Let’s break it down.

By Jon O’Brien

Published: Friday, 22 March 2024 at 13:45 PM

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Out of nowhere, a TV drama so under-the-radar it doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page has become a Netflix favourite, spending the last week nestled inside its most-watched Top 10.

First screened on Australian streamer Stan in 2023, eight-part Gray stars Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson as an on-the-run spy brought back into the CIA to track down the traitor helping to bump off agents left, right and centre. A gender-flipped Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy you could say.

So, who was the mole? Did the eponymous returnee survive the numerous threats to her life? And what was with all of those paper birds? Here’s what went down in the eventful finale.

Gray on Netflix ending explained

Did Cornelia go rogue?

In the previous episode’s cliffhanger, we saw Cornelia Gray (Clarkson) blowing the brains out of the Korea infiltrator she was tasked with rescuing. But unlike her shell-shocked colleague Sara (Lydia West), who witnessed the execution first-hand, boss Tagg (Rupert Everett) didn’t seem too surprised about the development.

“Not everything is black and white,” he told Sara on her return, revealing that, thanks to an experimental interrogation tactic known as IEP, the man in question was about to leak information that would have put millions of lives at risk.

You’ve been framed

On the warpath after Cornelia burned his house down while searching for incriminating evidence, ex-lover operative Chase (Shawn Doyle) decided to frame her by putting a bullet in the head of Sara’s poor husband Andy (Benjamin Sutherland).

Cornelia, of course, had already fatally poisoned Sara’s secret agent stepmother Tessa (Fiona Highet) and was the prime suspect for the death of her father, too. So it was relatively easy for the wicked Chase to convince his grief-stricken co-worker that the ruthless assassin was responsible. And soon she, too, was baying for blood.

Of course, Cornelia’s no stranger to a bit of framing herself. She had already doctored snaps of field agent Gold (Wendy Crewson) fraternising with Russian big baddie Orlov for potential leverage. And on discovering Gold had just been drugged – but not fatally, as intended – by Tagg’s right-hand man Rousseau (Tim Rozon) over those photos, she decided to make the latter her next fall guy.

Agent Abbott (Jamaal Grant) was then informed that Rousseau blackmailed Chase to get into CIA division Cerberus, a lie which then continued to spiral out of control.

So, who really was the mole?

All was revealed during Cornelia’s rooftop confrontation with Chase. Here, she produced evidence that his pocket bible contained contact info for Orlov, and that before killing the Russian, she’d used the IEP on him to confirm their connection. She then proposed that he had been leaking insider information since he joined the agency, ultimately causing the deaths of Sara’s dad and numerous other Americans.

Chase essentially confessed to his duplicity and tried to justify it, too (“What people in the world think we need is peace. No, The world needs balance.”). But Cornelia then decided to let the man who’d repeatedly put her own life in danger walk away – perhaps due to their history.

“I didn’t come to kill you. I came to tell you I own you,” she explained (kinda) before the pair passionately kissed in a laughable moment which suggested Gray was about to turn into a ’90s erotic thriller.

Battle to the death

Now aware that he had been set up, a vengeful Rousseau then headed for the guest house where Cornelia was staying and the pair engaged in a battle to the death. But just as the former’s strangling technique looked to be working, he was distracted by the latter’s bombshell revelation that he and Chase are half-brothers.

Cornelia then whipped out her favourite pair of paper-cutting scissors and forcefully stabbed Rousseau in the neck.

“Oh look, Carrie’s come home from the prom,” Tagg quipped after being greeted in the kitchen by the blood-splattered antiheroine, Everett and Clarkson’s verbal sparring being one of the show’s highlights.

The birthday party

Cornelia no doubt wished she’d stuck to running a small-town tea shop when just hours later, she had to deal with another maniacal workmate, on this occasion at her estranged granddaughter’s birthday party. This time, it was her unlikely friend Sara that was the threat, turning up announced and determined to kill who she thought had offed her entire family.

Cornelia did admit to murdering Sara’s stepmother, but she insisted that Tessa both killed her mother and lured her agent father over to the dark side. The clearly distressed Sara initially seemed to accept this version of events and both retreated for a more amicable chit-chat in her car.

The future

While Gray’s finale answered the show’s big question, it left several loose ends. In the closing montage, we learned that Rousseau’s somehow still alive, gasping for breath just as Tagg was about to start the clean-up operation. Will his boss finish the job, or allow him to recover and seek vengeance?

But even if Rousseau dies, Cornelia isn’t safe. In a mysterious conversation with Abbott, Sara revealed a desire to “isolate” her from Tagg, suggesting she hasn’t entirely bought her story. And then there’s her son-in-law George (Jonathan Kim).

While taking a family photo at the party, Cornelia noticed Chase’s name on his phone’s recent calls list. Is George a spy too? And was his nice-guy plan to bring his mother-in-law back into the fold just a ruse?

“When people try to kill me, it really pisses me off,” Cornelia remarked to Tagg in the walk-and-talk closing scene. It seems like she may need to get used to it…