What really happened to Cadence?

Based on E. Lockhart’s eponymous best-selling novel, Amazon Prime Video’s teen series We Were Liars packed its eight-episode first season with plenty of twists and turns.

At the heart of the story are the Liars — Cadence (Emily Alyn Lind), Gat (Shubham Maheshwari), Mirren (Esther McGregor), and Johnny (Joseph Zada) — who spend their summers on their wealthy family’s private island, Beechwood. Life looks perfect from the outside, but beneath the surface, the Sinclair family struggles with the aftermath of a traumatic accident from the previous summer that changed their lives forever.

Lockhart personally chose Julie Plec and Carina Adly Mackenzie to bring her story to life, telling Entertainment Weekly, “They were so thoughtful. I just felt that I was handing it over to a pair of people who were going to be the creative leads on the team as opposed to just selling it to a production company. And they were readers of the book. They were paying attention to the story as it was told in the book.”

While the showrunners stay largely faithful to the novel’s emotional journey, they also take some creative liberties, including an unexpected twist near the season’s end.

Read on as we break down We Were Liars season 1’s ending and uncover what really happened the night that shattered the Sinclair family.

What is We Were Liars about?

The official synopsis for We Were Liars wastes no time teasing the big mystery, declaring, “The Sinclairs are American royalty — known for their good looks, old money, and enviable bond — but after a mysterious accident changes Cadence’s life forever, everyone, including her beloved Liars, seems to have something to hide.”

What follows is a twist-filled, gut-punch of a story focused on Cadence, who’s healing from a traumatic brain injury. As she tries to piece together the events of Summer 16 (the summer she turned 16), she’s haunted by gaps in her memory and a family that refuses to talk. With no answers, Cadence seeks to figure out the truth herself, and what she uncovers is nothing short of heartbreaking.

What happened the night Cadence lost her memory?

Over the course of Summer 17, Cadence works tirelessly to regain the memories she lost after her terrifying accident the year before. As the truth slowly returns piece by piece, Cadence realizes that she and the other Liars were responsible for the fire that burned her grandfather’s mansion, Clairmont, to the ground.

When the show begins, Cadence is found unconscious in the water, wearing only her undergarments and clutching a string of black pearls. She’s left in the dark for most of the season, but the final episodes reveal that the force of Clairmont’s explosion hurled her into the water.

She had already sprinted toward the beach because her dress had caught fire, so the blast didn’t launch her far. But it was strong enough to rip off her outfit and bash her head against the rocks, causing the amnesia.

So what really happened that night on Beechwood? Well, left alone and fed up with the Sinclair family’s endless arguments over money, status, and control, the Liars took matters into their own hands. Seeing Clairmont as a symbol of everything broken in their family, they decided to burn it all down.

They split up, dousing rooms with fuel from the boathouse and using stacks of old newspapers to ignite the blaze. But they didn’t anticipate how quickly the fire would spread — or just how deadly it would become.

What happened to Mirren, Johnny, and Gat?

The massive twist at the end of We Were Liars mirrors the book’s haunting conclusion: Mirren, Johnny, and Gat all die in the fire.

The season finale takes us back to that catastrophic night, slowly revealing how each of the three Liars met their tragic end.

As the fire spreads, Mirren becomes momentarily distracted when she realizes her mother, Bess (Candice King), had tried to repair one of her paintings, the very one Bess had destroyed in a moment of anger. Overcome with guilt but determined to follow through with the plan, Mirren sets her part of Clairmont on fire but throws the painting out the window to save it.

Johnny also hesitates, and in the chaos, thick smoke and roaring flames trap both him and Mirren inside.

Gat, meanwhile, grows worried when he realizes Cadence is nowhere to be found. Without a second thought, he races into the burning mansion to rescue her. He, Mirren, and Johnny shout each other’s names while Cadence, already outside and unaware of their fate, escapes into the night alone.

Lockhart reflected on the ending in an interview with EW, saying the twist “had to happen.”

“When they die, there’s an extreme closeup of each of Johnny, Mirren, and Gat in a sort of slightly foggy look, and there’s this eerie music that’s playing, and it wasn’t in the script. [Director] Erica [Dunton] was just like, ‘I have an idea.’ And these actors brought it every time. There’s not a fake tear on that show. And those shots are some of my favorite shots, and I would never have imagined them myself.”

Are Mirren, Johnny, and Gat ghosts or hallucinations?

Audiences have been debating whether the Mirren, Johnny, and Gat seen in Summer 17 are actual ghosts or just figments of Cadence’s imagination. But according to the cast, the answer is clear: the Liars are, in fact, ghosts.

In an interview with TV Insider, the actors pointed to a key moment added exclusively for the series — one that confirms the supernatural twist.

In the final scene of season 1, Carrie (Mamie Gummer) returns to her house on Beechwood Island, Red Gate. Viewers learn that not only has she relapsed after years of sobriety, but she’s also been seeing and speaking with the ghost of her son, Johnny, throughout Summer 17.

When Carrie pops a Percocet, Johnny confronts her. She tells him she thought he had moved on, and he quietly replies, “I don’t think I can.”

That one exchange convinced Maheshwari that the Liars aren’t hallucinations, since someone else can see them, too. Lind echoed his viewpoint, adding, “I feel like you hear a lot of ghost stories, and it’s like ‘Do they have the gift?’ because it’s hereditary.” She also suggested the ability to see ghosts might run in the Sinclair family.

How does We Were Liars end?

When Cadence eventually comes face-to-face with her grandfather Harris (David Morse), he admits that while the rest of the world believes the Clairmont fire was a result of faulty wiring, he knows the truth and is finally ready to control how it’s told.

He tells Cadence he plans to give one last major interview to squash rumors about a family curse, noting that before stepping back from the public eye, he wants to name her his heir.

But Harris makes one thing clear: If Cadence agrees to stand with the Sinclair family, he’ll protect her and cover up the fire. If she refuses and rejects their name, he won’t hesitate to expose everything she’s done.

In the end, Cadence chooses herself. No longer willing to participate in her family’s lies and perfect facade, she tells a reporter, “I’m just really not into fairytales anymore,” then steals the family’s motorboat and sails away, leaving Beechwood and her old life as a Sinclair behind.

Lind explained to TV Insider that Cadence isn’t sure where she’s headed next. “It’s just her step to sort of be able to say, ‘I know that I’m not going to show up for [her grandfather] Harris, I’m not going to take his side. I’m going to walk away from all of it.'”

Where can I watch We Were Liars?

We Were Liars is now streaming on Prime Video.

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