
Then it returned again to the present, for one last bittersweet image of a mother-child reunion.

Then it returned us to the scene of the crime, presenting its ghastly murder as an offscreen event (the daughter covering her ears in the bathroom as her boyfriend killed her abusive mother), then followed the couple as they left the past behind and took to the road like lovers in a bloody Hollywood crime fable about geographical and sexual liberation. Slightly fracturing the chronology of its true-crime narrative, and not for the first time, the final episode began with a flashback to its protagonist and the mother she would subsequently kill looking up at the stars back in 1997.

Hulu’s The Act ended its eight-episode run cloaked, as always, in nearly impenetrable sadness, leaving its characters confused and broken, and pointedly refusing to resolve the mixed feelings conjured by its story.
