Niall spirals despite professional success, relying on drugs and risky sex while repeatedly harming others and missing key moments. He reconnects with Alby, who offers forgiveness and pushes him toward honesty about his sexuality. Through prison glass, Niall and Ruben bond and reveal long-buried trauma, including Ruben’s childhood sexual abuse by his father. Niall’s confession triggers a major revelation: he is the biological father of the baby Ruben believed he had fathered. The finale culminates in brutal violence, with Ruben dying after killing Niall at his wedding, completing a cycle of revenge and lethal intimacy between two non-biologically related “brothers.”
"Earlier in the finale, we watched Niall continue to spiral, despite the professional success he was finally enjoying as a writer with a book based on Ruben. He's addicted to drugs and visiting gay bathhouses for risky, unprotected sex. He even vomits on Ruben's mother Moira (Marianne McIvor) as she's dying, then shows up late and high to her funeral, having been arrested for crashing his car while under the influence."
"It's only when he reconnects with Alby (Charlie De Melo), his former university love interest whom Ruben assaulted and disfigured, that his life begins to change. Alby not only offers Niall the promise of forgiveness, but the encouragement he needs to finally- finally -be honest with Ruben about his sexuality."
"When Niall does finally open up to Ruben through the prison glass, he's forced to question who was holding him back his whole life: Ruben or himself? But as the two men bond and share their secret true selves with one another-Ruben reveals that his father sexually abused him when he was a child, causing him a lifetime of pain and confusion-Niall accidentally reveals that he is the true father of the baby Ruben had thought he fathered."
"Thursday night's series finale of , the HBO show from Baby Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd, ended with a staggering scene of brutality and a twist: We knew from an earlier episode that Ruben (Gadd) would die, having seen his body get wheeled out on a stretcher, but before he perished, he managed to kill Niall (Jamie Bell) at his wedding in one final act of revenge."
Read at Slate Magazine
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