‘We Were Liars’ TV Series Ending, Explained

Warning: This post contains major spoilers for We Were Liars.

If you’ve ever scrolled through BookTok, you may have been served a video—or, perhaps several—about E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars. Although the young-adult novel was a best-seller when it was published in 2014, it had a significant resurgence in popularity when BookTok began to really gain traction during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The corresponding hashtag for the title has since racked up over 21,000 posts.

Now, an eight-episode TV adaptation of the novel from showrunners Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) and Carina Adly Mackenzie (Roswell, New Mexico) has arrived on Prime Video just in time for the summer binge-watching season. Part teen romance, part family drama, part psychological thriller, We Were Liars centers on Cadence Sinclair Eastman (played by Emily Alyn Lind), the eldest grandchild of Harris Sinclair (David Morse), the uber wealthy patriarch of the illustrious Sinclair family. The Sinclairs are practically American royalty and spend their summers vacationing on the fictional New England private island of Beechwood, just off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

Harris and his wife, Tipper (Wendy Crewson), have three grown daughters, Carrie (Mamie Gummer), Cadence’s mother Penny (Caitlin FitzGerald), and Bess (Candice King), who all bring their own children to Beechwood each year. So, during the summer months, Cadence spends the majority of her time with the three other so-called Liars, the family’s nickname for the group of four older kids who are all around the same age. In addition to Cadence, there’s Carrie’s son Johnny (Joseph Zada), Bess’ daughter Mirren (Esther McGregor), and Gat (Shubham Maheshwari), the nephew of Carrie’s longtime boyfriend Ed (Rahul Kohli). The Liars have grown up together, with Gat joining the annual pilgrimage to Beechwood for the first time the summer Cadence was 8 years old—or, as she refers to it, Summer 8.

Cadence has always viewed her idyllic summers on Beechwood as something out of a fairytale. But everything changes during Summer 16, when Cadence and Gat realize they’re in love with one another, Tipper’s death brings the Sinclairs’ long-simmering resentments bubbling to the surface, and the season ends with a tragedy that leaves Cadence with a serious head injury, chronic migraines, and selective amnesia. Desperate to remember the events that led to her washing up on the beach with brain trauma, Cadence returns to Beechwood for Summer 17 determined to make sense of what actually happened that fateful night. But when she arrives on the island, she discovers her mother—per the doctor’s advice—has made everyone promise to let Cadence figure things out in her own time.

The TV series largely follows the overall trajectory of the novel, but changes some details along the way—and adds one new, final twist. Though in terms of shock value, that one is nothing compared to the story’s main, big reveal, which plays out in the show’s finale.

After spending the majority of Summer 17 trying to piece together her memories of the previous summer, Cadence finally comes to the realization that the reason her grandfather’s mansion, Clairmont, has been totally rebuilt is because she and the other Liars burned it down. The teens made this decision because they saw the home as a symbol of everything that was wrong with their ultra-privileged family and thought it would put an end to their moms’ constant bickering amongst themselves and with Harris over the family’s money and inheritances.

The plan was for each of the cousins to set a different floor of the mansion on fire before all escaping the house and meeting at the dock, where Gat would be waiting with the family’s boat. But, naturally, things quickly went awry. After setting the ground floor ablaze, Cadence made it outside only to hear the family’s two dogs, who had been locked in a downstairs room earlier that evening to keep them calm during dinner, yelping for help. She ran back inside to try to free them, but the fire had already grown too strong and she was forced to abandon them or die in the rescue attempt.

When Cadence finally made it to the beach, she saw that none of the other Liars were on the dock and quickly realized something was wrong. However, it was at that moment that the gas main exploded and Cadence was knocked out and thrown into the water. Unfortunately, once Summer 17 Cadence remembers that part of the story, she realizes all of the other Liars were killed in the fire, as Johnny and Mirren were trapped on the higher floors and Gat had run into the house to try to save Cadence when she hadn’t made it to the dock by the stroke of midnight. So while Cadence thinks she has been spending time with the Liars all of Summer 17, it’s really just been her brain conjuring their spirits as a trauma response. Or perhaps, actual ghosts. It’s somewhat unclear.

Cadence later tells ghost Gat she feels responsible for his death because the reason she was delayed leaving the house the first time around was because she stopped to retrieve Tipper’s infamous black pearl necklace, which had long been a source of conflict for the family. It was during that delay that Gat ran inside to try to rescue her. However, he says he doesn’t blame her and tells her they all made mistakes.

When a fully-aware Cadence finally has a conversation with Harris, he reveals that while the rest of the world believes the fire was caused by faulty wiring, he knows the truth. However, he tells her he’s planning to give his last significant interview—coincidentally, for a TIME Magazine cover story—to put an end to the chatter about a family curse, and he wants to name her his heir before he retires from public life. But she will have to maintain the lie in order for him to do so. In the end, Cadence decides to strike out on her own without her grandfather’s money or help, telling the reporter that she’s “just really not into fairytales anymore.”

What is the new twist in the show?

The new twist comes in when Carrie returns to her house on Beechwood, Red Gate, and we find out that not only has she broken her sobriety after many years, but she has also been interacting with her son Johnny’s ghost over the course of Summer 17. She tells him that she thought he had left and he simply replies, “I don’t think I can.”