Note: The following contains spoilers from “The Watchful Eye” Season 1 Episode 10.
Freeform’s “The Watchful Eye” finale turned up the volume on the mystery plaguing the Greybourne as Elena finally reveals the identity of Allie’s killer, which she offers to Tory for a high price.
Upon learning that her husband, Dick, was responsible for Allie’s death, Tory (Amy Acker) gives him a poison-laced smoothie to compel a confession out of him with the promise of an antidote should he tell her the truth once and for all. On the edge of life and death, Dick comes clean to Tory and admits he gave Allie medication that induced suicidal thoughts, and when Allie took action to end her life, he did not prevent it. Though Tory delivers the life-saving antidote to Dic — after he claims he did what he did so that Tory might live a peaceful life without her sister — a rage-filled Tory stabs Dick with a pair of scissors, prompting him to bleed out.
Moments later, Elena (Mariel Molino) walks into Tory’s apartment to find Tory standing over Dick’s lifeless body, covered in blood and frozen in adrenaline, before Tory tells Elena “we’re gonna need a shovel,” — a moment executive producer Emily Fox suggests implicates Elena in whatever happens next.
“Almost anyone that walked in at that point is going to be complicit in what’s just happened,” Fox told TheWrap. “When [Tory] sees Elena, it’s almost a relief to her because she knows that’s probably the one person in the building who has a vested interest in what’s going to happen next.”
While the show has not yet been renewed for Season 2, Fox also teased that characters involved in dark plots might get their comeuppance in a potential sophomore season, adding that the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for,” is a central topic of the story’s next chapter.
“When you make a deal with the devil, it’s gonna come due,” Fox said. “There’s a lot of interesting stuff — a lot of aftermaths — to explore in the world we’ve created.”
Keep reading to get seven burning questions from “The Watchful Eye” finale answered by the expert herself.
TheWrap: After Matthew’s arrest, Mrs. Ivey tells Elena they need to push off transferring money until things quiet down. Was Mrs. Ivey always going to go through with the deal had Elena not come clean to Tory?
Emily Fox: I think Mrs. Ivey initially had no intention of paying her, that’s why she mobilized James to get rid of her. When it became clear that James had failed in his mission, Mrs. Ivey was a little bit backed into a corner; as was Elena, because she always knew she can’t depend on or trust any of these people. So, she’s leveraging whatever she has in every direction … I think Mrs. Ivey does not bargain in general, and she’s very rarely pushed to a place where she has to.
Amid all the craziness, Elena also finds out her brother set her up in a trap with her mom, who blackmails her for the money. Why did Teo decide to work with their mother?
Teo is just a kid. He just wants his mother to love him, and his mother is a toxic narcissist, so she doesn’t really love anybody. But he has sort of fallen under her spell in a way that a lot of people have, and he doesn’t have enough agency or life experience to be able to recognize her for what she is. … Underneath his like teenage cynicism, he just wants his family back, and he isn’t willing to give up the fantasy that that could happen. In his mind, he and his mom are going to work together and Elena is going to come around, and then they’re all going to go home … I think all kids want to believe their parents, and I think for him to have believed Ronnie makes perfect sense to me.
After she escapes James’ grasp, Elena goes to Tory and tells her she will reveal who killed her sister for a price. Why does Tory agree to the deal?
She’s afraid of the truth, but she also needs to know. She doesn’t trust Elena at all, but she also knows that Elena is not bullshitting her. She’s agreeing to it, because I think the curiosity of is overpowering, and it’s morbid curiosity. It shouldn’t matter because Ali’s dead and we can’t bring her back, but it does matter, because I think Tory has known the truth all along, on some level that she can’t access, or that she hasn’t permitted herself to see or feel, and she doesn’t have closure on this thing. She’s not okay. Elena has said that in the course of the season that Tory is in a lot of pain, and I think there’s a little part of her that thinks, “if I knew the answer to this, maybe that would help with the pain, maybe that would help it go away?”
When Tory threatens Dick to tell her the truth, why does Dick choose to come clean to Tory? Would he ever have told her if he wasn’t in the process of dying?
He comes clean because he knows that’s the only way he’s gonna get this antidote. If we’re psychoanalyzing this guy who’s just been poisoned, all criminals want to confess, right? Because the burden of guilt can really destroy you from the inside. I think there’s a little part of him that’s proud of what he did … Dick’s perception of the whole situation is so two dimensional and so elementary, and Tory’s playing a completely different game. I think he’s sort of like, “if I confess, then she’ll save my life and then actually, we’ll end up having everything we want.”
Why does Tory choose to kill Dick?
If anybody is the poster child for repressed rage, it’s Tory Ayers. It was gonna come out sometime. I think those scissors have been sitting there since Episode 1 and it was always sort of an understanding that that kind of vengeful rage, when it becomes unbottled, is unstoppable. For that to come out in a violent act I think is I suppose horrifying, but also sort of cathartic.
Why did Darcy forge the letter in Allie’s writing and hand it over to the police?
She saw something on that laptop that implicated someone else and she wants to protect that person. Again, she is young — young young people don’t always think through the consequences of their actions. You do something that might be like a little stupid or reckless or just plain illegal, but you do it because you’re pretty sure this is the right thing to do, and you’re going to find out that it is maybe not and maybe kind of a felony. Darcy, we know, is someone who is a little removed from reality. She’s alone with her thoughts a lot of the time and and she makes a decision that is very detrimental to Matthew. She considers that collateral damage.
Has Mrs. Ivey always seen Jocelyn’s ghost?
She hears her and she knows that she’s been behind the wall of that staircase, and she has heard this crying all her life. She has been alone with that information — no one else knows, no one else can hear it— Elena is the first person that’s been there that can hear it, at least that we know of.
Whether or not she knows the truth about who is crying and why they’re crying and what they’re crying over, we don’t know for sure yet. But it’s safe to think that she has been listening to this crying all her life and it drives her crazy and that’s why she plays piano to drown it out.
“The Watchful Eye” is now streaming on Hulu.
