'The Stranger' Ending Leaves a Lot Open For a Season Two—But The Future of the Show Is Uncertain
Once you make peace with the fact that there are about 500 too many characters and interwoven plot lines, Netflix's The Stranger makes for a pretty entertaining watch. The eight-part thriller series is based on Harlan Coben’s novel of the same name (the author also served as an executive producer on the show).
The series begins when a stranger (played by Hannah John-Kamen) approaches Adam Price (Richard Armitage) at his son’s football (soccer) match to tell him that his wife Corinne (Dervla Kirwan) faked a pregnancy and miscarriage two years prior. Once Adam finds evidence that corroborates this information, he confronts Corinne, who goes missing soon after. While Adam hunts for Corinne, the Stranger continues to pepper secrets across town,
setting off a chain of unfortunate incidents—some related to Corinne's disappearance, and many, many others not. Miraculously though, the final episode manages to tie up most of the show’s major loose ends—we know why the Stranger blackmails people with their secrets, as well as where Corinne disappeared to and why. The problem is, though, that most of the ancillary plot lines could have been removed without changing the main story arc.
The side plots follow teenage characters—like Mike (Brandon Fellows), Daisy (Ella-Rae Smith), and Dante (Kai Alexander)—who were added in for the adaptation and did not exist in the original novel. This...shows. The series opens with the teenage characters at a secret rave in the woods, and cuts to a naked Dante sprinting through the trees in fear of something that remains unknown to the viewer. This storyline falls off completely by the end of the series, as it ends up entirely unrelated to Corinne’s disappearance or the Stranger’s business of secret telling (and generally meaningless in and of itself). This storyline flirts with relevancy when we learn that Dante often took stalker video footage of Corinne before she disappeared, but this is later brushed off as a harmless schoolboy crush. The poor kid’s sole function is to run around naked screaming in the cold for the first episode and then lie comatose on a hospital bed for the remaining seven.
Another character who wrecks purposeless plot-muddling havoc is Olivia. Olivia’s crush on Mike leads to a mutilated alpaca and a 14-year-old girl’s leaked nudes, and then...doesn’t really matter? There is no good reason why her mother has Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and feeds her rat poison, either. All the plot asks is for Katz to have a sick child for whom he needs to pay medical bills.
But of all the strange, useless characters, the weird all-knowing football shed caretaker guy who happens to coincidentally be chopping wood in the forest during the rave (???) and standing around creepily when they are burying the alpaca head (?????) takes the cake. Are we supposed to feel resolution when this man reveals that oh, don’t mind him, he just lives deep in the woods and needs to chop wood in the middle of the night in the 21st century, he only scared Dante and caused all this mess by accident!
There’s no problem with unanswered questions or loose threads if we’re being set up for a Season Two. That’s show biz, baby! The thing is that in this case, we probably aren’t. Writer and producer Harlan Coben told Digital Spy:
I don’t think it’s fair to ask people to watch an eight-episode crime story like this and not give you the ending, and make you wait for Season 2....We’ll do a Season 2 only if we can think of an idea that’s just as good for the characters, but I’m not going to hold something back or not give the full answer in Season 1. And really, the novels don’t lend themselves to more than one season… This is a closed story. You learned all the answers by the end, and the ending is tremendously satisfying.
So yes, you read that right, Season Two is not currently part of the plan, and they chopped off an innocent alpaca’s head for nothing. Those human teeth marks on the alpaca’s leg? Just a bit of fun with PCP—don’t worry about it. Doesn’t look like anyone’s going to explain the strange Satanic-looking symbol on Corinne’s earrings that appears throughout the show, either. Again—no problem if they’re going to explain these oddities in Season Two, but you heard the man:
"Could some of the characters return to season two? Maybe, but that's not our plan...I never say never, but it's not our plan. Our plan is to give you one great, great season.”
Of course, if they did go for a Season Two, we’d love to dig in to the Stranger’s relationship with her newfound half-brother Adam, explore the consequences of Jo and Adam’s murder cover up, and just check up on Olivia to make sure she’s ceased ingesting rat poison.
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