Beware of spoilers in this post! There, that’s all the warning you’re going to get about I. It’s hard to review this masterpiece of a miniseries without at least somewhat spoiling all the twists and turns that went down. In just seven episodes, this series managed to hook me from the get-go, and also manage to crash HBO Max during the finale. That’s how freaking good this mystery crime thriller is.
I do think a large part of that has to do with Kate Winslet playing the titular Mare. But instead of her posh British accent, it’s replaced with a brash Pennsylvanian one. That’s right, Mare is a detective for the fictional Easttown of Pennsylvania, and we meet her as she’s getting a stern talking to about an unsolved case involving a missing girl, Katie Bailey. More goes amiss in the episode though, when another local girl with a young son is found dead in the woods. This puts Mare into overdrive, and we spend the next seven tense hours with her trying to solve the case.
Before I get into all the nuts and bolts of the series, I think it’s appropriate to point out that while Mare as a gruff individual is not that endearing, her personal life definitely lends itself for her to be felt for by the viewer. She lives with her mother, daughter, and grandson left by her deceased elder son. Also, her ex-husband lives behind her with his new fiancé and she’s also sort of going on dates herself, but those dates are definitely by her terms. These familial interactions, along with her best friend Lori, keep Mare’s character a lot more grounded then she could have been.
Anyway, back to the crime! The young woman found dead in the first episode is Erin McMenanmen, who in the start of the episode we see has a contentious relationship with her son’s father, Dylan, and is clearly a little scared of her own dad, Kenny. Before her death, we see her go to try and talk some sense into Dylan before getting beat up by his new girlfriend. The news of Erin’s death is shocking and heartbreaking. In fear of what Erin’s dad might do, his cousins John (Lori’s husband) and Billy go keep an eye on him, but he manages to shoot Dylan in the back anyway.
There’s all sorts of possibilities for Erin’s murderer, including her father, Dylan, the local Deacon, and Dylan’s girlfriend. With all of these loose ends and sparse amounts of clues to go off of, Mare gets assigned a partner in Colin Zabel. He’s loveable and pretty much the exact opposite of Mare which makes his death in the fifth episode that much more awful. I can’t blame his mother for slapping Mare hard across the face! It’s clear he had a crush on her and also really looked up to her as a detective. At that point in the series, one mystery is solved, but there are still many more diversions to take before the big reveal hits us.
Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, one more important fact, however small, gets revealed or discovered which leads to a whole new avenue of suspects. Let’s just say no one is innocent in all that goes down, and while this town loves its citizens, there’s also a pretty ugly underbelly to it’s surface. Truly, I was very confident in who I thought the killer, but they managed to prove me wrong and surprise the heck out of me! If a better show comes along in 2021, then good for them, otherwise, give Mare of Easttown all the awards! Oh yeah, and go watch this miniseries!