her, but she puts it in a box, which is a perfectly fine way to deal with it, but then it continues to seep out in different ways.”

Clem also raped Candy (Frankie Adams), which was revealed in the show’s fifth episode. This suppressed incident divided June and Candy because June didn’t express why she turned Clem onto Agnes (Tilda Cobham-Vervey) after what happened. Once Candy blamed June for thinking Agnes was a better option for Clem because she wasn’t ‘broken,’ they reconciled.

“[June] can’t deal with it because she will not talk about it. She will not let that box open, and actually, June’s journey across the series, as much as anybody else’s, is learning the damage that that does to everybody around her,” Lambert continued. “It makes her make terrible decisions. It makes her act out in certain ways. And by the end, she puts [the stories of the Thornfield Flower Farm workers] down in black and white and then puts them away. It’s almost her way of saying, ‘We won’t deal with this. We’ll work in nature, we will use flowers. We’ll get a job and we’ll put you back on your feet and then take you out into the world, but we’re not going to talk about it.’”

Candy even points out that all this “secretive bullsh*t” probably gave June her cancer. Those words stir June to leave records of all of the “Flowers” or women who come to Thornfield to work so that they can escape their haunted pasts. The repression of her trauma and that of all the women only boils over later when the truth eventually comes out.

“June’s journey is about coming to this place of ‘I didn’t get it right. This was not the right thing to do.’ Putting a lid on it isn’t the way forward, and it’s really only by opening up that box, about owning your story —all of it, the dark, the light, the good things, the bad things,” Lambert said. “Can anything really change? Can you break the cycle of violence in your family? Can you break the curse that trauma does to all of us?”

The existence of Alice’s brother Charlie (Jeremy Blewitt) is the last lie June has to get off her chest. Agnes was pregnant with Charlie when Alice started the fire that eventually killed her mother and father. Alycia Debnam-Carey’s grown-up version with all the time that has passed.

“It’s really about examining [past trauma], talking about it and accepting it. And then, what are you going to do with it? We’re going to move forward because, in that way, you’re giving strength to other people,” Lambert said. “That’s the gift she ends up being able to give, by sort of owning that story and giving her the truth, all of it.”

All episodes of “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” are now streaming on Prime Video, as of Sept. 1.

The post ‘The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart’ Ending Explained by Showrunner: ‘Putting a Lid on it Isn’t the Way Forward’ appeared first on TheWrap.