Caught is the latest Harlan Coben adaptation for Netflix which follows the story of a journalist known for bringing criminals to justice, but when a young woman disappears, the investigation unravels a web of interconnected mysteries and suspects that no one could have predicted.
Want to read the book? Buy Caught by Harlan Coben here
The final episode opens with another flashback, this time to Marcos and Leo as adults, running through the woods that they used to play in as kids together. They get to the lake and Leo jumps in from a high ledge, and eventually Marcos follows him into the water.
Marcos talks to Leo about setting up a trust find for the foundation and how they can use their part as leverage to pressure Fran Briguel. He tries to persuade Leo to move the foundation to a new location and Leo says the kids like it near the lake and he doesn't want to take that away from them.
Marcos points out they would have loads of cash left over after the move, but Leo says he knows Marcos is lying about being used as a scapegoat in Buenos Aires and that he needs to face up to what has happened and move on. Marcos gets cross and reminds his friend that he took the blame for them both hurting Margarita 30 years ago. Leo says he doesn't need reminding because it haunts him every day and that he can't say yes to what Marcos is asking because the land doesn't belong to him, it belongs to the kids.
In another flashback we see Marcos and Martina on Fran Briguel's private plane. He advises her to not put herself in a position with Fran that she can't control, and Martina seems confused but nods.
At the bar, Marcos is trying to talk to Fran about selling the foundation land to him, and he interrupts and asks him to deal with Martina and they will talk business tomorrow.
Marcos gets Martina out of the hotel and takes her for pizza and puts her on a bus home. He gives her a scarf, which is the yellow one the police found on the bottom of the abandoned boat, as the bus is going to be cold, and tells her to get home safe. She thanks him for his help and hugs him goodbye - before quickly remembering where she knows him from. Martina asks if he is friends with Leo, and he says he is and she tells him she lives next door to his ex, Julianna. We see at this point that Martina has just given Marcos an idea.
In another flashback, we see Marcos emailing Ema pretending to be a teenage girl who is being groomed and asking for help catching the predator. He then messages her on the chat site and we realize the person she was talking to online for the story was Marcos.
We also discover that the man Martina was talking to was Marcos after he gives her a burner phone. They secretly meet up and he has groomed her to trust him and want to please him, so when he tells her he has a friend going through a tough time, she agrees to help. That friend is, of course, Leo and she agrees to call him asking for his help, getting him to meet her and a certain time and place. After Marcos sees Ema leaving Leo's house after they slept together, he calls Martina and tells her now is the time to call Leo and arrange where to meet.
We see Martina pretending to be in danger to Leo on the phone and because he is so nice, he agrees to go and get her. He leaves his meal with Marcos to get Martina and then as we know, this is where he meets Ema and her team and they think he is the online predator.
While Leo is at the house with the red door, being set up by Marcos, Marcos is at Leo's house planting all the images of the underage girls and the teddy from the fake meet up at the skate park with Ema and her team. We then see Marcos at home, comforting his daughter who has had a nightmare, and afterwards he looks online and finds Ema's video that seemingly exposed Leo as a child abuser and Marcos realises his plan has worked.
In the present day, we return to Ema and Marcos at the shore of the lake. Ema is out cold and he is dragging her to the water, yelling that if Leo had just given back the land that was rightfully his then none of this would have happened. He also yells that this is all Ema's fault, all she was meant to do was help the police catch Leo, but instead she got involved and now people are dead.
Marcos tries to drown Ema in the water and she fights for her life, trying to fight him off until he overpowers her and it looks like she is dead... however as he pushes her underwater she grabs a rock and hits him over the head. She she struggles to get out of the lake he comes after her, but she grabs her phone and starts a live stream, telling everyone she is hurt and needs help. She films Marcos as he comes at her with a rock and reveals that he has confessed to framing Leo and using her and Martina as a way of getting to his best friend. In the end, Marcos knows he has lost and walks off, leaving Ema alone at the lake.
Marcos drives home with his head bleeding and calls his wife, Mercedes. He tells her not to look at her phone until he gets there because people are making up lies about him, and she says now she is intrigued and is worried. He makes her promise not to watch the news and then hangs up on her... but instead of heading home he takes off his seatbelt and speeds up the car before taking his own life by driving into the back of a stationary log lorry on the side of the road.
Ema is at home days later and her head is cut and her arm is in a plaster cast. She is writing a piece about catching Marcos, but the words aren't coming to her. Bruno comes down and they head out, Ema tells her son that he can drive as she can't with her arm in the cast.
At the school they have a vigil for Martina. Her sister and parents are on the stage as everyone watches on and holds candles and Celia makes a speech about how amazing Martina was. On the way home, Bruno tells his mum that the speech was rubbish and that Martina didn't actually have that many friends and that she wasn't all that cheerful, either. Ema asks her son to tell her about Martina and he says she was uptight and played her violin to relax. He tells Ema that she made a huge scene the night she disappeared and that everyone was saying bad things about her.
Bruno takes Ema to the office and Vicky is trying to argue that just because Fran Briguel isn't guilty of framing Leo, he has been luring young girls to a hotel room and needs to be prosecuted for that. Ema tells her team that she thinks Vicky should write the 'Caught' pieces from now on, but her boss says the feature is famous because of Ema and they should think about this for a moment. Ema says she doesn't need time to think and she thinks Vicky will do a better job than her anyway.
As Ema and Bruno are leaving the magazine offices she sees a photo of Martina at the party and asks her son again what the red dot on her forehead means. He explains it is a bindi and she seems to realise something, but keeps it to herself. On the way home they stop at the school and Ema takes a photo from the shrine the students made - in the photo Martina also has a bindi.
Later, Ema goes to see Armando to ask him some questions, but Julianna is there and she tells him Armando is going to stay with his dad and that they need to leave. Ema doesn't want to go without answers and so goes inside the house to speak to them... but they are in another room packing hurriedly and Ema looks around downstairs.
We then see what Ema has noticed in the photo, and that is that Martina is standing in front of a wall of Armando's drawings. She finds the wall in their house where realises the photo that she got from the shine was taken in the very same room - Julianna and Armando's kitchen.
Armando and Julianna come downstairs and she confronts them, the photo was taken by Armando and Ema says she knows it was the night of the party because Martina has her bindi on, still. She asks if Armando was the one who got on the boat with Martina that night at the party, and Julianna tells her son to keep quiet.
The episode then flashes back to the party and we see Martina dancing, and this time we see Armando watching her. We see her have the argument with Gael, when he tells her he has something for her (which we now know is the music box he eventually gave to her sister, Sofia after Martina's death). As Martina storms off to the bathroom where she makes the mystery phone call, we see Armando watching her through the window from outside and she spots him looking at her and comes out to see him. She says she is bored of the party and asks him to take her out on the boat, and he agrees.
Once in the boat Martina takes her yellow scarf off and ends up leaving it in the bottom of the boat. She says she doesn't want to go to bed yet and they leave the boat without tying it up.
In Armando's house they drink more and she admires his drawings. He talks about how she used to come over to his house after school when they were little but she says she doesn't remember at all. She finds his camera and takes his photo and offers for him to take one of her, which is the one Ema has in the present day. In the flashback Martina asks Armando about when he looks at her through the window, and he remains, quiet. But soon they flirt and end up sleeping together.
However, in the middle of the night, Martina gets dressed while Armando is still sleeping after getting woken up by her phone pinging. She gets up and looks at the video that has been sent to her, and it is the one of Leo being caught by Ema in the house with the red door. She is horrified to realise that she is the one who lured Leo to the house after doing what Marcos asked so gets her burner phone out and calls Marcos. He tells her not to worry and that he will pick her up tomorrow and explain everything. But Martina wants answers immediately but Marcos tells her no and hangs up.
Meanwhile, Armando has woken up and knocks on the bathroom door where she is hiding to see if she is okay. As he opens the door she flushes her burner phone down the toilet and he finds her other phone with the video of Leo playing on it. He asks her what is going on and she explains that it isn't true, that the guy she is seeing has set her up and and she is sorry. He gets angry about what has happened to Leo, who is like a father to him, and she tries to apologise but he pushes her away from him and she accidentally falls backwards down the stairs.
We then see that Julianna came home and found Martina dead in her house and she tells Ema in the present day that there was nothing they could do for Martina and so she did what she had to do to protect her son. We see them get Martina's body in the back of the car and dump her in the woods where she was eventually found.
In the present day, Julianna is telling Ema that she was the one who planted Martina's phone with Leo's belongings in the woods after getting home from dumping Martina's body and finding that her phone was still in the house. Julianna says when she heard where Leo was killed she knew he had to be camping nearby and that she planted the phone with his things hoping that he would save them once again.
Julianna begs Ema not to go to the police, asking her as one boy mom to another to let her protect her son, but Armando knows it is the right thing to come clean and they go to the police station where they are charged.
Back at home, Ema realises after what happened between Armando and Martina that not all deaths are clean cut, and she tells Bruno that they have been getting letters from the woman who killed his dad for months and that she has kept them hidden from him. She now realises that while she will never be able to forgive her, Bruno has the right to read the letters and he goes to read them in his room.
At the very end of the episode a huge twist comes when Ema goes to see Facu in prison and tells him that because Leo's body was never found, his charge has changed from murder to attempted murder and he will be out of jail soon.
They talk about whether Leo could still be alive, and Facu tells Ema that even if he is still alive, Leo might never come back. And it turns out Facu is right, because right at the end of the episode we see Leo, alive and well, riding a horse through the Argentinian landscape. Behind him is a group of teenagers and it seems he might have set up a new foundation after swimming to safety after being shot.
All episodes of Caught are available on Netflix now.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
