Netflix's Seven Dials ending makes a massive change to Agatha Christie's book
Who killed Gerry Wade? Let's breakdown the big twist in Seven Dials
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials is Netflix’s newest murder mystery series – but if you’ve read the book, you’ll notice some big changes in the ending of the show.
The three-part series (written by Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall) doesn’t revolve around Christie’s most famous sleuths, like Poirot and Miss Marple.
Instead, it follows Lady Eileen – better known as Bundle. When a party at her lavish country estate ends with a shocking murder, Bundle senses that a cover-up is afoot and sets out to solve the mystery.
This involves another death, a mysterious club in London, and… metal, for some reason. Seven Dials is mostly faithful to the source material, but the ending makes a few changes.
***Warning: spoilers from Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials ahead***
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials ending explained
Netflix’s adaptation of Seven Dials ends with Bundle solving not only the murder of Gerry Wade, but also Ronny Devereux.
Quick recap: near the start of the film, Gerry Wade almost proposes to Bundle. However, he’s whisked away by George Lomax to cosy up to the Cootes, whom they’re hoping to secure a business deal with.
The next day, Wade is found dead in his bed with a “sleeping draught” beside him. Initially, the police believe he may have killed himself due to work pressures, but Bundle believes foul play was involved.
After all, his friends Devereux and Bill Eversleigh planned a prank with eight separate alarm clocks going off in his room, but only seven were found. Someone must have been in his room before he died.
Later, Bundle finds Devereux lying on the road with a gunshot wound. With his dying breath, he says two things: Jimmy Thesiger, Bundle’s friend, and “Seven Dials”.
What is the Seven Dials?
Early in her investigation, Seven Dials is initially believed to be a seedy, popular club in London.
However, Bundle later stumbles into a meeting of cloaked figures wearing masks with clocks on their faces – this is the true Seven Dials.
They seem to have sinister intentions. While discussing Devereux’s death, they say it’s been registered as a tragic accident, suggesting they may have been involved. They also speak about securing Dr Matip’s formula (more on this shortly) and ensuring it doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.
“Nothing and no one must stand in our way,” one figure says.
However, by the end, it’s revealed they’re actually part of a secret espionage agency which protects the country’s interests. And, in another twist, the person in the number seven mask wasn’t Thesiger – it was Superintendent Battle!
As it turns out, Battle had been paying close attention to Bundle. After the death of their greatest agent – Bundle’s father – Battle asks Bundle if she wants to join the Seven Dials. In the final scene of the movie, she says yes.
Who is Cyril Matip and what ‘formula’ did he make?
Cyril Matip is an inventor from Cameroon. As George Lomax explains, he has a “patent process that he applies to steel”.
“It becomes so toughened that a thin wire is as strong as a steel bar. And, in the right hands and properly applied, it will revolutionise our manufacturing industry, to say nothing of our military capability,” he adds.
This leads to one of the key events in the series: the gathering at Wyvern Abbey. Lomax invites Matip to stay for the weekend and promises he’ll be safe – but things don’t go to plan.
While keeping watch for an intruder, Thesiger is (seemingly) shot in the arm, and the culprit flees with Matip’s formula. However, how is this connected to Gerry Wade?
Seven Dials ending: Who killed Gerry Wade?
Loraine Wade, Gerry’s half-sister, poisoned and killed him. She also had an accomplice: Jimmy Thesiger!
After confronting Loraine on the train, Thesiger holds Bundle at gunpoint and admits he’s “the rest of the picture”.
An intruder didn’t shoot Thesiger. He shot himself in the arm, lobbed the gun out of the window into the garden, and pulled off the glove with his teeth, so he didn’t leave any fingerprints.
This was the perfect distraction for everyone else in the Abbey, allowing Loraine to drug Matip, steal the formula, and flee undetected.
But why did Gerry and Ronny have to die? As Thesiger explains, Ronny had “worked out a little too much”.
As for Gerry, his death was Lorraine’s idea. She “laced his champagne throughout the night while smiling sweetly at him”.
She left the poisoned bottle next to his bed, so when he drank it, it looked like his demise was his own doing.
The big Lady Caterham twist
Lady Caterham, Bundle’s mother, is revealed to be the person behind the plot to steal the formula (and, as a result, the murders).
Thesiger tells Bundle how he’s merely a “worker bee”, and that he was handing the formula over to someone else on the train. When she finds her mum sitting alone in a carriage, it quickly becomes clear that she planned everything.
By her own admission, she didn’t order Gerry’s death. “That was the girl. Far too impulsive, she believed Gerry had uncovered our planning,” Lady Caterham says.
However, she did plan the party at the Chimneys to gather intelligence about the formula, and then she recruited Loraine and Thesiger. But why?
“My country betrayed me… betrayed us; your father, your brother, all of us,” she tells Bundle.
“This family has done more in service of this country than you will ever know… it allowed your brother, my son, to be cannon fodder, ordered to his death by a deluded, drunken general.”
Lady Caterham was embittered by grief and “losing everyone [she] ever loved”. Also, with Bundle’s father and brother dead, they’re poor. They can’t afford the upkeep of their estate, and selling the formula would have solved all of their financial problems.
“You overestimated me for all your life,” Bundle’s mother says, before she’s arrested.
Which Agatha Christie book is Seven Dials based on?
The Netflix series is based on The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie, originally published in 1929.
It’s a particularly notable work from the famed author. Not because it focuses on a different sleuth… but it was broadly disliked.
It has since entered the public domain in the US, and it was previously adapted into a 1981 TV film.
How Seven Dials changes the book’s ending
Netflix’s Seven Dials is largely faithful to Christie’s novel – with four key differences.
The first one is the least significant: in the book, the formula is created by Herr Eberhard, a German inventor, instead of Cyril Matip.
The second change is enormous: not only was Lady Caterham gender-swapped for the series, but the final twist wasn’t in the book at all.
The closing stretch unfolds in much the same way, with Bundle deducing that Loraine killed Gerry. However, it’s Battle (still part of the Seven Dials society) who reveals to Bundle that they caught Thesiger.
Lady Caterham (who’s Lord Caterham in the novel) isn’t implicated whatsoever in any of the deaths or the plot to steal the formula.
Finally, while Bundle still ends up in the Seven Dials, she doesn’t take her dad’s place. Gerry was part of the secret group before his death.
Also, Bundle marries Bill Eversleigh at the end of the novel, a plot point completely omitted from the Netflix series.
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