The final episode of Netflix's new conspiracy thriller The Madness sums up the show's theme in one sentence: "If you stir up the madness of the world, then that madness will eventually come back to bite you." Starring Emmy winner and future Met Gala host Colman Domingo, the eight-episode miniseries centers on activist-turned-media-pundit Muncie Daniels (Domingo), who stumbles upon a murder scene in the Poconos. When he's framed for killing the victim, a white supremacist thought leader, Muncie must find the true culprit while on the run from both the police and the murder victim's devoted fans.
This stellar, edge-of-your-seat mystery, which arrived on Netflix on November 28, is a timely (maybe too timely) must-watch show that balances its chilling plot with a message about the importance of family and keeping your sanity in the face of a mad world. For anyone searching for a recap, we're breaking down the hopeful ending of The Madness.
Who killed Mark Simon in 'The Madness'?
A quick recap of The Madness's twisting conspiracy: Hours after he meets the random white guy staying in the Poconos cabin next to his, Muncie happens upon the man's dismembered body, and is chased by the murderers. It turns out the dead man was Mark Simon, a.k.a. the neo-Nazi blogger Brother14. As Muncie comes into contact with cops and feds, it becomes clear that he's being framed for the murder. He may have only gotten involved by coincidence, but also he's the perfect fall guy: He's a vocally pro-Black pundit and when he was a kid, his father went to jail for killing a landlord accused of redlining.
With the help of Simon's estranged wife Lucie (Tamsin Topolski) and FBI Agent Franco Quiñones (John Ortiz), Muncie learns that Simon had been working with a "hedge fund asshole" named Stu Magnusson (Bradley Whitford, in a great bit of casting). Magnusson had been paying Brother14 to influence his five million readers in favor of three Senate candidates, on behalf of the tech conglomerate Revitalize. A month before his death, Brother14 turned against the candidates, so Quiñones believes that Magnusson was calling the shots at Revitalize, and that the billionaire ordered the hit on Simon.
Quiñones's theory goes out the window when Julia Jayne (Alison Wright), one of Revitalize's fixers, kills Magnusson, revealing that Stu was just a patsy. The real man in charge is Rodney Kraintz (Neal Huff), a clean-energy billionaire and silent majority owner of Revitalize. The company owns one of the only prospective cobalt mines in the U.S., and Congress is considering a climate bill that would deregulate mining for private companies. Kraintz hired Jayne to eliminate anyone in the way of deregulation, so Revitalize's preferred Congressmen can push the bill through. When Muncie goes public on all this, he calls for the authorities to look into the billionaire, who "uses disinformation and murder to reap profit in the name of sustainability."
How does 'The Madness' end?
Episode 8 of The Madness starts with a harrowing scene, as Julia Jayne breaks into Isaiah's (Stephen McKinley Henderson) cigar shop, to torture Muncie's family for information. She's able to shoot Isaiah(!), before Muncie's wife Elena (Marsha Stephanie Blake) sneaks up on her, and Elena takes two bullets(!!) as she attacks Julia. The fixer is killed, but Elena is left gravely injured in the hospital, and her son Demetrius (Thaddeus J. Mixson) begins to distance himself from his dad.
While Elena's recovering in the hospital, Muncie and Kwesi (Deon Cole) learn that the cops have searched Julia's car and are now looking at her as the prime suspect for all of the murders so far. (The body count: Mark Simon, Laura Jennings, Donald Sloss Jr., Stuart Magnusson, and Magnusson's bodyguard Raul Diaz.) Muncie's now off free and clear, but he knows that Julia Jayne was working for a higher authority, and he gives the police his recording of Julia admitting that she works for Rodney Kraintz.
It soon becomes clear that the FBI isn't looking into Kraintz at all, in a parallel to the bureau's inaction when Quiñones brought the evidence against Revitalize to them, after which a devastated Quiñones decided to take his own life. Muncie has the chance to walk away; CNN wants him back for a tell-all report, and Kwesi encourages his friend to go along with it and pin everything on Julia. Kraintz even sends a lawyer who offers Muncie five million dollars to sign an NDA. However, Muncie admits that he's going to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life if Kraintz isn't put behind bars, or dead. Plus, after everything he's been through, he, Lucie, and Quiñones' partner Agent Khalil agree that someone needs to pay.
Live on CNN, Muncie names Kraintz as the mastermind behind all of the deaths, threading the final needle in the web with notes from Quiñones's journal. He ends the broadcast with a personal turn towards accountability, which he says is lost "when people like Kraintz corrupt our capacity to care for one another," as people "blame and sucker punch rather than being responsible to those around them." Throughout the series, Muncie has grappled with all of the people he has let people down—from Elena and Demetrius to his estranged daughter Kallie (Gabrielle Graham) to his North Philly community—while he focused on his media career. He now announces that he's removing himself from the "circus," what a Columbia Journalism Review writer once called the "moment-to-moment political scrimmaging" on cable news. He's stepping away from the "madness," and focusing on what's most important, his family.
Does Muncie kill Rodney Kraintz in 'The Madness'?
Later that night, Muncie seeks approval of his public statement from one of the people who matter most to him: his son. It's horrible timing, as Demetrius is still pissed about his mom being hurt and a little speech on TV doesn't really change things. But the teen also goes straight for the jugular, saying it doesn't even seem like Muncie has been fighting for Elena. With the wisdom of the young, Demetrius says that Elena asked for the separation because Muncie only ever does what's good for him, and he hasn't really done any of the work to prove that he can prioritize them.
The next day, a frustrated Muncie watches Kraintz claim to the press that he hadn't spoken with Julia for a year and that Muncie's audio recordings were faked. Demetrius is peering in from the other room, so he sees how his dad's way of getting justice didn't work. When Lucie delivers a note with the address for Kraintz's private office/server farm (in Staten Island because of course it is), Demetrius takes his dad's gun and goes there to shoot the billionaire. Luckily, Muncie and Kallie get there before Demetrius can make a big mistake, but the teen isn't the only one who wants vengeance.
In a dramatic standoff, Muncie holds Kraintz at gunpoint. The villain uses circular logic to claim that everything he's done, all the people he's killed and manipulated, were in service of the greater good. He calls Muncie a sellout whose life is "funded by entities...who destroy our planet daily," and says that Muncie can't extricate himself from the system of corrupt money and influence. Unfortunately, Kraintz is likely right that there's "a hundred more of him out there," but the question comes down to Muncie's soul. Does he need vengeance? Is vengeance even possible? Instead of killing Kraintz, Muncie decides to walk away.
Still, Kraintz doesn't end the series alive. Earlier in the finale, Muncie had relayed Kraintz's name to Lucie, who passed it along to the Forge, her ex-husband's white supremacist group. While Muncie was taking on Kraintz, Lucie decided to do what she could to help and turned over evidence on the Forge to the FBI. Remember that one Forge member who braided Lucie's hair in that heartbreaking scene? He escapes from the subsequent FBI raid and finds Kraintz, shooting him dead in a nondescript alley. Like Agent Khalil (Ennis Esmer) says, the madness came back around for Kraintz. The show still makes it clear that his death didn't end anything. A board of old white men is still running Revitalize, and the senator amplified by the disinformation campaign is set to win re-election. The machine runs on.
What happens to Muncie's family at the end of 'The Madness'?
In the final moments of The Madness, we see that both Muncie and Lucie have found their own means of escape. Lucie is seen driving along a road with a U-Haul, moving with her kids to somewhere with hopefully fewer white supremacists. Meanwhile, Muncie is teaching history in what looks like a local high school, maybe even his alma mater. He, Demetrius, and Kallie enjoy a barbecue at the same park where Muncie used to come with his mom as a kid, and the writer's relationship with both of his kids seems repaired.
It's not a completely happy ending. Muncie's pulled out of the moment by the sound of a car starting, and he watches it driving away with the same paranoia we've seen throughout the series. Even with Kraintz dead, the trauma of the whole wild experience will probably keep him in a state of hypervigilance for the rest of his life. But still, he can be pulled back down to earth. Kallie tells him, "You can't live your life worrying."
And then, in the absolute best way this horror show could've ended, Elena walks up. Back in the hospital, Elena had asked Muncie to take care of Demetrius while she was healing and then to give her and the boy some space once she was better. Now fully healed, Elena walks up to the cookout, and everything else melts away as Muncie sees the love of his life. The pair don't even say a word, but it seems like the estranged spouses could find a way back to each other with time. The show gives a lesson I'm going to take into the next few months: As the madness rages on, we can all stay sane by tuning out when needed, investing in our communities, and turning to love.
Will there be a 'The Madness' season 2?
By the end of The Madness, most of the series' plot threads are tied up; there's no obvious cliffhanger scene signaling the creator's desire for another installment. However, since the show's premiere, star Colman Domingo has been vocal about wanting another season with Muncie.
"I think there’s more story for Muncie and his family," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "I think now that they’ve had all these sort of huge life lessons, I’d be interested to take them out in the world and make them these modern-day, everyday superheroes who are just coming together as a family to work on things that affect the world or affect some change in some way. I feel like we need to take them to Europe and see what happens with this family."
Here's to hoping that means Netflix greenlights a second season.
