The Boroughs ending explainer: Why did Sam just glitch?
You've done it! You've braved the tunnels and laboratories of The Boroughs, met Mother (Nancy Daly) and her spidery "kids," and watched Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) and his friends free them in a daring escape.
It's a happy ending for almost everyone involved. Sorry to the villainous Blaine (Seth Numrich) and Anneliese (Alice Kremelberg), but they had it coming. However, there are still some major revelations to unpack, and a few more questions the show has yet to answer. Let's break it down.
What are the monsters in The Boroughs?
The origin of the spider-like nightmares who lurk in the tunnels beneath the Boroughs is tied to the founding of the retirement community itself.
In 1949, Boroughs founder Marcus Shaw found an egg in a mine. It hatched a creature he called Mother. Drinking her blood holds your body in time. You won't age, get sick, or die, as long as you keep drinking the blood. Marcus has been drinking her blood for decades, but in order to keep his immortality a secret, he changed his name to Blaine and posed as Marcus' grandson.
While Blaine, Anneliese, and their co-conspirators feed on Mother's blood, she needs to feed on cerebrospinal fluid. To obtain it, Blaine sics Mother's kids on the Boroughs' inhabitants at night. They feed the fluid back to Mother, thus creating the golden, goopy lifeblood that keeps Blaine and Anneliese looking young.
Draining so much cerebrospinal fluid can lead to rare neurological diseases, like Maxwell's, which impacts Edward (Ed Begley Jr.). Maxwell's is fictional, likely a cover-up Blaine and his staff use to explain their residents' decline as a result of all the brain fluid siphoning. In trying to buy more time for themselves, they're robbing time from others. It's a sick, exploitative cycle, but not one the monster kids seem aware of beyond simply needing to feed.
Why does Mother look like a human in The Boroughs?
While the kids have spider-like legs and human-like torsos, Mother is extremely human in appearance. (Aside from the occasional extra limb and a large protuberance on her back, of course.) Why does she look so different?
In episode 7, Wally (Denis O'Hare) posits that Mother looks human because she's been eating a steady diet of human brain fluid. Yummy. It's a very literal interpretation of "You are what you eat," and it appears to go both ways. Just as Mother looks human after eating so much human brain fluid, so too can Blaine and Anneliese shift into monsters after drinking so much of her blood. The kids have their fair share of human characteristics as well, likely also because of all the brain fluid changing their bodily makeup. That raises the question: If these creatures are fundamentally altered by what they eat, then what do they look like before they eat anything? How did Mother look when she first hatched?
How could Mother communicate with Sam in The Boroughs?
All throughout The Boroughs, Sam experienced traumatic flashbacks to the day his wife Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek) passed away. At first, they seemed like straightforward memories stirred up by external sensory triggers. As the season went on, though, they became stranger. Lilly would appear in the Boroughs, glitching like the monsters do in video footage and begging Sam for help.
Turns out, these weren't just memories. They were Mother trying to communicate.
As the oracular Manor resident known simply as the Duchess (Mary Mcdonnell) tells Sam in episode 7, Mother doesn't experience time in a linear fashion. Because of this, she communicates with people by looking like someone from their past. She mostly makes contact with the Manor's dementia patients, who are similarly unmoored in time. Sam is an exception. He's still grieving Lilly, and according to the Duchess, that loss "split" his mind.
"You've got one foot stuck with us now, and the other on the day she died," she reveals.
That connection allows Sam to find and rescue Mother with the help of the rest of his friends. He returns her to a cave in the old mine shaft, where she chooses to die in a glowing explosion alongside her kids (and Blaine).
Contrast Mother's embrace of death with Blaine's abject fear at the thought of aging and dying. No matter how long he tried to put it off (killing who knows how many Boroughs residents in the process), even he has to face the truth that everybody dies. As Sam puts it, "Join the club."
To thank Sam, Mother offers him the gift of a small bit of time with Lilly: not as a memory, but as herself. The two share a sweet dance, one that offers closure on Season 1's thoughtful examination of just how overwhelming grief can be. Have the tissues handy.
What was the deal with the cave and peach tree in The Boroughs?
The cave where Mother dies is the same cave where Art (Clarke Peters) discovered the peach that briefly restored his health. Mother's kids had been preparing it for her eventual death, explaining why the tree was adorned with beautiful glass ornaments.
The peach gets less of an explanation, though. How did it have the same healing powers as Mother's blood if Mother was all the way in the Boroughs? And why did the tree immediately wither after Art picked it? Perhaps it all goes back to Mother's birth. Did the presence of her egg or the act of her hatching impact the tree's growth and any fruit it might produce?
Why was Sam glitching at the end of The Boroughs?
While Mother and her kids are gone by the end of The Boroughs, their supernatural impacts linger.
In the season's final scene, Sam goes to the bathroom to apply a new bandage to his head wound. As he does so, his reflection glitches in the mirror, similarly to how Mother's kids glitched in video footage. What's happened to Sam?
The Boroughs leaves that question open-ended. However, it's clear that his time with Mother left a supernatural mark on him. Perhaps this alteration stems from the time Mother gifted him with Lilly. (Sweet!) Or maybe he got a little Mother blood in his mouth when she exploded. (Gross, but I'm not ruling it out.) Mother was also adamant that only Sam accompany her to the cave, so she may have known he would be changed by her death. Whatever the case, Sam is still linked to these creatures, leaving the door open for more adventure.
Are The Boroughs' monsters aliens?
We've witnessed Mother's death, but The Boroughs doesn't really give us clarity on her origins. Sure, we know she hatched from an egg, but how did that egg get in the mines in the first place? Who is Mother's Mother?
My guess? There are some alien shenanigans afoot. The Boroughs draws serious inspiration from E.T., even casting star Dee Wallace as Grace in its opening scene. Could those references go beyond homage and hint at the series going beyond Earth? The show's setting of New Mexico, home to Roswell and its theorized UFO crash site, also feels intentional.
But the most compelling argument for alien involvement is the show's very last shot, which pans from the rooftops of the Boroughs up to the stars. Between that shot and John Paesano's swelling score, The Boroughs suggests that further adventures await in space. Could Mother and her kids' people be living out there, looking down on the Boroughs?
Is there going to be The Boroughs Season 2?
Between Sam's glitching and the very pointed look to the stars, The Boroughs has set up some juicy story threads to follow in a potential Season 2. As yet, Netflix has yet to renew the show for a second outing.
