Over the course of eight weeks, while The Night Of explored the murder trial of an innocent young Muslim man, a 26-year-old in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, had his conviction overturned. After a decade behind bars, Brendan Dassey—whose imprisonment for his alleged involvement with the murder of Teresa Halbach was popularized by the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer—was given a chance at freedom. A judge concluded that Dassey's confession had been unlawfully obtained by law enforcement. It's unsettling to think that these events unfolded during the summer weeks fans were watching the trial of Nasir Khan on HBO. Both seem just as real, just as heartbreaking, and just as excruciatingly frustrating. It's a stunning blur of the real world and fictional realism.
It's been a brilliant and difficult couple months with The Night Of, which is why I didn't expect to laugh at the finale's closing shot. The last moments of this intense, calculated, serial crime drama offers a reminder that The Night Of was often really funny. Naz is free, though deeply fucked up from the horrors of Rikers, John Stone is back representing petty criminals for $250 a pop (cash only), Box is off hunting the man who may have actually killed Andrea, and that damn cat, which last we saw was headed to the great kitty litter box in the sky, sashays its way across the screen. It's been a season-long, sitcom-like side-plot involving Stone adopting a dead woman's cat even though he's allergic to it (cue the laugh track). It's also an amusing reminder of all of Stone's annoying and downright disgusting physical ailments ( those damn feet, the even worse chop stick, the miserable eczema). But I also took this as the show pointing at the viewer and yelling, "Gotcha!"
In the second episode of The Night Of, I predicted that the cat would be the biggest clue in solving the murder of Andrea Cornish. Throughout the rest of the series, the show lightly hinted that this cat would have a major part to play in this case: Why would they keep showing that back door clanging open? Why did Stone adopt the cat? Why did they show the cat outsmart Stone and open the bedroom door on its own and curl up next to Stone in—where else—his bed? The cat, as it turned out, was another red herring among the many revealed in the final episode.
At its heart The Night Of is about learning the truth, and how human and institutional flaws can easily prevent it. Every person in this series pursued their own version of the truth. Stone was convinced it was Andrea's stepfather, Don, the abusive, greedy asshole. Chandra was convinced it was Mr. Day, the beyond creepy hearse driver who hates women. Box and Weiss (and Naz's own mother) were convinced it was Naz, the kid who was found fleeing the scene of the crime with a bloody knife in his pocket. There are convincing arguments to be made for each, and everyone who watched the series believed their own version of what happened in episode one. (It was Naz's brother who killed Andrea, when he showed up to help Naz after he, in a drug-induced brownout, texted him!)
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But in its final, brutal lesson, The Night Of revealed every one of these versions of the truth were wrong. In Episode Eight, the audience had the same revelation that Detective Box had while up on the stand in Episode Seven: We'd been ignoring the answer right in front of us. Stepping back and looking at all the angles of the case he missed, Box (unable to enjoy those golf clubs knowing he'd put away an innocent man) tracks down Ray, Andrea's financial advisor who, turns out, has an incredibly compelling motive and much evidence pointing to his guilt. The answer isn't always the most obvious one, or the one we want it to be. Just like the solution to Stone's feet weren't in some powder from a back alley in Chinatown.
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Yes, Stone—his face covered in raw rashes, his hands hidden behind ridiculous Mickey Mouse gloves— gave a closing statement worthy of Atticus Finch. He delivers the most concise analysis of what happened to Naz yet: "The rush to judgement against Nasir Khan began at the 21st precinct at 4:45 a.m. the night of and ended 10 seconds later when he was tackled to the floor." If this were an episode of Law & Order, as it's so often compared, Naz would have been found universally not guilty by the jury. Box would have stormed in and presented all the evidence pointing to Ray. They would have found some sort of camera on the cat that had filmed the whole night. Naz would have walked free and lived happily ever after. But, this show, in all its tragic realism, got Naz off on a technicality following a deadlocked jury thanks largely to a prosecution that realized it had the wrong man.
"We've got more on the kid," Weiss tells Box after he shows her the evidence he's amassed against Ray. This might be the most heartbreaking moment of The Night Of. The prosecution is just looking for the easiest story to convince a jury. They're just trying to close another case, and in their eagerness to do so they've made mistakes, and more frighteningly, forgotten that they're about to end a man's life. You can hear it in the clinical delivery of Weiss' closing statement, a moment in the courtroom that, like Box, Weiss realizes what she's done. Box, to his redeeming credit, throws her off when he walks out during her speech. In the end, she too makes the right decision, but only after she's given the luxury of a split jury.
Though it gave a satisfying if unexpected conclusion to the main mystery, let's step back and look at the bigger picture of this episode. In a lengthy hour and a half, this finale felt at times too long while leaving a number of stories half-finished. Freddy, who at once protected Naz and turned him into a crack smoking accessory to murder, seemed to fizzle out in the finale. No dramatic farewell, no—as I was worried—expectation for Naz to repay a debt. And poor Chandra, her career ruined after winning (kinda?) a case that should have turned her into a celebrity defense attorney. Stone is back itching his feet with chopsticks on the subway under the watchful eye of his own advertisements to defend the lowliest of criminals. It's harsh, it's bleak, and it speaks to the fact that even the most noble of acts don't deliver the most rewarding of rewards. Did any of these characters expect anything else? Does it cheapen their good deeds to have done so? Maybe Chandra deserves her career to be over after kissing her client (oh, and delivering him drugs in prison). Maybe there's nothing special about Stone—he's just a small-time lawyer with a foot condition. Maybe these conclusions deserve to be morally ambiguous.
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So, where does all of this leave us? In eight episodes we've been given a bleak snapshot of the criminal justice system: A monotonous cycle of corruption, ineptitude, flawed bureaucracy, racism, and institutional oversight. We watched as Naz was transformed from Bambi into D'Angelo Barksdale. Though he walked free, Naz endured an almost unimaginable injustice. And let's not forget that in the end, a young woman was stabbed 22 times and her murderer is still out on the streets, possibly playing the slots in Atlantic City. There was no justice for Andrea Cornish. Maybe Box and Weiss will catch Ray. Maybe Ray is just another innocent young man who looks guilty. Maybe the system will fail someone else. Maybe, if there's a second season—and I don't necessarily think there should be, as some cases go cold, and this story is best told in a tight eight episodes—Box will get a chance to solve the crime.
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