Warning: This article contains spoilers for the “Disclaimer”.

Apple TV’s “disclaimer” is a lesson in storytelling.

The seven-part series tells the story of Jonathan (Louis Partridge), a 19-year-old boy who dies on vacation in Italy after catching up with Catherine (Cate Blanchett), an older married woman.

Jonathan’s widowed father, Stephen (Kevin Kline), seeks revenge on Catherine for the role she played in his son’s death. It is only at the very end of his mission that Stephen realizes that he may have had the wrong impression of his son.

In an interview with TODAY.com, “Disclaimer” creator and director Alfonso Cuarón spoke about the series’ ending, saying it’s important to pay attention to all the clues.

“It’s something I worked closely on with Cate,” says Cuarón. “We always say you have to see this show twice because on the second watch you will see a completely different story.”

“You’ll see the story of a woman who tries to speak and she’s always interrupted, even by the audience in many ways with their judgments. It was therefore very important to never give false clues because in the end, we see how it all fits together and makes sense. Catherine says it all with her behavior,” he adds.

Read on to see how the “disclaimer” ends.

Is the story of Jonathan’s death true?

Not quite.

At the beginning of “Disclaimer,” the audience learns of Jonathan’s death in “The Perfect Stranger,” the book his mother, Nancy, wrote about his life – but it doesn’t tell the real story.

In the book, Nancy says Jonathan had an affair with Catherine, an older woman, after seducing him during a family vacation in Italy. Their rigorous night of lovemaking is preserved through explicit photos Jonathan took of Catherine that night. The next day, Jonathan died while saving Catherine’s 5-year-old son, Nicholas, from drowning.

Jonathan, according to the book, wants to follow Catherine home to London and have a romantic relationship with her. His girlfriend had returned home early due to an emergency and he is fascinated by Catherine. Catherine, meanwhile, is less enthusiastic – and sees drowning as an opportunity to solve her problem.

Although Catherine sees Jonathan struggling in the waves, she decides not to tell any of the passers-by who flocked to the beach to save Nicholas. When someone notices Jonathan in the water, it is already too late. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Nicholas is brought safely to shore by two nearby spectators.

Once Nancy learns of Jonathan’s death, she becomes obsessed with finding out how her son really died. Nancy abandons everything that brought her joy and spends her time hiding in her late son’s room, where she eventually writes “The Perfect Stranger.”

Was Nancy aware of Jonathan’s violent nature?

Since Nancy died long before the events took place in “Warning,” it’s difficult to know exactly how much she knew about her son.

However, it is clear that Nancy chose to only believe certain parts of Jonathan’s life. As a mother, she was in love with her son and seemed baffled when she learned why Jonathan’s girlfriend Sasha had left him alone on holiday in Italy and returned home to London just days before his dead.

In “Warning”, Nancy receives a phone call from Sasha’s mother, Emma, ​​after her daughter has already returned home aggravated. During the call, he is told that Sasha and Jonathan had an argument.

When Emma gives Nancy more details, Nancy seems to lose her patience and says, “Well, I guess it’s up to them to sort out their differences.” Let’s not make things too big here, Emma. We don’t know what happened there.

Nancy even goes so far as to say that Sasha “exaggerated” about her split from Jonathan and that what she said to her mother is “nonsense” that seems “very extreme.”

Although the show doesn’t share what Emma said on the phone, it’s clear that Nancy knew her son could be dangerous to some extent and she chose to ignore the signs.

When Stephen asks Nancy about the phone call, Nancy simply tells him that Emma said their children had a fight and that’s why they are no longer together. Without questioning it, Stephen believes Nancy and then calls Sasha a “mess”, which Cuarón says further demonstrates the show’s message of “being wary of narrative and form”.

Cuarón explains that Stephen is a “very weak person” who was “undermined” by Nancy and Jonathan and that’s why he was “in denial” for so long.

“He’s just afraid to confront anything and he just takes Nancy’s point of view as his own. So he was in denial,” says Cuarón. “It’s true that we don’t want to think these things about our children, but when it comes to Stephen, he is completely submissive to his wife’s version of reality.”

As for whether or not Nancy knew about Jonathan’s violent nature? Cuarón says: “I would be almost certain of it. »

“In many ways, Nancy’s impulse to write ‘The Perfect Stranger’ was a way for her to protect her son and to change the narrative of her son,” he explained. “Thanks to the book, she was able to make her son this naive, heroic and romantic figure, very different from reality.”

Does Nicholas die?

At the beginning of “Disclaimer”, Stephen makes it clear that he published his wife’s book, “The Perfect Stranger”, simply to torture Catherine. He wants his closest friends and family members to know the role she played in Jonathan’s death.

Stephen creates a complicated catfishing plan to tell Nicholas about his role in the story. Distraught by the novel’s depiction of his mother, Nicholas overdoses and ends up unconscious in the hospital.

Once at the hospital, Stephen attempts to kill Nicholas by injecting him with an unknown substance. However, Catherine stops him just in time.

He then tries again once he has spiked Catherine’s tea, which puts her into a deep sleep. At the hospital, Stephen tries to give Nicholas the lethal injection, but he stops once he sympathizes with a confused Nicholas, who calls his mother.

What does Stephen see in the photo?

Once the truth is revealed about Jonathan, Stephen then decides to burn all the explicit photos his son took of Catherine the night he raped her.

As he places the photos in the fire, Stephen sees an important little detail that he missed: Nicholas was there in the room when Catherine was attacked.

A photograph shows a young Nicholas looking at his mother from the reflection of the mirror. It’s at this moment that Stephen realizes that his journey of revenge has hurt more people than he thought.

“Revenge and retribution are going to end the same way because it’s just like the saying: ‘He who seeks revenge must dig two graves,’” Cuarón says.

At the end of the show, Catherine tells Nicholas what happened to her in Italy. Nicholas begins to cry and says he doesn’t remember the trip or the fact that she was raped. While feeling remorse, he kisses his mother and they both take the opportunity to get to know each other better on a clean slate.

“Very often we do not remember the traumatic episodes we witness. But the fact that we don’t remember them doesn’t mean that they aren’t stored in us and don’t come out in different behaviors. This is seen with Nicholas and his addictive behaviors,” says Cuarón.

“Warning” ends with Catherine rebuilding her bond with her son. After prioritizing her career for many years, she decides to focus on Nicholas and repair their once strained relationship.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com