Spoiler Discussion for The Last Thing He Told Me

Hannah, recently married and a new stepmom, opens her front door to see a student at the school where her husband Owen works. The girl says Owen told her his phone was broken and paid her $20 to give a note to Hannah. She opens Owen’s note, which says: Protect Her.

Hannah and Owen met two years before, when Owen and his boss Avett came into Hannah’s furniture-making studio in New York.

Owen liked a table. Hannah said the table wasn’t for sale because its sharp edges could cause injury. (Hello, foreshadowing.) Hannah is attracted to Owen but tells him she doesn’t date clients. He asks her to go to a play.

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Back in the present, Hannah’s stepdaughter Bailey asks where Owen is. Hannah calls and leaves him voicemails but gets no response.  She then hears on the news that the software start-up where Owen works is being investigated for fraud by the SEC and the FBI.

When Hannah picks up her stepdaughter Bailey, Bailey is carrying a large bag that she says Owen left in her locker. The bag contains an apology note from Owen to Bailey and is filled with rolls of money.

Grady Bradford, who claims to be a US Marshal, shows up at Hannah’s house. As she hasn’t adopted Hannah, he advises her to get a lawyer and recommends one. Grady asks Hannah to call him if she hears from Owen and suggests that she should be careful whom she trusts.

Hannah searches Owen’s laptop and finds photos of Olivia, Bailey’s mother, some work documents, and a will.

Two FBI agents (Naomi and Jeremy) show up to question her. Hannah mentions Grady Bradford to the FBI and they seem confused about who he is.

Hannah calls her ex-boyfriend Jake, a New York City lawyer. He tells her to try to figure out where Owen might have gone. (Um, yeah…)

Based on the area code of Grady’s phone number, Hannah asks Bailey if she ever remembers being in Austin, Texas. Bailey vaguely recalls being in a wedding there, so the two of them fly to Austin.

Based on Bailey’s memories, they try to find churches near the UT Austin football stadium, but hit a dead end.

Jake calls and tells Hannah that “Owen Michaels” is a fake identity. He thinks Owen was running from something or someone long before the SEC investigation.

Hannah remembers a guy coming up to Owen and thinking he was someone he knew from Texas. Bailey is shocked to realize that she is probably also living under a fake name.

Hannah combs her memory for stories Owen might have told her about his past, stories that might offer clues. She remembers Owen’s story about a college professor and finds a possible match at UT Austin.

Hannah and Bailey go to talk to the professor, who doesn’t recognize a photo of Owen or remember him, but together they figure out what year Owen was in his class and get the class roster. Bailey and Hannah start researching all the names on the list.

Hannah gets a call from one of the churches in Austin they approached – she may have found the wedding that Bailey remembers attending. Kate, the sister of the groom, looks a lot like Bailey.

They go to the bar owned by the groom, Charlie, who suggests that his sister, Kate, is dead. She shows Charlie a photo of Owen and he flips out. Bailey and Hannah run.

After more research on Charlie and Kate, Hannah remembers a story from several years back about a lawyer named Nicholas who got involved with organized crime. Nicholas’s daughter Kate was murdered, either by the people he worked for or a rival group.

Ethan, Kate’s husband, cooperated with the authorities. Ethan, Nicholas’s son-in-law, is Owen. Bailey is Ethan’s and Kate’s daughter, Kristin. Ethan/Owen and Kristin/Bailey had to go into hiding as Nicholas and his employers were out for revenge.

Bailey vanishes from their hotel room and Grady shows up. He organizes a search for Bailey and tells Hannah that Ethan had to disappear after testifying against his father-in-law Nicholas and his organized crime associates.

Grady thinks Owen knew the SEC investigation of the software company would expose his fake identity. He says the safest thing is for Bailey and Hannah to enter witness protection. Once Grady says Bailey has been located, Hannah sneaks out of the hotel and back to the bar where Charlie works.

Hannah asks Charlie to help her speak to Nicholas, his father. Charlie drives Hannah to Nicolas’s house.

Nicholas argues that Ethan/Owen helped him with his work for organized crime, which is how he knew enough to testify. He claims Kate, a state Supreme Court law clerk, was killed because of an unrelated case she was working on. 

Hannah says she just wants assurance from Nicholas that she and Bailey will be safe. Hannah is willing to let Nicholas have a relationship with Bailey in exchange. She tells him Ethan would rather not see Bailey again but know she’s safe.

Grady says the plan is crazy and that she can’t trust Nicholas.

Bailey and Hannah are reunited and Bailey says that she spoke to her dad. He told her he could never come home.

What Was The Ending of The Last Thing He Told Me?

Five years later, Bailey is grown up and living in L.A. Hannah sometimes feels like Nicholas’s guys are watching her.

One day, Owen comes into an exhibition that is showing some of Hannah’s work. He stands there for just a few minutes. Then he says “the could have been boys still love you.” Then he disappears.

Movie News: Apple TV series of The Last Thing He Told Me

• Reese Witherspoon chose The Last Thing He Told Me as her May 2021 book club pick.

• The movie rights for The Last Thing He Told Me were optioned by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine.

• Season one of The Last Thing He Told Me premiered on Apple TV on Friday April 14, 2023.

• Julia Roberts was originally cast in the role of Hannah, but then in November 2021, Jennifer Garner took the role of Hannah and became an Executive Producer.

• Production on the film started around May 2022, according to Reese’s Book Club and Jennifer Garner.

• Season Two of The Last Thing He Told Me will premiere on Apple TV on February 20

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The Last Thing He Told Me: Differences Between the Book and Season 1 of the Streaming Series

Here are my overall impressions:

The series follows the book pretty closely, with some scenes being moved to different places.

• The book is narrated by Hannah, so for the series many of the characters’ roles have expanded. Bailey has more of a point of view. Jules and Max (who gets a big upgrade) help Hannah.

• For the first two episodes, Owen seems like less of a presence. In the book, he appears almost exclusively in flashbacks, which the series is using more sparingly so far.

• Some of the flashbacks from the book get used in different places.

• Episode three ramps up the suspense a lot more!

Review of The Last Thing He Told Me Episode One: Protect Her

Episode One starts out differently from the book with a flash-forward, flash-back structure.

The episode begins with a flash-forward to April 14.

Hannah is in what looks like a hotel room. She is washing her hands. Then she is looking at the screensaver of her phone, which has a photo of her with Owen. Then she steps on the phone, smashing it. This scene was in the book, but much later on.

The timeline then moves backward to four days before, which would have been April 10.

Hannah is reflecting on what I assume was her last evening with Owen. She’s working in her studio and he brings Chinese food. They discuss an about-to-be-published article about Hannah’s work. Owen also mentions that they’ve been married for fourteen months. None of this scene was in the book.

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The next scene is (I think) April 11, the last time Hannah or Bailey will see Owen. It’s morning and Owen drops Bailey at school, while Hannah goes to the city to deliver some pieces she’s made and sees the magazine article.

Then we get the “Protect Her” scene, which is chapter one of the book.

Most of the episode is the same. The series puts the wood analogy (the “every piece of wood has something that defines it) earlier on, and the could-have-been-boys gets pushed later.

Other differences between Episode One of The Last Thing He Told Me and the book:

• Bailey (and her boyfriend Bobby) have a bigger role and we get to see firsthand the impact that her father’s disappearance and the implosion of his firm has on her life.

• Owen’s will: Hannah finds the will on Owen’s computer, but it’s password protected with the clue “L. Paul”. In the book, she finds the will on the computer and there is a conservator in the will named L. Paul.

Review of The Last Thing He Told Me Episode Two: The Day After

Date: Maybe April 12 (thanks to those of your in comments who helped on the timeline. Keep the comments coming!)

Hannah’s flashback to a discussion (six weeks before) of a trip to Austin gets mentioned in this episode, which is earlier than in the book.

Differences between Episode Two and the book:

Carl: Hannah tries to reach Carl, their neighbor, on the phone instead of going over to his house (which happens eventually).

Hannah’s snooping: When Hannah goes into Owen’s work computer, she does NOT look at photos of Olivia, Owen’s first wife.

Patty Wisdom: When Hannah finally goes to Carl and Patty’s house, Patty has a new pithy quote: “every marriage has a liar and a fool.” According to Patty, if you aren’t one, you must be the other. Wow, Patty, that is VERY dark.

Jake has a new name and address. Jake Davis seems to live near the beach, while Jake Anderson (his book name) lived in New York. In episode three he talks about “coming up” to Sausalito, so I’m guessing he lives in Southern California in the show.

Burglars! There’s a break-in at the Michaels house that I don’t think was in the book.

A Female Max! Max is a male reporter with a crush on Jules in the book and a female reporter (and Jules’ love interest) in the series. Max has an expanded role in the series as she tries to help Hannah with her investigation. She helpfully info-dumps that a US Marshal comes after fugitives, not white collar criminals.

Max and Hannah also have a very weird conversation where they trade strange sayings that could be on a depressive wall hangings (along with Patty’s zinger above):

Hannah: “I’ve organized my life not to miss things.”

Max: “There are always shadows that we don’t see.”

Carl has a gambling problem instead of a mistress. Oh, Carl.

Review and Spoiler Discussion for The Last Thing He Told Me Episode Three: Keep Austin Weird

Episode Three of The Last Thing He Told Me:

Date: April 13 (based on Hannah’s phone)

This episode follows the book pretty closely, though some scenes are in a different order.

Overall thought: Hannah’s hair looks salon-perfect for that of a woman whose life is crumbling around her.

In the book, I felt that the Austin interlude was pretty low-suspense. It was just a fact-finding trip and a bonding experience for Hannah and Bailey.

Differences between Episode Three and the book:

More Suspense: The series ramps up the suspense by having the head of security for The Shop, Eric Cousins, spying on Hannah and Owen’s house. This doesn’t happen in the book and I don’t think Eric is a character.

Grady Takes the Money: In the series, he breaks into Hannah’s house and finds the duffel bag of money hidden under the bed.

In the book, Hannah hides the money under the kitchen sink. When she’s in Austin with Bailey, she speaks to Grady on the phone and tells him about it. He says he’ll send a marshal from the San Francisco office to pick it up.

The Piggy Bank: When Hannah asks Jules to go to her house to find the piggy bank, Jules finds a key inside.

In the book, there is a steel safe inside. Which is seriously weird because a piggy bank isn’t that large!

Review and Spoiler Discussion for The Last Thing He Told Me Episode Four: Witness to Your Life:

Episode Four of The Last Thing He Told Me also followed the book pretty closely.

Date: I think April 14 because they did spend the night in the hotel. Is today phone smash day?

Location: Austin, Texas

Cameo appearance! I was excited that Victor Garber, who played Jennifer Garner’s dad in Alias, is here playing Owen’s old professor “Cook” Cookson.

We are back to low suspense, and I found this episode pretty slow.

The show does (I think) make more of the Hannah-Bailey connection. Both of them grew up without their mothers, and I still think Owen picked Hannah out for Bailey more than for him.

Differences Between Episode Four and the Book:

More Duffel Drama: Hannah sends Jules to pick up the duffel, but because Grady took it, Jules can’t find it.

More Piggybank Drama: Jules asks Hannah where Owen might have a safe, and Hannah decides in her studio. In the book, Max finds a safecracker to open the piggy bank safe.

Maris! Grady has a boss named Maris and she’s NOT happy that he’s been chasing around after Hannah and Bailey in California when he told her he was on vacation.

Review and Spoiler Discussion for the Last Thing He Told me Episode Five: “The Never Dry”

Date: April 14

Location: Austin, Texas

This episode follows the book very closely, except for a few small changes.

In the book, everything was filtered through Hannah. In the show, Grady’s and Bailey’s parts have been expanded so there are some extra scenes from their POVs, but those don’t really change the main narrative.

Differences between Episode Five and the Book

A bit more suspense! In this episode, we see Grady trying to track Hannah and Bailey. The legal people and his boss want him to get a warrant, but that’s too slow for Grady. This is an EMERGENCY. Though we still don’t know why.

More Bailey! While Hannah goes to the Never Dry bar, which they’ve found through yearbook photographs at the University that have a photo of a woman who looks a whole lot like Bailey, Bailey calls Bobby. This isn’t in the book. Bailey reveals how shocked and upset she is that her father lied to her. Is this woman her mother? Is her mother alive?

Grady receives a surprise package! In the book, Grady tells Hannah that Owen had been sending him information about the Shop. The series (rightfully) had to make that more dramatic, having Grady receive Owen’s phone in the mail. There’s a post-it on the phone with a passcode: 082007. Is that a date? Maybe Bailey’s birth month and year? Tell me your theories in the comments!

Jules and Jake phone with a warning! In the book, Hannah figures out who Owen is by researching Charlie and Kate Smith. In the series, Jules and Jake call to tell Hannah Owen’s identity: Ethan Young. Does anyone remember why Charlie and Kate have the last name Smith while their father is Nicholas Bell? I’m going to research this and edit the post, but if you know, tell me in comments.

Hannah FINALLY smashes the phone! This is something I want to discuss with those who read the book. In the book, it’s unclear that Hannah smashes the phone out of fear that someone is tracking her.

The episode ends with an event from the book: Bailey goes missing.

Review and Spoiler Discussion for The Last Thing He Told Me Episode Six: When We Were Young

So there are SEVEN episodes total.

Let’s get into the main differences!

Date: April 14 (evening)

Location: Austin, Texas

Episode Six is when we FINALLY understand why Owen was hiding. It had nothing to do with The Shop, but with his former father-in-law, Nicholas Bell. Owen (then Ethan) helped Nicholas write code that let him send and receive encrypted messages in his work as a mafia lawyer.

But then someone killed Ethan’s wife Kate (daughter of Nicholas, mom of Bailey) and Ethan went rogue and turned over the encrypted messages to the FBI, leading to the arrest of Nicholas and some of his employers.

Flashbacks!

Well, I was right about the flashbacks, but I didn’t mind them. In some nice mirroring scenes, we see Nicholas Bell in 1999 coming to rescue his daughter Kate and her boyfriend Ethan, who have a flat tire.

In the present, we see Nicholas Bell in a car racing to get to his granddaughter Bailey.

None of this happened in the book!

Bailey actually goes to Andrea Reyes’s house!

In the book, Bailey does vanish but is found on the University of Texas campus. In the series, she and Bobby find Charlie and Andrea’s address. She heads there (without using her phone, which I’d love an explanation for) and Andrea shows her home movies of her parents back in the day.

I like having Bailey be more of the plot (as she’s central to it) and thought these scenes did a nice job of showing all that Bailey lost over the years.

Nicholas tries to get to Bailey

Because Nicholas seems to have a mole in the US Marshal’s office (something that is kind of suggested in the book) he knows that Bailey and Hannah were at the Never Dry and apparently has one of his minions watching Charlie and Andrea’s house.

When he hears that Bailey showed up there, he gets his driver to take him there. But Austin traffic is bad (it really is; I almost missed a flight because of it) and he gets there just as Grady shows up and whisks Bailey away.

Bobby plays a role

In the series, Bobby helps Bailey find her uncle and aunt’s address, so when Hannah calls asking Bobby where she is, he can (reluctantly) tell her.

The rest of the episode, which is basically Grady filling Hannah in on the last ten years of Ethan’s life, is pretty much the same. As in the book, Hannah asks Jules who Owen named as Bailey’s guardian. It’s Charlie and Andrea. She can trust them! More than Grady!

Review and Spoiler Discussion for The Last Thing He Told Me Episode Seven: Sanctuary

Seven episodes? I was expecting six or eight, but seven works for me.

Overall, Episode Seven was very true to the book with only a few minor changes.

New Flashbacks:

The series has two very similar flashbacks where Owen says he wishes he and Hannah could go somewhere. Just the two of them. Far away.

I don’t think this means he wishes he could ditch Bailey. I feel like he’s saying that in an ideal world, it could be just the two of them. When in reality, he has baggage. Like, a whole planeload of baggage.

Nicholas does not have scary dogs or own Hannah’s table

In the book, Nicholas has two scary guard dogs AND he owns one of Hannah’s tables. Which is a kind gesture. I think.

I feel like the series wanted to make him more menacing, so no table. (Besides, in the series I feel like she just makes smaller pieces?)

Nicholas and Hannah talk less.

In the book, Nicholas justifies his sketchy career choice and gives an alternate theory for Kate’s death, a sort of Pelican Brief kind of narrative in which Kate got killed because of a case that her boss, a Texas Supreme Court judge, was writing.

Owen’s surprise appearance seemed … weird?

When he said his famous line “the could-have-been-boys still love you,” in the series it came off … weird? Almost threatening? Like, “do not fall in love with anyone else. I picked you to guard my daughter like one of Nicholas’s dogs and you better give it your full attention.”

Did anyone else feel this way?

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If you love book reviews of new suspenseful books, books-to-movie comparisons, and book discussions then:

Book Club Questions for The Last Thing He Told Me

WHAT DOES “THE COULD HAVE BEEN BOYS STILL LOVE YOU” MEAN?

At the very beginning of the book, Hannah says that on their wedding night, Owen grilled her about all the men she left, or who left her. (Weird timing, but okay.)

He called them the could-have-been-boys. When he says “the could have been boys still love you,” I think he was telling her that he still loved her and always would. But that he is now a could-have-been-boy.

WHAT KIND OF A LOVE STORY IS THIS?

Some readers in comments have found the ending sad and romantic.

Owen knew what he had done in the past.

AND he knew that it was likely that when the shenanigans at The Shop were exposed, that would lead to media scrutiny that would be dangerous to him. THAT’S when he “falls in love” with an almost forty year-old single, childless woman whose mother left her.

There’s a small part of me that thinks Owen married Hannah because he knew he would have to go on the run. Was he picking a new mom for Bailey more than a wife?

And later on, him popping up and telling her he still loves her kind of prevents her from moving on.

HOW “REAL” CAN A RELATIONSHIP BE WHEN IT’S BASED ON A HUGE LIE?

We’ve all see stories about men leading double lives and those stories are usually framed as the relationships being fake and a scam. Owen tells a LOT of lies to Hannah about who he is, about his past, about his current work.

And yet, by the end, this is a love story. In a different book, Hannah (and the reader) might have been angrier. I think Bailey is the key to that – Owen lies but he also gives Hannah an important assignment: keep Bailey safe. It’s also a “found family” love story between Hannah and Bailey, both of whom lost their mothers and found one another.

How do you think Hannah’s memories of her past with Owen enriched and moved the story forward?

Owen isn’t really even in the story in the present. His presence in the story is filtered through Hannah’s memories. Hannah and Owen met when Owen and his boss came into Hannah’s furniture-making studio. He liked a table that Hannah said wasn’t for sale because its sharp edges could cause injury. (Hello, foreshadowing.)

Hannah calls him Ethan after he tells her his name is Owen (hello, mystical coincidence and more foreshadowing!)

I’m not the biggest fan of flashbacks, but this story clearly needed them. Not only did Hannah’s memories bring Owen more to life, they helped her solve his disappearance.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE EXPLANATION OF OWEN’S DISAPPEARANCE?

I liked that it was multi-layered: that underneath what seemed like the reason there was another reason. It was a little hard that the story about Owen/Ethan and Kate was only told through other people, and happened in the past.

I think that was what made the tension level in the story feel lower than it could have. I never felt Hannah and Bailey in danger even though they technically were.

Do you think Ethan thought through the consequences of testifying against his father-in-law? Do you think that is what Kate would have wanted? Did you believe Nicholas that Kate’s death didn’t have anything to do with him?

That part of the story got a little murky for me. I’m not entirely convinced that the murderous crime lords that Ethan/Owen testified would just do whatever Nicholas told them. Why didn’t they kill Nicholas? Or threaten Charlie or his kids? The more I thought about all this, the less it made sense.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME?

I mean, it’s a story of love and sacrifice. But also a more unusual love story, and a narrative about found family. I liked Hannah and I liked the development of Hannah and Bailey’s relationship a lot.

DO YOU THINK ETHAN WANTED HANNAH TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF HIS DISAPPEARANCE?

He tells Hannah to keep Bailey safe. He leaves them money. Did he leave her breadcrumbs to follow so she’d figure out why he really disappeared? Did he think she would accept the explanation of the SEC investigation?

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE ENDING?

Yes, it would have been nice (yet more predictable) to let Ethan and Hannah be together. And yet, I’m a sucker for these “doomed romance” things, like the ending of The Age of Innocence. But how did you feel?

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