Jennifer Garner’s Apple TV Thriller Just Blew Up Its Entire Premise With Its Biggest Twist Yet

Four episodes later, and we’re finally at the halfway point of Apple TV’s stylish and sleek thriller, The Last Thing He Told Me. In Friday’s fourth episode, “Ghosts,” things take a turn for Hannah (Jennifer Garner), Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and Bailey (Angourie Rice) as the family of three heads to Austin, hoping to finally confront the threat hanging over them. However, things start to unravel at the seams following some very shocking events.

After U.S. Marshal Grady (Augusto Aguilera) suddenly goes quiet, Owen discovers something even worse: the case the pair had been building against the syndicate headed by the Campano family (John Noble, Luke Kirby, and Judy Greer) may never have truly existed the way he thought it did. Not long after, the episode lands one of its biggest shocks so far: Owen’s father-in-law and Bailey’s grandfather, Nicolas (David Morse), is alive even though it was previously reported he had died of a heart attack. By the time the family has a chance to breathe, Grady is found dead in what’s clearly meant to look like a suicide, and Owen loses the one ally he believed could help him fight back.

At the same time, Hannah and Bailey are realizing just how little of the truth they’ve actually been given by those they initially trusted. In an interview with Collider, Garner describes her character’s frustration as the reality of the situation keeps shifting under her feet. “Somebody else was deciding when to dole out the truth and how much to tell us,” she says as she teases what audiences can expect in this last block of the season. But as Coster-Waldau puts it in terms of Owen’s next steps, “Both [he] and Grady had a very good idea of what they needed to do, but then it turned out that there were bigger forces at play.”

By the end of the episode, with Owen back on the run and Hannah stepping forward to confront the danger herself, the season suddenly feels a lot more unpredictable. In an exclusive with Collider, the pair breaks down the latest episode and looks ahead to what it all means for the rest of the season.

Why Hannah Refuses To Let Owen Run the Show Again

Why Owen “trying to come in and take over” doesn’t work for Hannah anymore after everything she’s had to carry alone.

COLLIDER: Hannah flat-out rejects Owen's old rules once they get to where they are. She doesn't want to split up with him. She wants to move on as a family. Was that moment written as Hannah taking control of the operation, or was it more like this is how she's going to start to handle threats because she's been away from him for five years?

GARNER: I think Hannah has had to make peace with the danger in her life and in Bailey’s life, and in doing that, she's had to take a lot of control of things. She's had to say, “Bailey, I've got this. Go ahead and grow up. Go to college. Become a young adult. I, on the other hand, will do everything I can to be ready for when the day comes, which is inevitable, when we are no longer safe.” So when Owen comes up and reinserts himself into the picture, it's complicated for Hannah. It's like everything she's dreamed of. All kinds of things bubble up — anger, hurt, frustration, rage. So, yeah, I think that Owen trying to come in and take over doesn't work for her anymore.

‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Finally Exposes the Limits of Owen’s Plan

Owen’s long game falls apart when Grady dies, Nicolas returns, and the truth proves far bigger than he ever understood.

Episode 4 does blow up Owen's plans completely. Grady is dead, and the case he's building is sort of up in the air. Does Owen realize he trusted the wrong system, or is it that he was never really in control of the system that he was trying to build a life for?

COSTER-WALDAU: Well, he doesn't know the whole story. That's the thing. Both [Owen] and Grady had a very good idea of what they needed to do, but then it turned out that there were bigger forces at play. And of course, with Grady, when he finds him dead, all bets are off, and now you realize this imagined threat is very, very real, like, “What the hell are we going to do?”

That thing you mentioned about Hannah taking control, in this season, Owen has to learn the hard way in a way that, yeah, it's great that you're doing all this and you've had all these plans that you’ve had for all these years, the plans we saw in Season 1 and all that. It's not really working out, buddy. You probably should work together as a team. And that's difficult. In a perfect world, especially a lot of guys have this thing, where if there's something to be solved, we want to solve it, and then you don't have to worry about it. But he’s just not smart enough.

GARNER: It’s not that simple.

In Episode 4, we learned that Nicholas is alive again. This was such a mind-blowing episode. What was the most unsettling part of that reveal for your character? Was it that they weren’t as alone as they thought they were, that they actually weren't in control?

GARNER: Once again, we were operating without all of the facts, and somebody else was deciding when to dole out the truth and how much to tell us, which is so condescending and patronizing, but also just insane for Nicholas to be alive. I think Hannah and Bailey don't know where the floor is. How much more will they learn that they did not know five minutes before?

Jennifer Garner Says the ‘Alias’ Reunion Is Not What You Think

Garner says an ‘Alias’ reunion at 25 years may look more like a cast get-together than a full-on revival.

First of all, Jen, I loved the reunion you had with Judy. I'm such a huge fan of 13 Going on 13. That was my everything growing up. You guys have amazing chemistry, but I also miss seeing Victor Garber from Season 1. It’s been 25 years since Alias. Are we having a reunion? The guy beside you also wants to have one, too. Everybody loves the show so much.

GARNER: Oh, thank you. For 20 years, we had a backyard party. Actually, I don't know her, but Melissa McCarthy loaned us her office backyard to have a party with the whole crew, which is wild, and we did, and it was incredible. So, at 25 years, there might be that kind of reunion because we were such a close-knit cast and crew, and so many of us are still working together. But I don't know. You'll have to talk to J.J. Abrams about more than that.

The Last Thing He Told Me streams Fridays on Apple TV.

Portions of this interview were abridged for clarity and length. Watch the full video above for the entire interview.