Note for book readers: This interpretation differs greatly from the way the book ends. Which may, to some of you, feel disqualifying. I address that at the very end, if you want to jump to that part or make it that far.
Sharp Objects ends in a cool, memorable way. But it’s not a conclusion. Right? Initially, viewers might be blown away by how Sharp Objects reveals Amma was the murderer all along. Yet when the credits roll, I figure many were like me, sitting there going, “Wait, you can’t end there! What happens next?!”
That lack of closure bothered me for a few days. Then I figured it out. The show actually told us what will happen next, you just might not realize it. The creators (Gillian Flynn, Marti Noxon, and Jean-Marc Vallée) put in breadcrumbs throughout the series that allow us to see the future.
History repeats itself
One of the major themes of Sharp Objects is the notion history repeats itself. Especially in Wind Gap. There are a few major signs of this.
One quick and easy example is how the show opens with a young Camille rolling skating around town. In the present, Camille’s half-sister, Amma (Eliza Scanlen), does just the same.
Another easy example is the Calhoun Day celebration. The town continues to honor a Civil War-era event where one Millie Calhoun refused to give up the whereabouts of her husband to Union soldiers. Even under violent torture. The fact that this gruesome event is not only honored year after year but that high school teens perform a theatrical version is just a little disturbing and points to the ethos of Wind Gap.
The other examples are a bit more serious.
Like Camille having sister-figures die. As a teenager, it was her half-sister, Marian, who passed away. As an adult, it was Alice, the roommate and sister-figure Camille had while in the psychiatric hospital. You can feel the burden of these deaths during the highs and lows of Camille’s budding relationship with Amma. A mixture of fear and longing that causes the older sister to ignore so many warning signs.
And of course, the plot builds to a climax where Adora may poison Amma—the same way she poisoned Marian many years ago. Except, this time, Camille is around to stop it.
I could keep going, but let’s focus on one more. It’s the most important.
You may remember what we learn of Adora’s childhood. The first tidbit comes from Alan. (Henry Czerny). He tells Camille that Adora’s mom would pinch Adora in the middle of the night to make sure she was still alive. It was pure paranoia. And pretty traumatizing, I’d imagine, for a kid to constantly be woken up by a parent pinching them. Later, Adora talks about the cruelty of her mother. Telling of a time when the mother walked Adora, still a child, deep into the woods and left her there. It took days of wandering to make it back. When she walked through the door, all her mother said was, “You’re home.”
Obviously, Adora’s mother was sick. Alternating between over-caring and under-caring about her daughter’s health. And we see Adora repeat this same behavior with Camille, Marian, and Amma. Giving too much attention or none at all. Tender then brutal. Tender and brutal. A byproduct of suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where you create situations in which you’re needed as a caregiver, to the point of hurting the very person you want to take care of.
Generally speaking, this sense of repetition grounds Wind Gap in a timelessness. The town can, in many ways, feel inescapable. Add in the fact that Camille struggles to deal with the trauma she experienced there. By having so many resonances between “then” and “now,” the trauma feels more alive than it otherwise would. Something active rather than extinct. Through Camille’s perspective, the danger and alarm is ever-present. This does serve the overall tone of Sharp Objects and makes Wind Gap a character in its own right. But it also sets up Camille as a kind of time bomb. At any moment, she may reach her breaking point.
For most of the series, we probably fear Camille will start cutting again. Or worse. Little did we know what fate Sharp Objects was setting up for her.
Like mother, like daughter
Several times, characters say something about how Camille is like Adora. Even Adora tells Camille, “You’re the most like me.” It’s easy to overlook. But it’s pretty much the biggest key to explaining what choice Camille will make regarding Amma.
Probably the most crucial example is the story Camille writes after Adora’s convicted of murder. We hear her boss, Frank Curry (Miguel Sandoval), read the story aloud. It ends with these lines:
As for me, I’ve forgiven myself for failing to save my sister. And given myself over to raising the other. Am I good at caring for Amma because of kindness? Or do I like caring for Amma because I have Adora’s sickness? I waver between the two. Especially at night, when my skin begins to pulse. Lately, I’ve been leaning toward kindness.
We know Adora felt her best when she believed her kids needed her. To the point she began poisoning them in order to create that need. If her children were independent, she denied them love. But if they caved to her wishes and demands, then she cherished them.
Camille doesn’t suffer from the same Munchausen by proxy as her mother. So she doesn’t need to create demand. But we do see how drawn she is to providing comfort. Whether it was to Marian, Alice, Amma, or even Detective Willis (Chris Messina). Willis is the outsider no one in Wind Gap likes. There’s something in his ostricization and sadness that appeal to Camille. Same with John Keene (Taylor John Smith)—accused of murdering his sister and hated by most of the town because of it. At Keene’s lowest point, Camille finds him, soothes him, and sleeps with him. It’s a decision that, I’m sure, caused many viewers to say, out loud, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! DON’T SLEEP WITH THE HIGH SCHOOLER!”
But, in hindsight, knowing there’s this legacy of abuse in Camille’s family where each woman manifests their damage in similar-yet-unique ways—it’s not surprising Camille is drawn to John Keene’s youth and trauma. To the point where she completely transgresses.
History repeats itself
Camille’s transgression with John Keene might feel strange in the moment, but it’s important as it sets up the idea she will cross ethical lines, that she is no bastion of morality. Even though Keene is of legal, consenting age, being 18-years-old, the gap between them makes their relations inappropriate and troubling. (Note, too, that they sleep together in the same kind of cheap motel where Camille had slept with Detective Willis a few nights before. While not the exact room or hotel, it’s graphically similar and another instance of repetition).
With all that in mind. Let’s talk the last scene.
Camille looks at the ivory floor in the dollhouse. Finds a tooth. And realizes Amma must be the murderer of Ann Nash and Natalie Keene. This is why Natalie’s body was found without teeth. Then Amma appears, realizes the jig is up, and says “Don’t tell Mama.”
That line, “Don’t tell Mama” is incredibly childish. Especially coming from a triple-murderer. It reminds you that despite Amma’s capacity for violence, she’s still a kid concerned about punishment and upsetting her mother. How do you think Camille’s going to respond to that Any logical person would feel outrage and disgust and immediately want to call the police.
But Camille already told us her feelings. In the article. She has “given herself over to caring” for Amma. And may like doing it so much because she has her mother’s sickness.
Having lost two other young women she loved, will she allow herself to lose a third? Especially after how she and Amma have bonded. Can Camille really give up now? Will she even blame Amma for the murders? Or try to justify it as a byproduct of Adora’s parenting? You can hear it, too, right? What Camille would say to herself: “It’s not Amma’s fault she has these jealous rages. Adora would starve us for attention, manipulate us to want and need her. No one understands but me. I can fix her. I just need some time.”
The kind and responsible decision is to get Amma the help she needs. To protect the people around them by making sure Amma can’t kill for a fourth time.
But Camille is drawn to trauma. To brokenness. And she is like her mother, stricken by an urge to care for someone in distress. It’s a powerful combination. One that will, I believe, cause her to protect Amma. To shelter her rather than turn her over to authorities. Convinced she’s the only one who can. What’s the other option? Send Amma to jail? To a psychiatric hospital where she can end up like Alice? Camille can’t let that happen. Not again.
Sickness wins. And history repeats itself, one way or the other.
And if you have any doubt, a few lines from the original novel get the point across:
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.
Sharp Objects
What about the book ending?
In the original novel version of Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn doesn’t suddenly cut to black after the Amma reveal. Camille turns Amma in and initially suffers for it. There’s a big scene about her cutting the one place she had kept pure. Ultimately, she ends up in the care of Frank and Eileen, getting the kind of loving parenting she never had from Adora and her unknown father.
There’s sadness, but also a kind of rebirth, as the shock of Amma’s true nature reverts Camille to more of a child-like state. The care she receives from Frank and Eileen is pure and cathartic. There’s a sense of hope that Camille can finally heal.
This hope is reinforced by the novel’s final words:
Sometimes I think about that night caring for Amma, and how good I was at soothing her and calming her. I have dreams of washing Amma and drying her brow. I wake with my stomach turning and a sweaty upper lip. Was I good at caring for Amma because of kindness? Or did I like caring for Amma because I have Adora’s sickness? I waver between the two, especially at night, when my skin begins to pulse. Lately, I’ve been leaning toward kindness.
The HBO Sharp Objects included a version of these thoughts in Camille’s big newspaper article. I quoted it above. But I’ll repeat it here for the contrast:
As for me, I’ve forgiven myself for failing to save my sister. And given myself over to raising the other. Am I good at caring for Amma because of kindness? Or do I like caring for Amma because I have Adora’s sickness? I waver between the two. Especially at night, when my skin begins to pulse. Lately, I’ve been leaning toward kindness.
In the novel, the sickness/kindness duality is spoken by a Camille who fully understands what happened with Adora and Amma. It follows the care she received from parent-figures who truly love her. It’s a huge step for Camille to lean toward kindness after all she’s been through. And it ends the novel with that idea of kindness and what that means for Camille moving forward.
But in the show, Camille writes those lines while in a very different state of mind. She still thinks Adora was the guilty one, that Amma is simply another victim. The lines carry the novel-versions sense of catharsis and hope. Except it’s premature. How will she feel once she knows the truth about Amma? Will she be responsible and turn Amma in? Or does the sickness take over?
The HBO version does not answer that question. It ends the story before we see what Camille does. All a viewer can do is hypothesize to the best of their ability based on the information we’re given.
Some viewers will agree with the idea that what happens in the book is what would happen next in the show. But that’s not usually how the book/movie or book/tv series dynamic works. Just because something happened in one version doesn’t mean it’s what happens in the other version. Even if many of the same events occur.
There was no Calhoun Day in the Sharp Objects novel. There’s no hospital scene where Willis and Camille have a soft goodbye. The tension between Alan and Vickery was HBO-only. Alan knowing what Adora was doing was more explicit in the show than in the book. Amma didn’t roller skate in the book. Camille didn’t stick her finger in a fan. Fans weren’t a continuous visual motif. So, yes, similar core events, but clearly there are many small and large differences between the two versions of Sharp Objects.
One of those is the ending. Yes, it could go the exact way the novel did, but it didn’t. Leaving us the space to form other, viable, interpretations. Even the showrunner, Marti Noxon, said, “But that’s something you have to wrestle with after the show is over, is what’s going to happen to those women now?”
Noxon could have said, “We know what Camille does because of the novel.” But she doesn’t—HBO Camille isn’t the same character as Novel Camille. Just because one turned Amma in doesn’t mean the other will.
Thanks for reading! If you have any requests for ending or thematic explanations, leave a comment below or email me.
