Harlan Coben‘s latest book-to-screen adaptation at Netflix is a decidedly faithful one — and for good reason. The author told TV Insider he was still writing the manuscript when creator Robert Hull began to adapt the story to series.
“When we did our first American series, we wanted a big story that we thought would really land in a special kind of a way with a special team, and Robbie and I had gotten together and wanted to make a show together, and when we chose I Will Find You, I was still writing the novel. Robbie and I were looking for something to do, and I said, ‘I’m writing this novel now,’ and I gave him the pitch, and his eyes went wide, and he’s like, ‘That’s the one I want, that’s the one, don’t tell anybody else,’” the author explained.
For Hull, then, it was just a matter of bringing Coben’s words to adequate screen life. “You don’t take a Harlan book and change the heart or change the end,” he explained. “It’s so fun to adapt Harlan’s novels, because we have this incredible roadmap, this incredible premise, this incredible heartfelt ending, and as a TV writer, your job is just to create something new in the middle, to find a different way from A to B to C, and there’s so much freedom in that. There’s also the freedom of being able to just pick up the phone and call him if we can’t figure it out, so as a TV writer and in action, it’s a dream come true.”
So, how did the series end in true Coben vision, and what’s next for the characters? Read on for a dissection of the ending of I Will Find You (and what’s next) with analyses from the creatives and stars Sam Worthington, Britt Lower, Logan Browning, and Chi McBride! Warning: Spoilers for all eight episodes of I Will Find You ahead!
Matthew Burroughs was alive and well the whole time.
The ending of I Will Find You revealed that Rachel’s suspicions about the child she saw in a fair photo were completely on point. Matthew was alive and well, despite David finding a child’s bludgeoned body in the boy’s bed and serving five years of a life sentence conviction for his murder.
As it turned out, his sister-in-law Rachel’s former beau Hayden Payne (Milo Ventimiglia) thought Matthew was his biological son because he’d swapped in his own sperm at a fertility clinic when he saw that Rachel was on the client list. Only, it was actually David’s wife, Cheryl (Erin Richards), who’d sought IVF treatment and didn’t know she was already pregnant at the time. Hayden kidnapped the boy from his bed, swapping in the body of an ill orphan from his family’s facility, and let David go down for murder while he raised Matthew alongside his mother, Gertrude (Madeleine Stowe), in secret at their lavish estate. Hayden’s help for David and Rachel after the jailbreak was just a ruse to keep tabs on and sabotage the search for Matthew.
Sarah switched sides to help David after becoming convinced of the truth.
Sarah Greer (Logan Browning) had to make multiple impossible choices during the events of I Will Find You. Her father and partner, Max (Chi McBride), had the philosophy that it wasn’t his place to decide the truth of David’s claims but to apprehend him: “Because Max is old school, his idea is, ‘I don’t care about what happens to the guy, my job is to catch him. We just catch ’em, we don’t cook them,’” McBride recalled of his character’s mindset.
When Max was shot in the middle of pursuit, though, Sarah had to decide whether to keep chasing David or help her father. “She hesitated because the moment before that, he says, ‘If you have a chance to take Burroughs, you take him.’ And so in that moment, she’s battling, ‘Do I listen to him or do I save him?’ And yeah, that’s a tough line,” Browning said of the decision.
For Browning, her character was convinced very early on of David’s innocence. “There was that moment when David is standing on the ledge, and he turns around, and he looks at her, and he goes, ‘I can’t go back,’ and they have a connection,” she explained. Ultimately, thanks to that moment and her father’s absence from the picture, she decided to help David instead of taking him in.
Hayden and his mother were killed in the ensuing melee.
Unfortunately, things took a deadly turn after the group finally tracked down where Hayden had been hiding Matthew at Gertrude’s estate. Rachel pretended that she wanted to run away with Hayden to gain access to the manor and ultimately revealed the truth of Matthew’s paternity to Hayden. After learning that Gertrude knew Matthew (whom he’d renamed Theo) wasn’t his biological son, Hayden shot his beloved mother dead on the spot.
“Madeline is doing everything she can to help her child, at least what she thinks is helping her child. I think it’s a really interesting twist on that theme to see the flip side of that coin, of you can try to be a great parent and do everything you can in the name of love, and it might not work out the way you think,” Hull said of the twisty mother-son dynamic at play in the moment.
After David and Sarah stormed the place, Hayden attempted to steal the child again but was unsuccessful, ultimately forcing Sarah to shoot him by raising his own gun against her.
David was exonerated, and his family was restored — with a twist.
After rescuing Matthew from the Paynes and informing him of the truth of his parentage, David was welcomed back into his family unit with Rachel by his side. Cheryl continued her life with her new husband (Aaron Ashmore), whom she’d forgiven for lying to her on the night that she thought her son was murdered, and their infant daughter, and she and David coparented the returned Matthew in apparent peace.
Is it a happy ending for them all, though? Sam Worthington said of the question, “I like that it was open-ended… there’s great power in small gestures, and I think that that’s there’s something kind of unique about that, that we didn’t just end it in a beautiful bow and they would kiss and run off into the sunset together. I like that you don’t know. It’s up to the audience to see what the possibilities of hope is, and you hope for the family, they can keep going without any more tragedy.”
Britt Lower predicted of the characters’ future, “We’re all gonna need therapy: therapy together, therapy solo, lots of art therapy, maybe even physical therapy.”
Watch the video above for more insights into the I Will Find You ending and series at large, above!
I Will Find You, Streaming Now, Netflix