Here's How Insatiable Ends — It's Even Darker Than You Imagined

During the final minutes of Netflix’s Insatiable season 1 finale, “Why Bad Things Happen,” co-lead Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts) screams into the night, “What else could possibly go wrong?” For a show that is hovering around a 14% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, that sounds like a fair question for the controversial streaming series as whole. After watching the teen show veer from tone to tone and have relentless ills befall its leading lady Patty Bladell (Debby Ryan), nothing else can go sideways in these last few seconds of Insatiable, right? Not while Patty and Bob fail to even cover up a murder with a classic ploy: submerging a car that doubles as criminal evidence in a nearby lake.

But, there is somehow yet another sharp turn towards the horrific for this pair. “I also… sorta… killed… Stella Rose,” Patty stammers. And, fade to black. With that single line, Insatiable confirms this so-called black comedy is even darker than viewers could have ever realised when they initially entered the world of Patty Bladell.

No matter what Patty or Bob says, the now-dead Christian Keene (James Lastovic) was right all along: Patty is the villain of this story.

The proof of this fact is the sheer number of felonies Patty manages to wrack up in about 13 minutes of screen time. First, she escapes her imprisonment by Stella Rose Buckley (Beverly D'Angelo), and is then seen hightailing it to her regionals pageant in the hot dog mobile she was trapped in. As we find out at the end of “Bad,” an actual murder occurred between these two scenes. While Stella was obviously hellbent on killing Patty, it’s highly likely the teenager didn’t have to return the favour to escape. It stands to reason Patty could have simply left her enemy on the side of the road or locked away in the back of the food truck.

But, no, Patty went and apparently killed Stella Rose in cold blood.

Things do not improve with Patty’s second homicide of the evening. Christian, Patty's ex-boyfriend hellbent on getting her back, lures her to a desolate parking lot with the goal of having the pageant queen murder Magnolia Barnard (Erinn Westbrook), her competition. Realising kidnapping and murder are wrong, Patty helps Magnolia escape.

Then… Patty murders Christian. That move doesn’t exactly make sense, since Patty had just realised murder and abduction should be major no-nos, yet here we are.

When investigating the events that led to Patty's second murder, it's nearly impossible to understand why she would do something so dark. First, Christian details all the bad things Patty had done by choice over the season, surmising, “You’re a bad person.” Patty counters by repeatedly screaming, “I’m a good person!” With every declaration, she bashes Christian’s head in with a tire iron, making the boy’s point for him. Patty is a bad person. Once she’s done yelling, Christian’s skull looks like a bucket of smashed cherries, and Patty is covered in his blood. Hence, the need for Patty and Bob to sink that car at the end of “Bad;” Christian’s bloodied corpse is hidden in the trunk.

With this last scene, it seems Insatiable has fully embraced Patty as a villain. She can yell about being a good person as much as she wants, but she’s the one covered in viscera, hiding bodies, while revealing the need to hide even more bodies.

She’s also the person who, in between all the killing, callously leaves her panicked friends behind in favour of her own selfish whims. When Nonnie (Kimmy Shields), Brick (Michael Provost), and Donald (Daniel Kang), who spend the episode terrified Patty has been kidnapped, finally track her down, the teen is barely thankful for their interest in her well-being. Instead, Patty runs away from them and steals Donald’s dad’s truck again, right in front of him, to go score a likely less-than-ethical leg up on the competition.

Of course, the promise of a regionals-winning macguffin actually turns out to be a trick by Christian that eventually escalates to his own murder. Because nothing goes right, or crime-free, for Patty Bladell.

If the polarising comedy does get a second season from Netflix, it’s likely the series will explore what Insatiable looks like when Patty has come to the realisation everyone has known for all of season 1: She might just be a very bad person. Hopefully that’s the first step to moving on from all the murders.