All Her Fault Final Thoughts

 

Spoilers For Entire Series Below

In the final minutes of All Her Fault Lia, played masterfully by Abby Elliott talks about how our society finds it far easier to scapegoat and punish people for perceived wrongdoings rather than face its own flaws.  While this is a manifest truth, there is the clear irony in the fact that Lia is in fact doing so to deflect attention from the culpability of the death of her brother rather than acknowledge the truth – and that by that point the viewer is completely on her side.

Ostensibly All Her Fault the masterful Peacock adaptation of Mary Mara's best selling novel is telling the story of the events that follow the abduction of Milo Irvine, the five year old son of Marisa and Peter and while it is mostly about that it is also a frightening portrayal of one of the greatest monsters I've seen on television in a very long time in Peter Irvine. Jake Lacy has a history ever since his breakout role in the first season of The White Lotus of playing outwardly nice people whose façade reveals true bullies led by privilege. But I've never seen him play a character like Peter a man who clearly has no soul or conscience, who has lived his entire life completely oblivious to the damage he does to the people he supposedly loves and who even when confronted with the horrible things he's done after decades is absolutely indifferent to the trauma he's caused.

This is made clear in the fifth episode where Brian and Lia finally learn the worst aspects of their brother. Brian (Daniel Monks) has spent his entire life with paralysis, living off the goodwill and compassion of Peter ever since a childhood incident at age six. He's lived that entire period believe his sister Lia was responsible for it in a childhood accident. Lia, in turn, has spent her life addicted to painkillers and has gone to rehab three separate times, the most recent one within weeks of Milo's abduction.

At the worst possible time Brian learns that Peter has been lying to him about not being a candidate for a spinal surgery that could have given mobility. He told him he wasn't a candidate when in fact he was and Peter turned it down. At the same period Peter believes Lia has relapsed because he found an empty prescription bottle of Brian's painkillers. Even after he is called on both of these problems Peter becomes more superior arguing that even if the surgery worked Brian would have to start all over again and he couldn't handle it and he's sure that Lia's relapse will happen again. Then he gives away the fact that it was not Lia who tripped Brian thirty years ago, it was Peter. He was jealous of not being included so he tripped him – and in his words, he never told anybody.

What's terrifying is that Peter feels no guilt about the trauma he caused his sister: "I gave you a gift," he says nonchalantly. And he clearly doesn't feel bad about what happened to Brian. He doesn't apologize for that either.  We have no time to deal with this because Milo has just been found and returned – though there is no sign of Carrie Finch.

In the penultimate episode we are finally told the backstory of Carrie, whose real name is Josephine Murphy. The entire episode tells us what has happened to Josephine and its stunning. Sophia Lillis is magnificent playing a teenage girl who is clearly suffering from a mental illness and has never known a moment of love from her criminal father or neglectful mother. What's striking is that we spend much of it thinking that Josie's obsession with Milo is based on some kind of delusion of her mental state. Because she lost her child not long after giving birth to her (we don't see how until the finale episode) the viewer naturally assumes that Josie has never truly processed her trauma appropriately and that this is just a sign of her condition.

Lillis leans in to it hard for most of the episode, playing a young woman who never had a chance to grow up and who might very well be acting out a fantasy of hers. As things continue to get deep she ends up calling in first her boyfriend who just got out of prison and her father, who is a bookie. As things continue to unravel Josie's father kills her boyfriend to cover his track and then arranges things for what we believe is a ransom but what we later learn is blackmail. Josie returns to the motel room and finds her father dead and the phone still recording.

We truly think she intends to kill herself before she ends up at the Irvine home with a gun and its only then we get a hint of the truth: there was an accident six years ago with her baby in the back seat. She is now convinced that the Irvines took her son from her and we now think that's the truth.

It's in the series finale that all of this comes together and the bloodbath begins. Josie enters the house with a gun and Colin (Jay Ellis) tries to take it away from her and he is accidentally killed. Josephine clearly knows how things are going to end and she tells Brian and Lia to go upstairs. She tells Marisa that you have to protect your son and while this is going on Peter charges Josie and shoots her.

It's only then the true evil of Peter is revealed. On the night they were taking their son home the Irvine car and Josie's collided.  Their son was killed. Peter, in a moment of shock, got out of the car and then he heard the baby in the Murphy car crying. He took the child out and replaced his dead son with hers.

This plays out the same pattern that Peter did with his siblings as a child and for all his tears at the moment we know all of this is being done for the same reason. This is not about taking Milo away from Marisa and Peter; this is about Peter needed to be in control. He emotionally bullies Marisa into lying for him at the crime scene and in the aftermath, saying Josephine was clearly deluded.

By that point Marisa knows that Peter's hands are even bloodier. While he was sent out to get upholstery cleaner he did bring the ransom. But when it was clear there was an attempt at blackmail, he killed Mr. Murphy in an instant. Then he took his son out of the motel room and put him in the trunk of a car, to make sure he wouldn't get caught. The viewer has every reason to believe Sarah will kill Peter right then but she freezes.

Lia, who is completely shell-shocked, plans Colin's wake. By that point it's clear that whatever devotion Peter had for his son has been replaced by his need for control and that he has been more than willing to move on from this with no remorse any more than what he did to Brian and Lia. Marisa has realized she has no options.

If the viewer had any doubt that Peter deserved to die it was completely removed by watching him at the wake. He has no sympathy for his brother trying to move on and live on his own, saying its all about him and makes it very clear that he thinks Colin and Lia's relationship was not one he approved of. It's clear he intended to blame Lia for Colin's the death the exact same way he spent thirty years forcing her to blame herself for Brian's injury. And the fact that when they went to the wine cellar he seemed to feel superior that he had lived and Colin was dead made me feel no more remorse than Marisa did for what happened.

It's worth noting that while this is going on Detective Alcarena (Michael Pena) had managed to connect the dots. He realized that Milo was in fact Josephine Murphy's child and that Peter Irvine was responsible for covering it up. When he learns that Peter is dead and we end up at the start of the series its clear he's withheld quite a bit of information from his partner that would end with all of this being resolved.

During the series we've gotten to know Alcarena a bit. We know that he has a son with special needs that he clearly loves without condition and that he's been trying to get him into St. Marks, the same school that Milo and Jacob go too. He's essentially been bribed by the headmaster of the school to make the drug charge of one of the students there with early admittance and while he initially rejects it, he does so for the good of his son.

Alcarena is one of the only characters who stays sympathetic all the way through and through his scenes with Marisa its clear the two are connected by their efforts of being working parents. I believe that's why he comes to see Marisa  at the end of the series to tell her that while he knows the facts of the case he's not going to pursue charges. "I think you were faced with some truly difficult choices," he tells her, not knowing even a fraction of how monstrous Peter was and it's the absolution she needs.

I have to say while this is a series full of truly incredible performances Dakota Fanning is remarkable as Jenny. I have no idea if Jenny's role was nearly as significant in the novel as here (I'll be reading it in the weeks to come) but it's clear Jenny was put there to show that she is in the same emotional place as Marisa during this period. It's clear that her husband has been emotionally distant for years and has never truly supported the fact that she was breadwinner. It's clear he thinks the fact that their nanny has been a criminal is an opportunity for Jenny to stay home more and take the burden off him.

By the time we reached the sixth episode we see that her husband has no emotional maturity at all and has been lying about his quiz team to just spend a few hours watching TikTok and YouTube. When Jenny unloads on him with the ferocity of how horrible it is to be a both a mother and a breadwinner it is the kind of speech that is more emotional resonant with any woman in America if not the world.

Refreshingly with the clear exception of Peter every major character in All Her Fault fits more clearly in the average person mode that the morally grey area the viewer has become accustomed to in even the best TV shows for much of this century.  The first part of the teaser: "All these nice people' is actually true and the violence that unfolded was almost entirely done by monstrous ones and arguably all of them happened because of Peter's actions.  This is true even when the killing takes place; Josie's actions are accidental; Peter has already killed her father and feels no remorse killing her. And given what we already know about Peter Sarah's actions were completely defensible.

As I've mentioned in earlier articles Peacock has produced some genuine sensations when it entered the original programming world in streaming and over the last two years I was fans of the recently canceled Poker Face, the superb Day of the Jackal and small gems such as Long Bright River and Apples Never Fall.  Yet it seems that it is All Her Fault may be the show that finally puts the streamer on the map: it has become the most watched series of any Peacock program in its history and already being nominated for Best Limited Series by both the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards with Snook being nominated for Best Actress by both organizations. The latter group has been more generous to the series, nominating Pena and Lillis for Supporting Actor and Actress,  in a Limited Series/TV Movie. Whether the Emmys will consider remains to be seen – there are six months to go before the eligibility period officially ends – but this is clearly one of the best shows of 2025.

My score (SERIES) 5 stars.