Expats is a Prime Video drama that explores the intertwining lives of three female expatriates living in Hong Kong— Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), Margaret (Nicole Kidman), and Hilary (Sarayu Blue).
In Expats episode 3, we return to the present, continuing to follow our characters as they continue to deal with their increasingly entangled lives. Margaret has a new theory as to who might have been responsible for Gus' disappearance, whilst Hilary tries to reconcile with her husband, and Mercy strikes up a new friendship.
A new suspect
We pick up with Mercy, who is continuing to work as a server, though she's also been looking up missing children in Hong Kong in her spare time. Meanwhile, following her encounter with Mercy, Margaret has continued to look into Gus' disappearance, looking over an old photo of him at her second apartment. She phones Hilary and revisits the fact that Christopher (Hilary's neighbor at the Peak, who died in episode 1) had a photo of Gus on his phone. Neither she nor Essie were with him when the photo was taken.
Hilary, in turn, warns Margaret to stop suspecting everyone of kidnapping him, and puts the phone down as she's busy. David, meanwhile, has continued to have Sam take him to the bar, and stayed away from her. Hilary tries to reach out to him, but can't get through. Mercy spends some time people-watching at an eatery; on the train, Charly, a woman she'd been watching, strikes up a conversation with her.
That's because David has continued to sleep with Mercy. In a hotel room, Mercy asks David what his plan is. He's been staying away from Hilary for weeks now, and he gets frustrated when she presses him for information. David goes on to explain the situation between them: he grew apart from Hilary because she didn't immediately defend him when Margaret accused David of being the kidnapper. He erupts into a rant about how ridiculous her theory was, and then pretends to search for Gus around the room; Mercy ends up joining in his ruse.
Margaret is still at her other apartment, and looking over the photo. She zooms in and remembers he had a cut on his arm from a trip to Thailand. Clarke asks where she is, and she says she's gone to the store (she does, soon after). Whilst on the phone, she laments the fact they didn't tell the police about that identifying mark because they forgot about it. Clarke sends her to get corn syrup for Philip's science project, and Margaret irritably asks another patron (whom she thinks is a store clerk) to help her search for it. Once she realizes her mistake, she marches out, embarrassed.
Clarke, meanwhile, attends a sermon. Afterward, he tells the priest he's struggling to find any light in his life during this ordeal. Hilary is elsewhere at a flower market, continuing preparations for a dinner party. She receives a series of texts meant for Mercy from David, and tersely replies, assuming he's not coming to dinner; David sees the message but doesn't send anything back. When she returns home, Hilary finds Puri folding some of David's laundry, which she's been doing in secret. Hilary throws it all out the window and wants Puri not to retrieve it.
Back home, Margaret is frantically taking photographs of any scars or identifying marks on Philip's body. Mercy is explaining her "curse" to her new friend, and Charly invites her on a night out with her friends.
A tragic update
Hilary's guests arrive; she lies about David's whereabouts, telling them he'd thrown his back out at the gym to explain his absence. Clarke returns home from work to the sounds of Daisy and Margaret arguing: he finds her trying to wrestle Daisy's clothes off so she can photograph her body. Clarke intervenes and tries to comfort his daughter. Margaret leaves the apartment and walks over to Hilary's; whilst she's gone, Clarke introduces the kids to a dog he's rehomed from an advert he saw at church.
Excusing herself from the table, Hilary answers the door. Margaret has asked Hilary if she had a spare key for Christopher's house. Hilary initially refuses to hand it over, as she doesn't want to help Margaret 'ruin another man's life'.
Recognizing her meaning, Margaret says she's already apologized for what she did to David but harshly argues that Hilary will never understand what she's going through because she isn't a mother. Hilary then hands over the key, tells her to keep it, and shuts the door. Margaret immediately takes it and starts searching Christopher's apartment.
Hilary finds herself being overwhelmed by her guests and hides out in the bathroom for a while. After they've gone home, she puts on another dress and orders Sam to take her to where David has been hiding. Before she can leave, Puri apologizes for not telling her about David's laundry arrangement but confides that she is always on Hilary's side.
Mercy meets up with Charly's friends but leaves after a short while. On the bus back home, she calls her mother, inviting her to Hong Kong and pretending she's got loads of friends around her.
Hilary arrives at the bar, and finds David nursing a drink. The pair start talking and admit they don't want to live without one another, but it doesn't seem like they have a path forward together. And when Hilary complains that the bar in question is a dump, he gets defensive, saying he doesn't need to be saved. She says she's trying to save their marriage but feels like the only one doing that, so she leaves.
Margaret continues her search until she finds a postcard of the same beach from their family trip to Thailand. She snatches this up, convinced it is a clue that Christopher was responsible for Gus's disappearance. She returns to her family apartment to find Clarke sitting with the police. Detective Chang tells her that detectives on the mainland have found a body matching that of Gus' description. The body is being held in a morgue in Shenzhen, and they want her to make contact with the facility in the morning.
Margaret, distraught, turns the postcard over in her hand, and finds it signed by Jenny, addressed to Christopher. Mercy arrives home to find David sitting on the staircase of her apartment building. She takes him upstairs, and they fall asleep side by side, calling each other by their real names. Elsewhere, Clarke puts the kids to bed as they prepare to head to the morgue, and the episode ends with them beginning their journey to China, in silence.
Expats is now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.
