'Captivated's Conclusion Burns It All Down
All four episodes of Captivated, the psychological thriller miniseries about single mom Rachel (Kara Tointon) and her son Liam (Charlie Hodson-Prior), dropped on BritBox at once last week; with four installments all told, we've split our recap into two parts. The first half of the series saw the two taken in (literally and figuratively) by a wealthy man named Elliot (Allen Leech), who is not what he seems. The third episode begins when Elliot takes Rachel and Liam on holiday to his cabin in the woods, where there is (of course) no cell signal.
Rachel and Liam are both on edge at first, but Elliot, as we observed in the first two episodes, puts them at ease. Elliot finally tells Rachel “the truth” about the fire that killed his parents. He says that his father was abusive and set fire to their house when he found out that his mother was planning to leave him. When they return to Elliot’s mansion, Elliot’s assistant Simone (Sara Powell) tells him it wasn’t Rachel’s ex who trashed her apartment. Simone wants to call the police, but Elliot says he’ll solve the problem by asking Rachel to move in with him.
Meanwhile, Elliot’s ex-wife Olivia (Alexandra Moen) arrives at the house and warns Rachel to leave because he isn’t who he says he is. Elliot comes home and disputes everything Olivia says. Rachel still wants space from him, so she goes to a hotel with Liam and her friend Jasmine (Taj Atwal). The episode closes with Elliot calling the police, pretending that Olivia has attacked him.
The next day, while Liam is at school, the police come to Rachel’s home and tell her that Elliot’s ex-wife has attacked him. Rachel apologizes to Elliot, and just like that, they’re back on the same page. When Rachel returns to her apartment, she discovers a package on her doorstep with news clippings about the fire that don’t match Elliot’s story. Rachel calls the phone number left in the package, and it’s Simone, who says Elliot is lying about his past. His father survived the fire but died in prison soon after.
The news clippings lead Rachel to Elliot’s child psychologist, who was so unnerved by Elliot that she refused to testify at his father’s trial. She meets the psychologist, saying she wants to know if Liam will be safe with Elliot. Readers, let me give you a hot tip. If you have to go through all these hoops to find out whether your son is safe with your boyfriend, save yourself some time and assume the answer is no! The psychologist says that Elliot became freakishly obsessed with her after she treated him. She believes Elliot started the fire that killed his mother.
While Rachel meets with the psychologist, Elliot picks Liam up from school and takes him to the cabin. Rachel understandably freaks out, but Elliot also appears on her doorstep to bring her to the cabin. The cracks are starting to show in Elliot’s smooth demeanor – he yanks Rachel’s phone out of her hand when he sees Simone calling her.
At the cabin, Elliot makes Rachel and Liam come inside for dinner, but Liam notices the room smells of petrol. Elliot tries to gain Liam as an ally, telling him that Rachel isn’t trustworthy because she put Liam in a foster home when he was a baby. So there’s the part of Rachel’s past that Simone thought she hid in the previous episode.
Elliot confesses to having burned his mother alive because he knew she was trying to leave him, and now he wants to do the same to Rachel. She tries to talk him down, but he attacks her. Liam hits him with a hammer, and they flee, but Elliot pursues them. After a small battle, Rachel lights Elliot on fire with a blowtorch she finds in the garage.
For all the leadup to this moment, the series ends suddenly. Despite what we’re led to assume is manslaughter, the only repercussion for Rachel is a fat check from Simone for her troubles. The series ends with Liam reflecting on Elliot’s words, saying that Liam is unwanted and that he is just the same as Elliot.
The ending is ambiguous enough to leave room for a second season, but the series is not quite interesting enough to warrant it. It would have made a solid movie, but the episodes are padded enough that viewers can figure out the twists (and then some) long before they happen. Simone, though mysterious, didn’t turn out to be the mastermind she could have been. She was just Elliot’s lackey who could only enable his schemes so far before they crossed a line.
Though the final episode borders on fantastical, the story’s core is all too real. Wealthy men who exert their power over women who are financially dependent on them, framing abuse as romance, are far from fiction.
Captivated is streaming now on BritBox.