What did Stephen do to Catherine?

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for episode 6 Disclaimer.Disclaimer Episode 6 ends with one of the series’ biggest cliffhangers yet, as things begin to come to a head between Catherine Revenscroft (Cate Blanchett) and Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline). The truth about what happened between Catherine and Jonathan (Louis Partridge) in Disclaimer has not yet been fully revealed, but the sixth and penultimate episode begins to distort the narrative of the events portrayed in the book The perfect strangerand perhaps towards reality.

Throughout the episode, flashbacks to Italy in DisclaimerThe past-to-now timeline is narrated by Blanchett herself, allowing Catherine to tell her side of the story: that She and Jonathan didn’t have an affairbut rather that he was scary and apparently stalked her. It’s part of a complicated episode that builds tension, including Stephen’s plan to murder Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and ends with a confrontation, finally, between the two protagonists of Disclaimeris released… but it needs a dark twist.

Stephen drugged Catherine – will he kill her?

Is this Stephen’s ultimate revenge plan?

During the confrontation at his home, Stephen crushes some sleeping pills and puts them in Catherine’s tea. He received the pills earlier at the hospital, asking the nurse for something to help him sleep after he was “attacked” by Catherine. It’s unclear if this was his exact plan for them, but he obviously knew they would be useful in some way, whether to Catherine or as part of his attempts to kill Nicholas.

Unfortunately, Catherine he does drink the tea, which means when Disclaimer When episode 7 begins, she will either be on the brink of unconsciousness or already there. The question then is what Stephen will doand will he change his mission from revenge to simply killing her? While this is somewhat plausible, it seems unlikely – and not just because Blanchett’s character’s death at the end seems like a strange and inappropriate way to end the story.

Stephen is focused on hurting Catherine, not murdering her. He wants to kill everything in her life: her career, her marriage, her son; take everything away, as he (and his wife, Nancy, before him) believe she did by seducing Jonathan and then leaving him to die. He wants Catherine to feel the pain he and Nancy feltwhich probably means that the sleeping pills are a means of knocking her out and preventing her from interfering a second time with her true objective: Nicholas.

Will Stephen keep his promise to kill Nicholas?

He tried it once and seems determined to do it again

Stephen tried and failed to kill Nicholas in Disclaimer episode 6, but things are set for him to try and do it again. Robert Ravenscroft (Sacha Baron Cohen) has already invited him back to visit Nicholas once againand that may be exactly what he intends to do now that he has drugged Catherine.

Nicholas is a living reminder of what Stephen lost. He is, literally, alive because of Jonathan’s death. Stephen’s idea of ​​revenge against Catherine is built around this: a son for a son. So, it looks like he will try to kill Nicholas a second time. What is less likely is that he will succeed.

If Nicholas died in Disclaimerso the show had two perfect opportunities to do this. It could have caused him to die from a drug overdose or Stephen killed him in the hospital before Catherine intervened. After all that, it would be a strange storytelling choice to still kill him. It seems rather more likely that Stephen won’t be able to go through with itor he will be arrested when the truth finally comes out.

What truth about Jonathan will Catherine reveal?

Disclaimer is one step closer to showing what really happened

Disclaimer The end of episode 6 may see Catherine drugged by Stephen, but the point of her going there was all about the truth. Even Stephen himself seems to suggest The perfect stranger not being entirely accurate, as he says, Nancy, like all good writers, mixed “fragments of reality” to find the greater truth. Since he knows that she was not present for much of the story being told, it seems that on some level he is aware that it is partially fictional, even if he cannot face her.

Catherine plans to force him to face this. She’s already started dropping hints about what really happened, with her voiceover explaining that the beach photos were taken without her consent, and were actually just her adjusting her bikini. And while she and Jonathan were together at the bar, it was nothing more than a glance; he was apparently very interested, and although she admitted to being excited, she was also nervous.

It looks like the Apple TV+ show is preparing a dark reveal for its finale, where Catherine tells her full version of events. It could be that Jonathan is stalking her, but it could also go further, and there are definitely signs that she was assaulted by him. At this point, it’s more a question of whether she will be able to tell the truth since she was drugged, and if so, whether she will be in time to save Nicholas and whether anyone believes her.

The point of Disclaimer So far it’s been about unreliable narration and how stories change based on perspective and how the truth can be distorted to match the reality someone wants to see. With that, a more ambiguous ending is not out of the equation, although given the potential severity of this, we hope there is a stronger resolution.

The seventh and final episode of Disclaimer will launch on Friday, November 8th on Apple TV+.