Lazarus ending explained: Unconscionable sins of the father reveal themselves in Harlan Coben series
Bill Nighy's psychiatrist had a dark soul indeed
Lazarus, Prime Video’s latest team-up with mystery master Harlan Coben, harbours an ending that really stays with you.
Its six episodes chart the ramifications of Dr Jonathan Lazarus’ suicide. Son and fellow psychiatrist Joel return home to find familiar ghosts casually entering his father’s office. Even the old man himself turns up from time to time, and they all have a story to tell.
So why did Dr Lazarus choose to kill himself? What really happened to Joel’s sister Sutton? And how do the sins of the father materialise in Aidan? Here’s the full Lazarus ending explained.
***Warning: contains spoilers from the ending of Harlan Coben series Lazarus***
Lazarus ending explained: What caused Dr Lazarus to die by suicide?
During Joel’s final visitation with his deceased dad, it was confirmed that Dr Lazarus either murdered or incriminated his troubled patients. He was freeing them “from their pain” and freeing “everyone else from the danger of them”.
He told Joel: “After Sutton [died] something closed in me, I saw things differently.”
Cassandra Rhodes, who fatally smashed her boyfriend Neil Croft’s head in with a statue, was strangled to death and Dr Lazarus justified this over fears that she’d tell the police he helped her get rid of the body, or kill someone else. When it came to Arlo Jones, his dark ideations voiced on the psychiatry couch warranted imprisonment.
As a close confidante of DCI Alison Brown, he’d been sharing information about them for years to deflect from his own crimes. They were unfairly demonised and police investigations reached inaccurate conclusions.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand [the human mind] and most people have empathy, morality, some sense of right and wrong however twisted. And then there are the others who are beyond repair,” the doctor stressed to his appalled son.
In a revelatory flashback, DCI Brown said that the only way for them to move forward was if Dr Lazarus shot himself and left a note admitting to his many crimes. “I know what you did, what we did… I’ve been so stupid,” she said, seconds earlier. Overcome with upset at the gravity of the situation, Dr Lazarus agreed to bump himself off. He knew that he’d be joining his late wife and daughter in the ‘next life’.
Did DCI Brown get away with it?
As the senior investigating officer on the Cassandra case, DCI Brown accepted that her boyfriend was the murderer and fled the country. She then oversaw the aftermath of Imogen Carswood’s demise, tying it to known-monster Arlo Jones through a DNA stitch-up. Before he jumped off a roof, Harry Nash’s abusive priest Frank Barnway gave DCI Brown a self-made video claiming he hadn’t killed Harry. But, instead of taking him seriously, she buried it. This was all in cahoots with Dr Lazarus.
When Joel confronted her about this alongside DI Seth McGovern, she desperately fled after pushing the former over his chair and tasering her colleague. “Let it go, I can spare you so much pain if you just stop now,” she warned her inquisitor. Via flashback, we saw her burning the first page of Dr Lazarus’ suicide note which chronicled their nefarious actions, just as Joel suspected.
Joel pursued DCI Brown through the city on foot and behind the wheel. But, when she crashed her car and resumed pounding the pavement, disaster struck. A road cyclist clipped the back of her legs and she fell over in front of an onrushing double-decker bus.
Rather graphically, the officer’s head was squashed like a seasonal pumpkin.
Who really killed Sutton in the Lazarus ending?
On that 1998 prom night, poor Sutton Lazarus’ light was extinguished by fellow school pupil Sam Olsen. But this led to the wrongful conviction of serial killer Arlo Jones. The guilt of not accompanying his twin sister home had never left Joel and even his father believed he’d played a part in her gruesome fate.
When Joel let himself into Sam’s house, he found Sutton’s teddy in the corner of a room. According to Sam, she’d given it to him as a thank-you after he helped track down her grandma’s lost dog when they were little. Sam told Joel that he spotted Sutton and her boyfriend Billy McIntyre having an argument on the night she died – insinuating that he might’ve killed her.
Sam’s lies crumbled when Joel spotted Sutton’s teddy in a photograph of her bedroom dated just hours before her death. His story was therefore completely implausible. Joel tracked down the slippery individual once again, who confessed to letting himself into the Lazarus home for months leading up to Sutton’s death. On prom night, she came back early and found Sam in her bedroom.
He tried to have his way with her but she was having none of it. As they violently scuffled, Sutton fell backwards onto the sharp edge of the bed and instantly died.
Lazarus ending explained: What did the dolmen represent?
Best described as a three-legged table popping up across Lazarus, dolmens are prehistoric tombs formed by giant upright stones supporting a horizontal capstone.
The first dolmen to appear was on the second page of Dr Lazarus’ note, next to where he wrote “it’s not over”. Joel predicted this was “some sort of code”.
Talented illustrator Billy gifted his girlfriend Sutton a sketchbook full of portraits of her that he’d drawn. Its front cover featured a dolmen too, and upon investigation Joel learned that his sister was into symbology. So was her shrink father, evidently, with Billy revealing that Dr Lazarus believed that dolmens signified a portal into the afterlife.
Dr Lazarus explained to his son: “That drawing on my suicide note, do you know what that symbol means to me? Time isn’t linear, it’s cyclical. Sons become their fathers Joel, it’s in their blood. History is destined to repeat itself unless we break the pattern.”
The spiritualist Jenna Lazarus was also seen to be into dolmen-based imagery. It became a motif in the Prime Video thriller, connected to the overarching themes of death and life after death.
Why did Aidan murder Laura?
Joel and Bella Catton’s teenage son Aidan had been eagerly watching his father’s every move throughout the series. He provided a mic-drop ending that nobody could’ve anticipated.
In the closing scene, finally able to move on from the death of Dr Lazarus, Joel stopped by Laura Maynard’s place in the hope of cracking on with their blossoming relationship. What he discovered inside her house put a blood-drenched spanner in the works, though. Laura was nowhere to be seen; she’d either had to run from armed burglars or the worst thing imaginable had unfolded.
A glassy-eyed Aidan appeared in front of Joel holding the same distinctive Japanese blade that was identified as Margot’s murder weapon. Having decided not to drown his sister’s killer Sam at the lake, Joel promised his dad that the so-called sins of the father would not repeat themselves through him. They simply skipped a generation.
As for why Laura was so horrifically slain by the kid, there were no concrete answers. Perhaps he was jealous that Joel appeared to be moving on with his life and finding love outside of their already broken family? Laura’s earth-shattering death completed the cycle of Joel encountering dead (or soon-to-be dead) patients in his dad’s office.
Lazarus series 2: will it happen?
As of yet there are no official plans for Lazarus series 2 over at Prime Video. But there’s plenty of scope for more episodes…
Despite Joel letting go of his father’s complicated history, recordings from his incriminating patient sessions found their way to Jenna. We don’t know how she’ll respond in the long run, knowing that her dad was a calculated murderer.
Given Aidan’s shocking final flourish, there’s also room for Harlan and screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst to explore his immediate future, too. How Joel comes to terms with this last-minute horror would be worth a look as well.
Read more: Lazarus on Prime Video: Plot, start date, and latest news on Harlan Coben’s spooky family thriller
