No wonder Cady Sinclair Eastman (Emily Alyn Lind) wanted to forget how Summer 16 ended. When the oldest Sinclair grandchild finally regains all her memories in the We Were Liars finale, everything about Summer 17 shifts into a new light.
Nothing during the present timeline is as it seems because not only did the Liars set the main Beechwood house on fire, but there are multiple deaths that Cady has buried deep because the pain was too raw. Cady is the only surviving Liar and has spent the vacation hanging out with ghosts.
Recounting the events of the night the Liars committed arson takes several attempts as Johnny (Joseph Zada), Mirren (Esther McGregeor), and Gat (Shubham Maheshwari) are still reluctant to tell Cady the deadly truth. They wanted to burn Clairmont to the ground as a way to bring the family back together without the material objects coming between them. But what they couldn’t foresee was how terrible their plan was.
Read on to find out what happened in the We Were Liars finale.
Setting the fire
In the flashback to Summer 16, Cady is serious about burning Clairmont and its contents. Cady thinks this purification can’t make things worse for their family (if only she knew!). The group comes up with a cover story: when they woke up at the Cuddledown house, Clairmont was already on fire, and it was too late.
Johnny mentions they “don’t know how to do arson,” but Cady thinks they can use the fuel from the boathouse and each take a different section of the house, with Gat getting the boat to be their getaway driver. Cady takes the ground floor, Mirren wants the east wing, and Johnny will set fire to the attic. When the clock strikes 12, they will all light a match and get out.
A flash of them celebrating depicts the perfect version of this plan. It has worked as the moms are no longer fighting, and Gat was invited back. Cady is briefly satisfied until she can’t think of a logical reason why she was in the water.
The truth
In the present, Cady overhears Mirren saying to Johnny and Gat that Cady will remember everything soon. The truth is, the trio doesn’t know how she got in the water.
Cady devises a way to beat the “pain dragon” that makes her mind short-circuit whenever someone tells her what happened. They will play “Trigger Trauma Scrabble” using words related to that night. It is a play-by-play of how they set the fire, showing Cady running out of the house and then hearing the sound of the dogs barking from inside.
When Cady ran to save Eleanor and Franklin, the room they were in was blocked. Falling debris caused Cady’s head injury, and she went into the water to put out her flaming dress. Cady is understandably bereft at the incredibly upsetting reveal.
On the beach, Cady finds Harris and says sorry for what happened. Cady thinks Harris is talking about the dogs when he refers to them as heroic, and he mentions the faulty wiring and gas main as the source of the fire. Harris gives Cady an early 18th birthday present: the black pearl necklace. Cady tells the Liars she thinks Harris knows the truth.
The whole truth
Cady still doesn’t know why none of them reached out this year, telling the Liars she is strong enough to know her own story. It is time to know everything. Gat ran inside to find Cady, as she didn’t come out when she meant to. Mirren saved the painting her mother had destroyed and was secretly renovating, but she couldn’t save herself. Johnny didn’t even light his match, and the smoke was already so thick from below.
When Cady ran out of the house, her dress was on fire, but it was the gas line exploding that threw her into the water. “Turns out we really didn’t know how to do arson,” Johnny says.
A flash of moments from the summer reveals Cady has been alone and not with the Liars. Or rather, no one else can see the Liars because they aren’t figments of her imagination but ghosts. Each of the Liars appears to Cady separately, giving each other closure and an emotional resolution.
When Cady talks to Gat, she confesses that she took so long in the house because she went to grab the black pearls. Cady can’t explain why, but she just had to have them. Gat won’t let her blame herself for his death, as he didn’t stick to the plan.
Cady tries to return the pearls to Harris, but he refuses. Harris knows what she did, but her aunts, mother, and cousins believe the version where Cady is a hero who tried to save the others. Cady needs to tell a Time Magazine reporter this because Harris wants Cady to be the new face of the family.
Cady makes a choice
On the first anniversary of the fire, Bess (Candice King) asks Carrie (Mamie Gummer) if this is punishment for what they did the summer Bess was 16, but if that is the case, then why was Penny (Caitlin Fitzgerald) spared? She doesn’t elaborate, but there is a prequel novel by E. Lockhart called Family of Liars.
Ed (Rahul Koli) arrives during the photo shoot for the Time profile as he is back with Carrie. Harris invites him to be in the photo, but Ed declines. Cady is late, but dressed to match everyone else. However, she is wearing the beads Gat gave her, not the Sinclair pearls. Cady refuses to play the Harris Sinclair “strength of character” game. Instead, she chooses to drive the boat and throw the pearls overboard.
There was another goodbye as Cady parted ways with her beloved cousins and Gat. While she might no longer see them, they will always be with her. However, one final scene reveals this might not be the end. Earlier, it looked like Carrie was talking to herself about Harris’ declining health. However, when she goes to grab a pill before leaving Beachwood, Johnny is still there. Carrie thought he had left; Johnny doesn’t think he can.
Cady isn’t the only one who can see ghosts, and this island might no longer be a fairy tale destination, but there is still magic. Liars forever!
All episodes of We Were Liars are streaming exclusively on Prime Video.
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