Who is Erin Carter? episode 7 recap and ending explained

Who is Erin Carter? episode 7 recap - Evin Ahmad in Who is Erin Carter?
Evin Ahmad in Who is Erin Carter? (Image credit: Netflix)

After seven episodes, the Netflix thriller Who is Erin Carter? ends with an action-packed finale full of backstabbing, front-shooting and... divorce proceedings? 

We've followed Erin Carter as she's dealt with drama at the school she works at, avoided shadows from her past and also contended with the criminal underworld of Barcelona, and it all comes to a head in the final episode.

So what happened in Who is Erin Carter? episode 7? Let's recap the episode and dig into some lingering questions you might have from it. 

The bulletproof Erin Carter

Erin Carter (Evin Ahmad) gets up after her episode 6 gunshot wound and staggers away from the hill, eventually finding a campsite that she raids for a first-aid kit. She patches herself up, steals a truck and returns home.

While she's gone, Lena (Denise Gough) breaks into Erin's house, and goes through her real daughter's belongings. When she's there Jordi (Sean Teale) and Harper (Indica Watson) return home from their trip, but they promptly leave again to go to the supermarket. Lena continues going through their belongings, but some thugs show up and kidnap her.

Erin returns home once Jordi and Harper have returned from the supermarket, and she's bleeding badly. Jordi, a nurse, patches her up, and she catches them up before telling them to leave. Erin expects Lena to arrive, unaware that Lena's already been and has been taken.

Lena has in fact been kidnapped by the bad guy Daniel (Douglas Henshall), and it turns out that he's the guy who bankrolled the heist five years ago (in episode 4). She fills him in on Erin's identity and role in the botched heist, and offers him the remaining gold that she just took in exchange for Harper's safety. Daniel sends a hit squad to take out Erin.

The hit squad shows up but Erin subdues them, and escapes through her fancy neighborhood, eventually coming up to Penelope (Charlotte Vega) who drives her away.

A showdown on the docks

Lena has been texting Harper with a number she found on Erin's fridge, and uses this to realize that her and Jordi went to stay with Olivia (Susannah Fielding). Lena appears but Jordi and Olivia protect Harper, who's still referring to Erin as her mother. However some of Daniel's men show up to take Jordi and Harper, and give Lena Jordi's phone to contact Erin.

Erin and Lena meet at a fancy party at the neighborhood, where Penelope is heading so she can serve divorce papers to her husband. Lena tells Erin that Daniel is the bank-roller for the heist job and that he'll give Lena Harper in exchange for Erin, but that he can't be trusted.

The two women meet with Daniel, who wants Erin to work for him to repay the money he's lost. However, the meeting descends into a firefight on the docks, where Erin shoots Dan who slinks away. There are too many men so Erin offers to sacrifice herself to let Lena get to Harper, but Lena swaps it around and draws the men away. She shoots an explosive barrel near her to take out the men.

Daniel goes to his office where he has Jordi and Harper, and is about to shoot them when Erin shows up. She kills Daniel and rescues her family.

Sometime later, the trio are on holiday, and Harper has written a letter to her mother. The police officer who signed Erin on to be an undercover agent (Jamie Bamber) shows up, implying that he still expects Erin to work with him, before she goes back to Harper.

Who is Erin Carter? ending explained

Lena (Denise Gough) is sitting in a bar with a glass of wine in her hand, talking to another woman who has her back to the camera and is out of focus

Lena (Denise Gough) in Who is Erin Carter? (Image credit: Netflix/Left Bank)

Does Lena get killed?

After Lena shoots the explosive barrels, we see a brief cutaway of her burnt body, and she's never mentioned again.

It's not explicitly stated whether she's alive or dead, since she's already survived one apparent death in the series. However, given that Harper is going to put a letter to her mother into the sea (instead of, say, a letter box), it suggests that Erin at least thinks Lena is dead.

Is Erin re-recruited to the police?

Right at the end, when Jamie Bamber's Jim Armstrong shows up to recruit Erin for another undercover job, a response isn't shown. However Erin says that she is 'Erin Carter' now, implying that she's happy in her current non-undercover-operative lifestyle.

The lack of an affirmative response doesn't rule out a 'yes' down the road if there's a season 2 of Who is Erin Carter? though.

Do Jordi and Erin stay together?

Jordi is clearly having doubts about his marriage in the later episodes, which isn't helped by Erin's refusal to level with him. In fact, we never find out if she actually told him about her police past, though she promises that she's told him everything.

However on the trio's holiday right at the end, he and Erin discuss getting a pet for Harper, implying that they'll stick together as a family unit. So it seems that Jordi and Erin will remain married in the end.

Does Erin get her full-time teacher job?

An important plot point for the first few episodes of Who is Erin Carter? is the character's attempt to transition from substitute to full-time teacher. A botched job interview early on in the season is followed by Erin's friend Olivia putting in a bad word for her.

This plot thread isn't brought up much in the final episode, so we don't know for sure if Erin will get to stay a teacher. However, before we learned he was a baddie, school donor Daniel did put in a good word for her, so there's a good chance she can stay — if she's happy working in a position she only got because of the machinations of a drug lord.

Who's the big baddie?

While Daniel is shown to be the main antagonist to Erin, he's not actually the one in charge of the Barcelona drug operations.

Daniel is shown many times to simply be working for another person: he tells Erin this as a way to threaten her, is on a call to someone asking about future shipments, and talks about having attempted to get away for a while.

We're never told who the main baddie and Daniel's boss is. However, there are a few clues that it could be Tabarez (Andy Lucas), Emilio's police boss. He's overly curious about where Emilio got his information from, is very suspicious of Erin when he meets her, and quickly shuts down Erin at the funeral when she tells him that Daniel Lang is involved in the killing.

On the flip side, Emilio got in trouble because he was selling police information to Augustin, who was working for Daniel. If Daniel was therefore working for Tabarez, who was the police chief, he'd have no need for this information as he'd have access to it already.

Who is Erin Carter? is available to stream on Netflix now. 

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Tom Bedford
Streaming and Ecommerce Writer

Tom is the streaming and ecommerce writer at What to Watch, covering streaming services in the US and UK. His goal is to help you navigate the busy and confusing online video market, to help you find the TV, movies and sports that you're looking for without having to spend too much money.