Alfred Molina as Sam in Netflix's ‘The Boroughs’
Netflix
Netflix’s The Boroughs ends with a twist, teasing the future of the series and hinting at the true origin of Mother.
The Boroughs, a critically acclaimed sci-fi series from Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance), boasts Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers as executive producers.
Like Stranger Things, The Boroughs features a supernatural mystery that is uncovered by a plucky group of underdogs—rather than teenagers, our heroes are a group of retirees who live in the titular retirement community.
The new arrival to the town, Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) is a curmudgeonly grouch with a heart of gold, consumed with grief over his late wife, Lily (Jane Kaczmarek).
After experiencing sinister, otherworldly events in the not-so-sleepy community, Sam teams up with his neighbors Art (Clarke Peters), Judy (Alfre Woodard), Renee (Geena Davis), Wally (Denis O'Hare) and Paz (Carlos Miranda).
As they discover, the New Mexico town isn’t a retirement community at all—it’s a factory farm, with the residents treated like cattle.
Warning—Spoilers Ahead
The wealthy founders of the Boroughs, Blaine (Seth Numrich) and Anneliese (Alice Kremelburg), along with a small group of elites, secretly maintain a parasitic relationship with the town’s elderly inhabitants.
Blaine and the others have discovered the Fountain of Youth, contained within the blood of an entity named Mother (Nancy Daly).
Blaine discovered an egg inside a mineshaft decades ago, which hatched into Mother, a name that he gave her.
Drinking Mother’s blood keeps the group young and healthy, but is slowly weakening Mother, who is kept alive on a diet of human cerebrospinal fluid.
A network of tunnels below the town allow Mother’s spider-like children to enter the homes of the residents and extract their brain fluid as they sleep.
Interestingly, Mother has visibly grown more human over her decades of consuming brain fluid, while the elites who drink her blood have grown more monstrous.
Mother and her children share a mysterious connection with a magical peach tree growing underground in the “Cave of Wonders,” its fruit offering temporary relief from the effects of old age.
After uncovering the sinister conspiracy, the group seek to kill Mother and end the suffering of the town’s residents, who are suffering neurological damage from the constant draining of their brain fluid.
Wally, a doctor, wants to experiment with Mother and use her golden blood to help humanity, arguing that the youthful elixir surely contains a multitude of medical cures.
However, Mother has established a telepathic communication with Sam, and she asks him to die peacefully, in the Cave of Wonders.
Sam wants to respect her wishes, and the gang obliges, using the secret network of tunnels to transport Mother to her chosen resting place, escaping the blockades set up by Blaine.
Mother senses that her children are imprisoned in an underground area and asks that they be set free. Paz and Renee open the cages and free the creatures, thanks to the betrayal of security chief Hank (Eric Edelstein).
As they try to take Mother to safety, the underground gates slam shut and the group realizes that Blaine is directing them to Sam’s house, a detour that proves advantageous.
At Sam’s house, the group set up a trap for Blaine and the other town elites, reusing the makeshift television-set weapon that they previously tried to kill one of the creatures with.
The retrofitted tech has since been improved, thanks to some tinkering from Sam's daughter, Claire (Jena Malone).
As Blaine, Anneliese and the others arrive to confront the group, the garage door opens to reveal the screens, blasting them with energy.
Everyone is killed but Blaine, who collapses, but is able to revive due to the amount of Mother’s blood inside his system.
As Sam finally manages to reach the tree and put Mother to rest, she informs him that she’s about to explode.
Sam’s confusion is interrupted by Blaine, who bludgeons him with a brick, warning Sam that he has no idea what Mother is, or what she’s capable of.
Sam mocks Blaine’s fear, reminding him that death comes for us all.
As the two struggle, Mother’s children surround her, and she peacefully explodes in a blast of energy, destroying Blaine’s body and temporarily transporting Sam to a reunion with his deceased wife, Lily.
Mother experiences time differently, and here, she appears to have taken control over a bubble in the timestream, with Lily aware of what is happening.
The two share a last dance and a kiss, until the moment dissolves and Sam wakes up in the cave, realizing that both Blaine and Mother are dead.
The Boroughs season one finale ends in a surprisingly peaceful scene, the group relaxing and spending an evening together.
However, there is a final twist that hints at something deeper.
Sam heads to the bathroom to clean up a minor head wound from his struggle with Blaine. As he nurses his cut, Sam’s reflection flickers, echoing the glitch effect associated with Mother’s telepathic communications.
Sam doesn’t seem bothered, and the season one finale concludes with a final shot of the night sky, the screen “switching off” like a retro television set.
Sam’s glitch opens the door to several possibilities, implying that Mother is still out there or has left her residue on him. After all, Mother may exist beyond her death.
The explosion that killed Blaine might have infused Sam with Mother’s essence, marking him as the heir to her powers.
There is a darker possibility—it might be the case that Mother has created a comforting illusion.
After all, there is no guarantee that the reunion of Sam and Lily was real. Maybe the final scene is so serene because Sam is trapped inside a false reality, still lying on the floor of the Cave of Wonders.
Blaine might have been a villain, but he did know more about Mother than Sam, and he delivered a warning about her before his death.
The entity known as Mother is left ambiguous, as is the tree inside the Cave of Wonders, but there are hints to their true nature.
The mysterious peach tree in Netflix's 'The Boroughs'
Netflix
The tree echoes the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden, and the Forbidden Fruit eaten by Eve. When Art ate the peach, he experienced a temporary healing effect, and the tree mysteriously withered.
Mother’s insistence on being laid to rest by the tree suggests that she originated from there, but the tree itself is never explained.
The moral choices surrounding Mother and her tree illustrate the true nature of the characters, with Blaine choosing immortality, Wally seeking to help humanity and Sam choosing to respect Mother’s wishes.
It might be the case that Mother is more sinister than Sam assumed, as Blaine warns him. After all, Mother is inhuman and consumes brain fluid, hinting at a parasitic nature.
Mother is something of a queen bee, assisted by her minion-like children, and her true purpose might be to establish a feeding network on Earth—it just happened to be hijacked by Blaine.
While a potential second season will surely delve deeper, there are clues that Mother and the tree are extraterrestrial in origin.
The first breadcrumb laid by The Boroughs comes from the eerie claim that there is an “owl in the walls” of Sam’s house.
Owls are intricately tied to UFO abduction stories, with eyewitnesses commonly reporting the presence of owls alongside alleged alien encounters.
The final shot of the star-filled sky strongly implies that the answers are out there, in space.
The final shot teases a second season, but it could also serve as an open-ended series finale, if Netflix fails to renew The Boroughs.
Speaking to IGN, The Boroughs showrunners Addiss and Matthews discuss the final shot of season one, stating:
"That we have ideas for season two [and] know where [it] goes, and it builds directly off that moment, and nothing about that shot was done idly. It was a tip of the cap to where we want to go, which means we can't give away what it means, because that's going to be the fun, knock on wood, should we get a second season."
At time of writing, Netflix has yet to renew the show for a second season, but there’s clearly an intention from the showrunners to tell a larger story.
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