Breaking Down the Shocking Ending of The Girlfriend
Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Girlfriend.
In The Girlfriend, a drama out on Prime Sept. 10, a medical student named Daniel (Laurie Davidson) is caught between the two loves of his life: his girlfriend Cherry Laine (Olivia Cooke) and his mother Laura Sanderson (Robin Wright).
While Daniel is not romantically involved with his mother, they have a close relationship and feel like they can’t live without each other. Laura is especially protective of Daniel, who became an only child after his sister Rose died as a child. So when Daniel brings home Cherry, Laura grows convinced that the new girlfriend has a dark past. Even though no one believes her, Laura decides to uncover the truth.
Adapted from Michelle Frances’s novel The Girlfriend, the six-part series follows Laura’s journey to expose Cherry for the troublemaker she really is, destroying her relationship with her son in the process. Here’s a look at why Laura didn’t trust Cherry from the get-go and the show’s shocking ending.
Meet the parents
Daniel introduces his parents Laura and Howard Sanderson (Waleed Zuaiter) to his new girlfriend Cherry—who works in real estate and boasts cherry red hair—over dinner at their home in London. The young couple met when Daniel was looking into buying an apartment and toured one of Cherry’s company’s listings.
Howard hits it off with Cherry immediately because he’s also in real estate and even offers up one of his contacts to help Cherry land a job. Laura, a gallery owner, is polite to Cherry, but is suspicious of her. It’s not like Laura’s suspicions are unfounded. During her first visit with Daniel’s parents, Cherry takes a bracelet from Laura’s room and throws Laura’s cat Moses out the bathroom window. Laura believes they both mysteriously disappeared.
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More lies add up: Cherry joins the family at their second home in Málaga, Spain and has a ton of anxiety about fitting in with their upper-class lifestyle. In the nightmare scenario for a couple that has just started dating, Cherry lies about being a confident swimmer and ends up struggling to keep herself afloat in the ocean, so Laura has to jump in and rescue her. She also notices Cherry’s swimsuit still has the price tag on it, even though Cherry said she’d had it for a while.
But the biggest red flag comes in the first episode when Laura sees Cherry punch a guy on the street shortly after their first family dinner in London. On vacation in Spain, she sees the same man in a viral video, as a groom who cuts into a white wedding cake with his bride, and they get splattered with blood. This explains why, in the first episode, Cherry cut out a lamb’s heart and disguises herself as a wedding caterer. Laura shows the video to Cherry, and asks her if the groom is indeed her ex-boyfriend, and Cherry doesn’t say anything. Laura threatens to tell the truth to her son.
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Family drama
While Laura’s day job is running three galleries, she basically becomes a private investigator on the side. Cherry says she went to a school called St. Florian’s, but when Laura calls up the headmaster, a personal friend, she finds out Cherry never went there. Laura tracks down Cherry’s ex before Daniel, who told her that he feared for his safety after they broke up. When he started dating the woman who would become his fiancée, he got a restraining order against Cherry. Laura tells Daniel about this conversation, but he chastises her for trying to interfere in his relationship. Even her husband accuses Laura of hating Cherry because she thinks she’s trying to replace her.
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On some level, that’s true. For example, she had a tradition of going to a musical and dumplings with Daniel every year on his birthday, and Cherry one-upped her this year by planning a rock climbing getaway to a place Daniel has always wanted to go.
Daniel isn’t the only family member that Laura is on the outs with. She’s had an on-and-off affair with her art school classmate Lilith (Anna Chancellor), and Howard accuses her of never loving him as much as he’s loved her. In the show, he reveals that he loves her so much that he’s secretly been infusing cash into Laura’s gallery shows and lining up buyers for its artworks behind her back. Without his help, the galleries would have gone out of business after their first year. This news comes as a surprise to Laura, and she’s horrified. Howard also thinks that Laura is too hard on Cherry.
The fall
The family’s world is turned upside down when Daniel falls during the rock-climbing trip, and doctors at the hospital don’t believe he’s going to make it through the night.
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Cherry is calling Laura incessantly, and Laura ignores the calls, until she realizes there is one way she can drive the two apart.
She tells Cherry that Daniel is dead and that there was a funeral just for family members. Then she whisks Daniel off to their second home in Spain to recuperate, hoping that while he is in physical therapy for weeks, Cherry will move on.
But separating the two is apparently not enough. Laura still feels the need to destroy Cherry, hacking into her Instagram and writing a post criticizing “rich wankers” that gets Cherry fired from her real estate job. Cherry has behaved badly—but so has Laura.
Laura’s plan is foiled when Cherry meets one of Howard’s real estate contacts at a hotel Howard owns. He tells her Daniel is alive and dining upstairs with Laura. Cherry ambushes the two and tells Daniel that Laura told her that he was dead and that there was a funeral.
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Daniel and Cherry get back together, and his relationship with his mother is strained. Cherry shows up at one of Laura’s gallery events, Laura takes Cherry aside in her office and they get into an argument. Cherry breaks a glass against her own head and then runs out and tells the attendees that Laura threw a glass at her.
A dark ending
By the finale, five months after Cherry has been in the Sandersons’ lives, Daniel has had enough of his mother’s meddling, and his father has moved out of the house. Daniel is engaged to Cherry, and they’re planning an engagement party.
But Laura is still determined to show her son who the real Cherry is. She takes out a piece of mail addressed to Cherry that she accidentally received when Cherry gave Laura some of Daniel’s mail. Inside is an invoice from a nursing home. Laura goes to the nursing home, where she learns Cherry’s father John Laine (Simon Meacock) is a resident, and she visits his room, pretending she’s an old friend of his who hasn’t seen him in a long time. When she asks a nurse what happened, she says he fell 20 feet at a construction site, broke his spine in two places and cracked his skull.
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Laura marches over to the butcher shop run by Cherry’s mother Tracey Laine (Karen Henthorn), demanding to know whether Cherry pushed her father. Tracey doesn’t deny it, but emphasizes that her daughter wasn’t trying to kill him. She warns Laura not to mess with Cherry. What Tracey doesn’t realize is that Laura is recording their conversation on her iPhone, including Tracey’s comment that Laura should watch her back because Cherry can be quite vengeful.
Sure enough, while Tracey is filling in Cherry on her interaction with Laura at the butcher shop, Cherry breaks into one of Laura’s galleries, covers the security cameras with a black blanket, and vandalizes paintings by writing “LIAR LIAR” across several canvases, including artworks by Laura’s lover Lilith. Laura tells the police that Cherry must be behind the vandalism, so officers show up at the engagement party and arrest Cherry.
Daniel shows up at Laura’s home, arguing he’s done everything to make her happy his entire life, so she should be supportive when he chooses to marry the love of his life. Realizing that she won’t have the same relationship with her son again, she offers to make goodbye drinks, and he agrees to have one. She goes into the kitchen and mixes his cocktail with pills that end up knocking him out for hours. Then she plays the recording in which Tracey warns Laura to be careful of Cherry, hoping he will be able to pick up some of it, but he’s too drugged to pay attention.
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Cherry, freed from police custody, shows up at the house, and Laura chases her up and down the stairs with a knife. By the time they reach the Sandersons’ indoor swimming pool, Daniel is conscious again, and the three of them end up wrestling in the water. While trying to restrain his mother, he pushes her underwater, drowning her. It’s ironic that earlier in the show, she “killed” him—by telling Cherry he was dead—and now he’s the one who kills her—for real.
The finale ends with Daniel smiling in the kitchen while Cherry, who is pregnant, and his father are outside in the yard yucking it up. Moses, Laura’s cat, has returned, and he’s pawing at something underneath an end table. Daniel reaches for the object and sees that it’s his mother’s phone. He finds a charger for it, and when it turns on, he looks to see the last photos she took and finds the video of Laura’s confrontation with Tracey. As he listens back to the audio of Tracey telling Laura to watch out, he stares out the window, and his jaw drops as he hears Tracey tell Laura, “she’ll want something you’re not prepared to give, then she’ll find a way to get rid of you.” He looks as if he’s afraid of what could happen next.
Family shows AI video of slain victim as an impact statement — possibly a legal first
Updated May 12, 20257:27 PM ET
A screenshot of the AI generated video of Christopher Pelkey.
YouTube
For two years, Stacey Wales kept a running list of everything she would say at the sentencing hearing for the man who killed her brother in a road rage incident in Chandler, Ariz.
But when she finally sat down to write her statement, Wales was stuck. She struggled to find the right words, but one voice was clear: her brother’s.
“I couldn’t help hear his voice in my head of what he would say,” Wales told NPR.
That’s when the idea came to her: to use artificial intelligence to generate a video of how her late brother, Christopher Pelkey, would address the courtroom and specifically the man who fatally shot him, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas, at a red light in 2021.
On Thursday, Wales stood before the court and played the video — in what AI experts say is likely the first time the technology has been used in the U.S. to create an impact statement read by an AI rendering of the deceased victim.
Since the sentencing hearing, Horcasitas’s attorney Jason Lamm has filed a notice of appeal. He said he agreed that victims have an “unfettered right” to share their views at sentencing. “The issue, however, is to what extent did the trial judge rely on the AI video in fashioning a sentence,” Lamm added.
A sister looking for the right words
Wales has been thinking about her victim impact statement since the initial trial in 2023. The case was retried in 2025 because of procedural problems with the first trial.
The chance to speak in court meant a great deal to Wales, who held back her emotions throughout both trials to avoid influencing the jury.
“You’re told that you cannot react, you cannot emote, you cannot cry,” she said. ”We looked forward to [sentencing] because we finally were gonna be able to react.”
Wales’ attorney told her to humanize Pelkey and offer a complete picture of who he was.
So Wales went on a mission. She said she contacted as many people from Pelkey’s life — from his elementary school teacher to high school prom date to the soldiers he served alongside in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A photo of Christopher Pelkey walking his sister Stacey Wales down the aisle at her wedding.
A photo of Chris Pelkey walking his sister Stacey Wales down the aisle at her wedding./Stacey Wales
In total, Wales gathered 48 victim impact statements — not counting her own. When it was time to write hers, she was torn between saying how she truly felt and what she thought the judge would want to hear.
“I didn’t wanna get up there and say, ‘I forgive you,’ ’cause I don’t, I’m not there yet,” she said. “And the dichotomy was that I could hear Chris’ voice in my head and he’s like, ‘I forgive him.'”
Pelkey’s mantra had always been to love God and love others, according to Wales. He was the kind of man who would give the shirt off his back, she said. While she struggled to find the right words for herself, Wales said writing from his perspective came naturally.
“I knew what he stood for and it was just very clear to me what he would say,” she added.
A digitally trimmed beard and an inserted laugh
That night, Wales turned to her husband Tim, who has experience using AI for work.
“He doesn’t get a say. He doesn’t get a chance to speak,” Wales said, referring to her brother. “We can’t let that happen. We have to give him a voice.”
Tim and their business partner Scott Yentzer had only a few days to produce the video. The challenge: there’s no single program built for a project like this. They also needed a long, clear audio clip of Pelkey’s voice and a photo of him looking straight to the camera — neither of which Wales had.
Still, using several AI tools, Wales’ husband and Yentzer managed to create a convincing video using about a 4.5-minute-video of Pelkey, his funeral photo and a script that Wales prepared. They digitally removed the sunglasses on top of Pelkey’s hat and trimmed his beard — which had been causing technological issues.
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Wales, who was heavily involved in making sure the video felt true to life, said recreating her brother’s laugh was especially tough because most clips of Pelkey were filled with background noise.
The experience made Wales reflect on her own mortality. So one evening, Wales stepped into her closest and recorded a nine-minute-video of herself talking and laughing — just in case her family ever needs clear audio of her voice someday.
“It was a weird out-of-body experience to think that way about your own mortality, but you never know when you’re going to not be here,” she said.
The night before the sentencing hearing, Wales called her victim rights attorney, Jessica Gattuso, to tell her about the video. Gattuso told NPR that she was initially hesitant about the idea because she had never heard of it being done before in Arizona court. She was also worried that the video may not be received well. But after seeing the video, she felt compelled that it should be viewed in court.
“I knew it would have an impact on everyone including the shooter, because it was a message of forgiveness,” Gattuso said.
The AI generated video helped with healing, sister says
Ten people spoke in support of Pelkey at the sentencing hearing. The AI-generated video of him went last.
“Hello. Just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I’m a version of Chris Pelkey recreated through AI that uses my picture and my voice profile,” the AI avatar said.
The video went on to thank everyone in Pelkey’s life who contributed an impact statement and attended the hearing. Then, the video addressed his shooter, Horcasitas.
“It is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances. In another life, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and in God who forgives. I always have and I still do,” the video said.
The video ended with the avatar encouraging everyone to love one another and live life to the fullest. “Well, I’m gonna go fishing now. Love you all. See you on the other side,” it concluded.
Neither the defense nor the judge pushed back. Later in the hearing, Judge Todd Lang said, “I loved that AI. Thank you for that.”
A photo of Christopher Pelkey.
Stacey Wales
He added, “It says something about the family because you told me how angry you were and you demanded the maximum sentence. And even thought that’s what you wanted, you allowed Chris to speak from his heart, as you saw it. I didn’t hear him asking for the maximum sentence.” Horcasitas received 10.5 years for manslaughter.
Wales said she didn’t realize how deeply the video would affect her and her family. For her teenage son, it was a chance to hear his uncle say goodbye. For Wales, it gave her the strength to finally look back at photos of her brother.
“Going through this process of AI and what he’d sound like and trimming his beard and inserting laughs and all these other things, it was very cathartic and it was part of the healing process,” she said.
What AI and legal experts say
Over the years, there have been a growing number of examples testing the bounds of AI’s role in the courtroom.
For instance, in 2023, President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen unwittingly sent his attorney bogus AI-generated legal citations. More recently, last month, a man attempted to use an AI-generated lawyer avatar in court — an effort that was quickly shut down by the judge.
But the use of AI for a victim impact statement appears novel, according to Maura Grossman, a professor at the University of Waterloo who has studied the applications of AI in criminal and civil cases. She added, that she did not see any major legal or ethical issues in Pelkey’s case.
“Because this is in front of a judge, not a jury, and because the video wasn’t submitted as evidence per se, its impact is more limited,” she told NPR via email.
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Some experts, including Grossman, predict generative AI will become more common in the legal system, but it raises various legal and ethical questions. When it comes to victim impact statements, key concerns include questions around consent, fairness and whether the content was made in good faith.
“Victim statements like this that truly try to represent the dead victim’s voice are probably the least objectionable use of AI to create false videos or statements,” Gary Marchant, a professor of law, ethics and emerging technologies at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, wrote in an email.
“Many attempts to use AI to create deep fakes will be much more malevolent,” he added.
Wales herself cautions people who may follow in her footsteps to act with integrity and not be driven by selfish motives. “I could have been very selfish with it,” she said. “But it was important not to give any one person or group closure that could leave somebody else out.”
