Memory of a Killer Season 1 Finale Brings Angelo’s Lies to Light

It was always going to end this way, wasn’t it?

Angelo has played a dangerous game for a long time, and this season showed that his lies were starting to converge.

The Ferryman drama only reinforced what we already knew: what’s done in the dark will always find a way to shine.

Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 9 was partly about Angelo finally putting things together, and Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 10 was about Angelo trying to put an end to things once and for all.

In the immediate aftermath of Earl’s death and Angelo and Dutch saving Michael, the game plan for Angelo was to bring Grant down, not necessarily kill her, which I found interesting.

Angelo’s job is to kill, so after all she put him through, it’s fascinating that his plan was to take Grant down from within.

And that was even after he discovered that Grant did have Leah killed, as I suspected.

We only got confirmation now, but the early connection between Grant and Earl made it clear that Leah’s death wasn’t accidental. Let’s put that into perspective.

Grant had Angelo’s wife killed and tried to have his daughter and his brother killed. It’s chilling how far she was willing to go to destroy Angelo’s entire life.

So often, you see revenge stories where the person has a change of heart, realizing that getting revenge won’t actually change their circumstances. But Grant did not have that kind of conscience.

She was hellbent on ruining Angelo in every which way, and it’s wild to think about just how close she got.

That’s why Angelo’s decision to go to Agent Roberts and to elicit Nicky’s help felt somewhat shortsighted, if only because I’m not convinced that anything, including prison, would stop her. She’s proven to have an endless number of people at her disposal.

That included Nicky, even if she was the one who found her conscience in the end and decided to fight back.

Angelo obviously had a lot going on this season, including his illness, but he always had a blind spot for Nicky, even after she proved herself distrustful. She even called him in the last hour to tell him she was going to make things right, and yet he was still surprised when it turned out she had befriended Maria.

Nicky was stuck in an extremely difficult situation, and she had to betray Angelo to save herself, which is a tale as old as time. But we really only ever saw Nicky betraying Angelo, so her assertion that she had feelings for him rang very hollow.

There were ample times she could have come clean or chosen not to mess with his memory the way that she did. From what was shown to us, it wasn’t as if Grant was listening in to all their conversations, so why couldn’t she have told her she was deliberately confusing him, but not actually done it?

If anything, what really changed Nicky’s mind about everything wasn’t her supposed feelings for her subject, but instead Grant being so gung-ho to kill a pregnant woman. That was a step too far.

Now, the whole mini-operation of trying to expose Grant via Nicky was doomed from the start, because Grant was never going to fall for it. She was already skeptical of Nicky, seeing as how Maria was still alive, plus Agent Roberts had already tipped her off.

Angelo and Nicky didn’t know that, obviously, but it was more a matter of how it would go wrong, rather than if.

Who do we think Grant has on her payroll? Because she has people risking their lives for her left, right, and center. My guess has always been that she just has a bunch of Nicky-like people, those whom she’s kept out of jail, to do her bidding.

But man, if she’s been collecting felons like Pokémon cards to help her exact revenge and no one noticed, that makes you think.

Nicky’s death was predictable, but the manner in which it happened was pretty brutal. Getting shanked in broad daylight is a horrible way to go, but the second she chose not to leave town and help Angelo, you kind of felt that she was a goner.

Nicky’s death seemed to be the main thing that told Angelo that he had to kill Grant, and again, that’s something he should have realized a long time ago.

Joe is still a very underdeveloped character, but a common thread throughout the season has been the strained relationship with Angelo, which has improved as the season has gone on.

Angelo trusts Joe, and I think it took him a minute, but he also respects him. Their dynamic is easily one of the best of the show, and I appreciated the conversation they had when Angelo went off to confront Grant and told Joe to stay behind.

There is no shame in knowing your limits and not being able to kill at will. Joe is still a valuable part of the operation, and while he’s been helping Angelo with the whole Ferryman saga, that final confrontation didn’t concern him.

It was truly just about Angelo and Grant. And even if Angelo was ambushed—which he was—he didn’t want Joe to get caught up in his fight.

Stubborn Joe didn’t listen, but it’s a good thing he didn’t, because Grant was not riding solo!

I’m not sure why I believed that Grant would enter into that confrontation alone, but I did. So, imagine my surprise when the shooters came out of the rafters!

Memory of a Killer Season 1 has had some great action sequences, and this gunfight was one of their best because it was genuinely suspenseful. I thought for sure Joe was going to die saving Angelo, and it was going to seriously bum me out because if there’s one thing I want to see in a potential second season, it’s the continuation of Angelo and Joe’s working partnership.

Luckily, a little bullet didn’t take Joe out, but Grant wasn’t so lucky.

Grant couldn’t make it out of this season alive.

The Ferryman mystery was a fully contained arc within this season, and once Grant was revealed as the big bad, her part of the story needed to end this season.

Carrying it into another season wouldn’t have worked because of everything she was now up against. Angelo wasn’t going to die, and she couldn’t go back to work, and The Ferryman’s whole thing is that she wanted Angelo to suffer.

So, her floating off into the wind wouldn’t make sense, and it would have felt like a cop out.

Angelo and Grant needed to come face-to-face, and one of them had to die.

As far as villains go, Grant was a great one. She was focused, determined, ruthless, and, maybe most important of all, calculated. She rarely made mistakes, and Angelo never took her lightly.

What’s so fascinating about this series is that Angelo is also technically a bad guy, but he’s presented as the person in this story you root for. He killed Parks, and maybe he felt bad about it, but he still did it, and yet, we’re hoping he kills Grant and gets his life back.

For those wondering when Maria was going to have her baby, it was always going to be in the finale, and for it to coincide with the big Ferryman showdown was television magic at its finest.

I audibly gasped when Angelo couldn’t remember Maria’s name at the hospital, and one thing this show does well is show the real effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s and how it can come on unexpectedly.

While I assumed someone in Angelo’s life would discover his lies, I also wondered whether his diagnosis would come to light as well. And it looks like that will still be carried over if the show gets renewed.

Another thing that will get carried over is Maria finding out her dad is a killer.

Grant was so smart and evil to send all that proof on Angelo to Maria instead of the police, because facing Maria and her disappointment would be worse than getting arrested.

The fact that Angelo could continue living his life while Maria cuts him off after a lifetime of lies—especially given his indirect role in her mother’s death—would hurt him more than anything, and Grant knew that.

There is nothing that matters more to Angelo than Maria and Michael, and now he will be tasked with earning back his daughter’s trust.

The prospect of losing Maria is more devastating than a legal consequence, and it sets up a compelling hook for what will hopefully be another season of this twisted tale.

Killer Notes

• Did they ever tell us how Grant discovered Angelo killed Parks?

• I love Joe, but why did he have to mention the word daughter? Dutch will make it his mission to find out what Angelo is hiding now, because he was so obviously lying when confronted.

• Jeff growing a backbone and confronting Dave was the most I’ve liked him all season.

That’s all for this season, folks!

There were highs and lows, but the series came into itself toward the end and gave us some really entertaining hours.

I’d love to hear from you guys about the series as a whole, and what you thought about the finale!

Hopefully, we’ll meet again for season 2!

You can watch Memory of a Killer on Mondays at 9/8c on Fox.