The Boroughs creators explain that ending, because it was all a bit confusing

Netflix’s latest sci-fi series The Boroughs has had everyone hooked, but people are a bit confused by the ending. Thankfully, the creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews have explained everything.

The eight-part series execuitely produced by the brothers behind Stranger Things, that has a very similar film to the teen drama – but with old people. Set in a New Mexico retirement village, it follows a guy called Sam as he investigates strange creatures that have been stalking the neighbourhood at night.

“The show starts off about a guy who sets out to kill a monster, but it ends up as a show about a guy who saves a monster and saves the town that he doesn’t want to be in, doesn’t want to be part of. So we had to make a creature that could start off as scary, but then become sympathetic and sad,” Addiss told Deadline.

Alongside Renee, Judy, Art, and Wally, he finds out that Blaine and Anneliese have been sending the children of a supernatural being known as Mother into the town at night to extract brain fluid from sleeping residents. They then used this brain fluid to feed Mother and keep her alive. Blaine, Anneliese and other Boroughs staff members feed off Mother’s blood to keep them young.

Credit: Netflix

“We liked the idea that you are what you eat,” Matthews told Tudum. “Blaine and Anneliese take on some monster qualities because they’ve had so much goo, [which means] Mother would take on some human qualities because they’ve stuffed her full of so much brain fluid.”

After being drained of her blood for years, Mother wants to die. When Sam finds this out, he drags her to the Cave of Wonders under The Boroughs, where Mother and her children all die together. Blaine attacks Sam as revenge for the death of his wife, but also dies when Mother’s body explodes.

However, Mother saves Sam because she is grateful that he helped her end her life. As a gift, she gives him extra time with his late wife, who tells him: “She’s saying thank you. Time is a gift.”

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“If Sam’s arc is about going from not accepting that death is part of life to embracing it, then he starts in a very sad place, missing Lilly,” Matthews explained. “We thought to help complete that arc — to heal that wound and create a little closure — [was] to give him this magical moment.”

Credit: Netflix

The creator said it’s “not entirely clear how in control Mother is of her own powers,” but this is “another way to look at how Mother’s relationship to time is different. Matthew said: “Sam’s relationship to time was different because of his grief, so maybe now we can see how his relationship to time can be different because of his healing.”

Adiss also told Deadline: “You start to think, ‘Okay, if he needs to save a monster, and we got a couple of these crawlies running around, we needed our E.T.’ We had this image of Mother, and instead of taking her to the stars like at the end of E.T., her end is to die, to shift [Sam’s] relationship with death.

“The creatures go from scary and other to almost sad and heroic, and that is their release. So to break it down, the creature is death and the way Sam’s relationship changes to it.” In the final scene, Sam glitches as he’s looking in the mirror in the bathroom, a clear sign that while he thinks he’s conquered the threat, but he hasn’t really. And a teaser for series two.

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Featured image credit: Netflix