The Boroughs Ending Explained: What’s Really Killing The Residents

The Boroughs is a retirement town, where its residents have everything they need – from a community center to restaurants and cinemas, and even a mental health institution they call The Manor. Although he initially wants his contract to be terminated, Sam ultimately decides to stay after meeting his neighbors. However, one night, Sam sees a monstrous creature feeding on one of his new friends, Jack (Bill Pullman), who is later found dead.

With the help of the rest of the group – married couple Art (Clarke Peters) and Judy (Alfre Woodard), retired doctor Wally (Denis O’Hare), and retired music manager Renee (Geena Davis) – Sam makes a disturbing discovery about the creature he saw feeding from Jack, its connection to the town, and to the town’s CEO Blaine Shaw (Seth Numrich), uncovering an obscure secret involving Shaw, his wife Anneliese (Alice Kremelberg), and those working closely with Shaw.

The Boroughs’ Mother & Sons Explained

As expected, nobody believes Sam when he tells them what he saw the night Jack died, and Jack’s death is believed to have been a heart attack in his sleep, as he had sleep apnea. However, one night, Sam notices that the blood of the creature left on the hammer he used to hit it with reacts to the signal from his old TV and explodes. He later shows this to Wally, which convinces him to help him capture the monster, though Wally also wants to study it.

Judy later joins them after she follows them to the funeral home, where they try to get some samples from Jack’s body. Wally realizes that the monster feeds on their cerebral spinal fluid, and it constantly does so, which, over time, leads to the residents developing different health issues for which they are later committed to the Manor. After the separate investigations of the group of Sam, Judy, and Wally, the duo of Renee and security guard Paz (Carlos Miranda), and Art by himself, lead them to cross paths, they are caught by Shaw and taken to the Manor.

There, Wally tells them Shaw has made an offer: they will go back to their normal lives, without leaving the Boroughs, are forbidden from talking about the monster again or they will be committed to the Manor, and Wally will work for them. Although they’re not ok with it, they all eventually agree, and Wally, now part of Shaw’s closest group, learns the truth about the monsters.

The monsters are the offspring of a creature Shaw refers to as Mother. The sons take the cerebral spinal fluid from the residents to take it to Mother and feed her, and because of the large amounts of it that she has ingested for years, she has taken a human form. Mother was found inside an egg when Shaw’s relatives arrived on the land to build the town, and in that spot is now a tree with various trinkets hanging from it, from which Art took a peach-like fruit that made him younger for a couple of hours.

However, even though the sons are contributing to the deaths of the residents, neither they nor Mother is the villain of The Boroughs. This is part of their nature, but they have been manipulated and used by Shaw for decades, with Mother not wanting to live anymore and asking Sam to end her and her sons' suffering. At the end of The Boroughs, Sam takes Mother to the tree, where she calls on her sons, and she passes away, destroying Shaw as well, as he had arrived to kill Sam.

Blaine Shaw’s Plans At The Boroughs Explained

The real villains in The Boroughs are Blaine and Anneliese Shaw. Blaine is the CEO of the Boroughs and lives in the town with his wife. Thanks to this, Blaine is well-aware of everything happening around town, with the help of those working closely with him, most notably Hank Williams (Eric Edelstein), the town’s head of security. However, Blaine and most of his team aren’t who they say they are, and they are a lot older than they look.

Renee finds out that Hank is actually a man named Milton Hauser, who died in 1975, and when talking to his son, he shows her some old photos of himself. In one of them, Milton appears with Shaw, who looks exactly like he does in the present day. Wally later confirms, while working for Shaw, that they, along with the rest of their team, are actually a lot older, and they have stayed young for years thanks to Mother.

The Shaws found out years ago that the blood of the Mother has healing properties that also keep them young, and through consistently ingesting it, they could become essentially immortal. The Shaws founded the Boroughs to have a consistent supply of cerebral spinal fluid for the sons to take to Mother, so they could then continue to drink her blood. The Shaws share the blood with their team, including Wally, who wants to use it for a bigger and better cause.

The Shaws need Wally to heal Mother so they can keep on drinking her blood, but Wally rescues her in hopes of studying her and using her blood to heal diseases, like cancer. Given that the blood of the sons and thus that of Mother reacts to the signal of the old TVs, Sam and company set up a trap, through which they kill some of Shaw’s team members and Anneliese.

In the end, as mentioned above, Shaw is killed by Mother when she explodes, and it’s understood that the surviving members of the team won’t live for long without their supply of Mother’s blood.

Why Sam Had Hallucinations Of His Deceased Wife In The Boroughs

Sam is still grieving the sudden death of his wife, Lilly, but when he moves into the Boroughs, he starts having hallucinations of her. These start as very vivid flashbacks to the night when Lilly died, with Sam reliving this traumatic experience. However, Lilly then starts to appear at different moments, later accompanied by puzzle pieces. Sam quickly understands that the puzzle pieces are breadcrumbs, leading him towards the next step in his investigation.

As for the hallucinations of Lilly, these aren’t entirely the result of his trauma and grief. Thanks to a Manor resident known as the Duchess, Sam learns that Mother is telepathically communicating with him, and she does so through someone Sam will always recognize: Lilly. All those times his visions of Lilly beg him for help are actually Mother calling for help. The Duchess explains this happens because Sam’s mind broke with the shock of Lilly’s death, making it easier for the Mother to reach out to him.

This helps Sam understand Mother and empathize with her, which is why he takes her to the tree so she can die in peace. As a thank you, Mother grants him a reunion with Lilly in his mind, through which he’s finally able to process his grief and move on. Sam’s hallucinations stop after Mother’s death, and he carries on with his life in the Boroughs.

Why Sam’s Reflection Glitches At The End Of The Boroughs

One important detail in Sam’s hallucinations of Lilly in The Boroughs is that they glitch. This is what gives away to Sam that he’s not really seeing Lilly, and it becomes an even more important detail at the end of season 1 of The Boroughs. As mentioned above, after Mother’s death and with the Shaws also gone, Sam and the rest return to the Boroughs and carry on with their lives.

The Boroughs ends with the group having dinner at Sam’s home, including his daughter Claire (Jena Malone), and her husband and children. Claire tells Sam to change the bandage on the wound on his forehead, and so he goes to the bathroom to check. While Sam prepares the bandage, his reflection in the mirror glitches, just like his visions of Lilly. This doesn’t mean that the Sam in the final sequence isn’t real, or that their happy reunion isn’t real.

It’s possible that Sam’s connection to Mother didn’t entirely end with Mother’s death, and there’s still some sort of special power in Sam’s mind. Whether this could interfere with Sam’s daily life or not, or if it will bring problems for him and the group in the near future, is unknown, and that could only be answered in a second season.

Will The Boroughs Get A Second Season?

At the time of writing, it’s hard to say if The Boroughs could return for a second season, as that will mostly depend on how well or badly it’s received by critics and general audiences. In terms of narrative, however, The Boroughs might have set a trap for itself in its first season. Even though there’s the question of why Sam’s reflection is really glitching, the first season tells a complete story.

The Shaws are destroyed, Mother and her sons die, and the rest of Shaw’s associates won’t live long without Mother’s blood, so there’s no one who can carry on with their villainous plans. However, there’s the question of who is now in charge of the Boroughs, so that could make way for a new story. It could also be possible that someone can save the tree and take advantage of its fruits, but that would be a much smaller problem compared to what season 1 did.

If The Boroughs doesn’t get a second season, it won’t be a loss, as it managed to tell a complete story, with character development and depth, in just eight episodes, with almost no loose ends, and with an ending that leaves just one detail to the interpretation of each viewer.