How does The Last Thing He Told Me end in the original book?

Modified Jul 08, 2024 10:54 GMT

Jennifer Garner in a still from The Last Thing He Told Me (Image via Apple TV)

After having a successful first season, Apple TV+'s The Last Thing He Told Me has been renewed for a second season, scheduled for release at a later date. The Jennifer Garner, Angourie Rice, Aisha Tyler, Augusto Aguilera, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau show's plot follows the premise of Laura Dave's novel of the same name.

For the uninitiated, the show's plot and its ending have been directly taken from the novel, barring a few deviations. In the book and the show, Hannah (Jennifer Garner) and Bailey (Angourie Rice) end up being closer to one another than before the plot began to thicken. Through a journey of shared trauma, the stepmother-daughter relationship between the two ends up being a mother-daughter one, with the latter addressing the former as "Mom" towards the end of the show. The official logline for the show read:

"This gripping limited series follows Hannah, a woman who must forge a relationship with her 16-year-old stepdaughter Bailey in order to find the truth about why her husband has mysteriously disappeared."

The Last Thing He Told Me book ending explored

The Last Thing He Told Me chronicles the story of Hannah and Bailey, who embark on a journey to uncover the truth behind Owen's (Hannah's husband and Bailey's father's) sudden disappearance and his secret life.

After Owen goes missing, leaving behind a note and some money, Hannah suspects Owen of foul play. She thinks that Owen fled home because there were ongoing raids in their locality, and The Shop, the tech company where he worked, was one of the places that were under the police's radar.

With Owen gone, Hannah and Bailey decide to go to Austin, Texas, to gain more insight into Owen's life. They find things that they have never heard of. For instance, they find out that Owen's real name was Ethan and that he was married to a woman named Katherine. They also find out that Bailey's birth mother was Katherine and that the former was named Kristin at birth.

They also learned that Owen, then named Ethan, had fled Austin because of his fallout with his father-in-law, Nicholas. It was the same reason he had changed his name. Additionally, they also learned that Owen's previous wife and Bailey's mother had died a long time ago and that Owen met Hannah only after Katherine was gone for a while.

After learning all of this in Austin, Hailey and Hannah decided to return to their home in California, where the two started leading a normal life despite Owen's absence. Their relationship is stronger than ever, as exemplified by Hailey referring to Hannah as her mother, which she did not do earlier.

Having said that, Owen does make a brief appearance during one of Hannah's exhibitions, where he comes to look over his family but leaves undetected. At the end of it, Hannah is happy to be sharing a closer bond with Bailey than she usually does, accompanied by a sense of relief that Owen is not a bad person.

Also read: Where was The Last Thing He Told Me filmed? All filming locations explored.

Characters explored in The Last Thing He Told Me show

Most of the characters explored in the book The Last Thing He Told Me made it to Apple TV+'s show. The characters that were a part of the hit show were: