Stay Close is an eight-part thriller
available to watch now on Netflix
that follows four intertwined lives.
There's bride-to-be Cassie, played by Cush Jumbo,
Richard Armitage's troubled photographer Ray,
Detective Michael Broome, played by James Nesbitt,
and Sarah Parish as nightclub owner Lorraine.
Oh, and a huge pile of bodies
growing between them.
If you've already watched it and are trying to untangle
this web of lies
or just want to track who killed who,
then this video is here to help.
From the shock killer of Carlton Flynn
to the bizarre antics of Barbie and Ken,
this is Stay Close: Explained.
And if you haven't watched the show yet,
maybe do that first,
as this will completely explain a number of twists.
At first glance, Stay Close is about the search
for a missing teenager, Carlton Flynn,
but the trail to his body
crosses with multiple murders
and causes a few more to take place.
So it's maybe easier to break down
some of the mysteries around that first.
Let's also keep a death count running.
What are Ken and Barbie up to?
When Carlton Flynn goes missing
on the night of a local carnival,
his dad, Del Flynn, turns to the law for help.
He's an important local businessman
and that applies extra pressure to the police.
Detective Broome is asked by his boss
and amateur magician, Goldberg,
to make it a priority.
Take your coffee and get yourself over there.
Little does Broome know that Del, driven by worry,
has also employed the services
of two theatrical assassins, Barbie and Ken,
to search for Carlton.
Fed information on the investigation
by bent copper Goldberg,
the duo hunt down potential witnesses
and torture them to death for information.
This includes exotic dancer Tawny Allure,
and Harry Sutton,
a lawyer who looks out for the dancers
and wrestles with a drug addiction
that Del's assassins use to fake a fatal overdose.
They also target Megan
by kidnapping her daughter, Kayleigh.
But the enterprising stripper turned super mum
manages to rescue her daughter.
When Goldberg refuses to help our pair
of harmonious hit men any further,
they strangle him
and go after their targets directly.
Big mistake.
Barbie is killed in a fight with Megan.
And Ken is sliced by Lorraine.
More on her in a moment.
The important takeaway from this
is that despite adding five bodies
to the overall count,
Barbie and Ken are not part of the bigger picture,
although they certainly make it a groovier picture.
Is Stewart Green alive?
When Carlton Flynn goes missing,
it catches Broome's attention for a reason.
He vanishes exactly 17 years
after a man called Stewart Green,
an unsolved case that still haunts the cop.
It's a serial killer.
I can feel it.
Stewart Green is the main connective tissue
between Megan, our mum of the year,
Ray, a jilted photographer for hire,
Broome, the detective trying to make sense of it all,
and the mystery killer.
Seventeen years ago, before Megan was Megan,
she was Cassie,
an exotic dancer in a relationship with Ray,
a man so love-struck,
he proposed with a plastic ring from a crane game.
But Cassie was also being stalked by Stewart Green,
an abusive punter who would harass the dancers
and made her fear for her life.
He stalked me,
and he threatened to kill me.
He was crazy.
It's hinted that she and Ray
were involved with Green's disappearance,
which is why Cassie fled
and reinvented herself as Megan,
leaving Ray to obsess over the one that got away.
Back in the present day,
Megan is visited by Lorraine,
her boss from her days dancing at the Viper Club.
Lorraine says she's seen Stewart Green alive.
He's back.
He's dead, Lorraine.
But this is a lie.
She made up the story to re-enter Megan's life.
But how does that explain
the bald man in the dragon suit
who was following Megan
and delivers one of her old dancing leaflets to her son?
This is a big, bald red herring.
The mystery man is Vipers bouncer Rudy,
who believes Megan stole money from him and Stewart
17 years ago.
He still owed me my cut.
No, it turns out
Stewart Green was killed 17 years ago,
add one to the body count,
and that both Megan and Ray
thought the other was responsible.
You'd already killed him.
No, I told you, I was behind you.
Megan thought Ray had killed Stewart
to protect her,
while Ray thought Megan had killed Stewart
to escape him,
leading him to chop up the body and hide the crime.
The trauma of the act caused his mind to blank,
which is why he doesn't remember
turning up at Fester's
covered in blood all those years ago.
You were catatonic,
just looking right through me.
It's a tragic misunderstanding
that tore the couple apart and forced Cassie
to build an entirely new life as Megan.
I thought you were dead.
I'm sorry.
Who killed Stewart Green?
So, if not Megan or Ray,
who did kill the bald bully?
This one is a shocker.
Throughout Stay Close, we see Detective Broome
investigate a number of missing men,
all vanishing around carnival time,
just like Carlton Flynn and Stewart Green.
Most of us could guess
there was a serial killer in the mix,
but would any of us have pointed the finger
at lovely Lorraine?
Look how happy she makes James Nesbitt.
Yes, Lauren has been killing men for 18 years.
She started with her abusive partner.
He had taken my child's life,
I had taken his.
And when she saw the threat
Stewart Green posed to Cassie,
she took care of him too.
What are you doing here?
Lorraine's mistake,
aside from murdering nearly 20 people,
was to lure Cassie to the body
by telling her Ray was waiting for her.
This caused the misunderstanding
that shattered their relationship.
Also, because Ray found and chopped up Stewart,
Lorraine couldn't hide the body
in the underground bunker
where she stored her other victims,
a whopping 15 bodies to add to the death toll.
Oh, and it was Lorraine who murdered Guy Tatum.
Ray thought he had done it himself during a blackout,
but it was our friendly neighbourhood throat cutter.
She was interrupted by Carlton Flynn's forest chase
before she could sneak the body
into her murder hole.
Speaking of Carlton,
Lorraine claims to have killed the missing teen,
which would tie up Stay Close neatly,
but there's nothing neat about this sad story.
What happened to Carlton Flynn?
And so we come full circle
and get back to our original missing person.
Carlton Flynn was last seen in Vipers
hanging out with two masked girls.
They turned out to be Megan's daughter Kayleigh
and her friend Bea.
Having snuck into Vipers,
Bea realises Carlton is trying to spike their drinks
and switches their glasses
before escaping with her friend.
The two run into the forest,
that's what forces Lorraine to abandon Guy's body,
and split up.
Kayleigh leads the drugged Carlton back to his car
and dumps him in the boot
before the girls steal the car
and leave it in the forest when it runs out of petrol.
This explains how Kayleigh comes to be in possession
of Carlton's distinctive necklace.
Kayleigh's dad Dave then collects the girls
from the woods and decides to come back later
and dispose of Carlton's car in the lake.
He thinks he's clearing up
a petty theft for his daughter,
but unbeknownst to him,
Carlton is still unconscious,
spiked by his own drugs,
in the boot of the car.
Help! Help me!
Kayleigh doesn't know her dad got rid of the car,
and Dave doesn't know the body was in there,
so neither is aware that Carlton is dead.
That's one last body for our count,
and one last secret for Megan to keep
as she puts the horrible two and two together
on her wedding day.
And so we reached the end of Stay Close,
with a whopping 24 bodies turning up
in just eight episodes.
If you enjoyed this show,
you should check out The Stranger and Safe
on Netflix.
Like Stay Close, they are based
on Harlan Cobain's twisty thrillers.
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