Based on the best-selling novel by Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days has arrived on Amazon’s Prime Video. Starring former Disney star Dove Cameron and former Nickelodeon star Avan Jogia, the erotic thriller has twists, turns, and some major changes from the book it’s based on. Looking for a 56 Days ending explained? We’ve got you covered.
Spoilers for the series past this point, but just to precap, the show followed multiple timelines, ranging from when Ciara Wyse (Cameron) seemingly accidentally bumped into Oliver Kennedy (Jogia) in a supermarket in Boston, to 56 days later – hence the name of the show – when a decomposed body is found in the bathtub of the apartment they shared by Boston cops Karl Connolly (Dorian Missick) and Lee Reardon (Karla Souza). Who is in the tub? Who killed them? And what will happen to Ciara and Oliver? Brother, that’s what this article is all about.
In the first seven episodes of the series, including your requisite seventh episode flashback, we discovered that Ciara is actually a girl named Megan Martin, who grew up in Narragansett in Rhode Island. Also born there? Oliver St. Ledger, the real name of Oliver Kennedy. Back in the day Oliver was hanging out with his friends Shane and Paul, when the two started fighting. In order to protect Shane, Oliver ended up accidentally drowning Paul. Shane, it turns out, is Megan’s older brother, and thanks to the machinations of Oliver’s evil guidance counselor turned therapist Dan Troxler (Patch Darragh), Oliver put all the blame on Shane, and then the therapist convinced Shane to kill himself in prison.
Years later, Megan found out that Oliver was living and working in Boston under an assumed name. She set up a fake life of her own to entrap him, and it worked… Though in the process the two had explicit sex a bunch and then fell in love and then had some more explicit sex. Oliver slipped and fell in the shower, lying in a pool of his own blood, though he was fine somehow. Megan/Ciara confessed everything to him, he confessed everything to her, and they agreed that they were very in love.
One more thing to mention: in the present, Lee has been having an affair/bribe relationship with drug dealer/criminal Linus Finch (Dylan Colton). Lee confessed to Karl, tried to break it off, and in response a car drove by and shot at Lee and Karl.
Okay, that’s enough precap. Now we’ll recap the 56 Days finale, followed by an ending explained – and how this is dramatically different from the novel.
56 Days Finale Recap:
The episode actually starts with Megan putting it all together, finding Oliver, looking back in a yearbook to discover he likes space stuff, tracking him down to Boston, creating a fake ID, all the goods, “137 Days Ago.”
Back in the present again, Lee and Karl are both fine, and they know that Finch is the one who shot at them. They also find that the autopsy of the body in the tub will be ready in the morning.
Back on Day 34, Dan Troxler enters The Crossings – the building where Oliver and Ciara live – and discovers them inside eating avocado toast, which is the same rotted avocado toast that’s still there in the “present.” Dan is pissed that Oliver ditched him as a therapist, which happened because Ciara told him he didn’t need him… And given Dan isn’t a real therapist, she’s actually right… Dan has been manipulating him since the start.
Dan, as a note, also knows about Megan, as well as her sister Shyla (Megan Peta Hill), who he has a restraining order against after Shyla discovered he caused their brother’s death back in the day. Dan threatens Oliver, and blackmails him, demanding $5 million or $10 million to let him go and never tell about Oliver killing Paul. He also has a letter that Oliver wrote to Shane back in the day, confessing to the murder, as well as years of recordings of their sessions together. So Ciara conks Dan on the head, accidentally killing him. Oops!
In the present, our faithful cops discover that the victim was male, and is indeed Dan Troxler. Yep, Dan Troxler is the decomposed body in the tub. But if you’re wondering how he ended up there? Well, stay tuned. First we need to deal with Lee and Karl talking about why she hooked up with a drug dealer, and they hatch a plan involving Finch’s necklace.
Okay, back to Day 34, Ciara calls Shyla, who knows how to dispose of a dead body thanks to a guy named Andrew Delaney who ripped off a bunch of lobster traps and was found dead and decomposed in a tub. Shyla’s advice? They buy bleach from various places, fill the tub with it to break down Troxler’s body, add a heater in the bathroom to make the room super hot and speed up the process, and place clothes and other “evidence” around the scene to confuse the investigators.
Oliver gives Ciara his safe code, which previously was a point of contention between the two, and they take stacks of money and IDs and put it into a suitcase. Oliver calls his billionaire buddies to set up a private plane to take them to safety, and recommends she say goodbye to her sister.
In the present again, Karl is looking at footage with extremely loosely moraled building super Kevin Sullivan (Matt Murray), who really wants to be a cop. Or at least a deputy. Karl shows Kevin a picture of Finch, and asks if he’s ever seen him around with injectable propofol, which is the drug that was left at the scene of the crime… Though we know it wasn’t used to kill Dan Troxler, it was a sleep aid that Troxler prescribed to Oliver. They find footage of Troxler entering the apartment, and Karl has planted the seeds that maybe Finch is responsible.
Karl also goes to the evidence room, and while he does we see Lee confessing everything to their captain, who surprisingly just wants to move past all this. She’s going to report her to Vice, there’s going to be an investigation, but Lee and Karl are likely going to stay on the force.
On Day 34, Ciara/Megan says goodbye to her sister, and tells her everything – except that she’s leaving forever. Meanwhile, Oliver talks to his boss/father figure Elliot Berhane (Alfredo Narciso), and it seems like he’s saying goodbye, too… But he’s not. He confesses to Elliot, and heads to the Boston police station to confess, taking full responsibility for the murder of Dan Troxler in a way he didn’t for Paul’s murder when they were kids.
…Or does he?
56 Days Ending Explained:
Okay, so first of all, Lee and Karl talk over hot dogs and beer, and they’ve passed off the case to Flynn Shannon, a bad cop they call a “lazy paperweight.” Lee is sure that Megan killed Troxler, but the fix is in: they’re framing Finch for his murder in order to take a bad guy off the streets, and get Lee in the clear and out of his thrall. Additionally, Karl, who has considered quitting the police force all season long decides to stay with it. And just to jump ahead, sure enough Flynn takes the bait, and we see Shyla happily reading an article that shows Finch has been arrested for Troxler’s murder.
Back on Day 34, Ciara waits for the private plane to take them to Reykjavik, and lies about how she’s Oliver’s wife, they have a house out there and go on vacation all the time. It sure seems like she’ll be waiting forever… Which is when Oliver shows up, he didn’t give himself up to the police after all.
They tell each other they love each other, and Ciara says she thinks having a catered, pampered life in Reykjavik sounds “like hell,” and she has a better idea.
In Narragansett, Ciara/Megan’s mom gets a FedEx package, and in it is a letter from her about forgiving Oliver for what he did, alongside a check for $2 million, which should take care of her mom’s foreclosure issues and then some.
Lee and Karl head off on a new case. And meanwhile, many, many days later, Ciara and Oliver are found in their new life on an unknown seaside beach. It seems to be tropical based on the palm trees, so not Narragansett. Ciara now has Dove Cameron’s regular blonde hair, and Oliver has his, you know, normal hair. He points out that a storm is coming.
…And that’s when it’s revealed that they have a baby, named Shane. “Sometimes I look at gorgeous baby Shane, and I ask him, ‘are you crazy like your mommy? Or crazy like your daddy?”
The narration ends with Ciara saying she can’t “wait to see what happens tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that,” as she and Oliver kiss. Thunder and lighting crash over the sea as they head away from the beach.
So in short, everyone except Finch (and Troxler) get away scott free. Oliver and Ciara have a baby together, named in honor of Shane. And finally, the two of them are looking to the future – not stuck on an event that happened in the past.
How Is The 56 Days Ending Different In The Novel?
Oh boy, where to start. So the biggest difference between the show and the book is that the book is set at the beginning of the COVID lockdown, in Dublin, and the TV show doesn’t even remotely mention COVID and is set in Boston. That removes some important context from the book, like Ciara and Oliver decide to move in together so quickly because of the lockdown, and she’s around to overhear his virtual therapy sessions because they’re both in the same apartment all the time.
Another big difference? While Lee and Karl are investigating the crime, all of their personal stuff and everything with Finch was invented for the show… They’re basically investigators piecing things together in the present and that’s it.
But the biggest difference? The ending. If you were wondering about that weird scene where Oliver is lying twitching in the shower, that’s essentially the end of the book. There’s no Dan Troxler or manipulative therapist at all. In fact, it’s all about the secrets between Ciara and Oliver. Boiled down, Oliver finds out about Ciara from reading her diary, takes rohypnol (which is what he takes in the book instead of propofol), tries to wake himself up in the shower, slips, and falls.
Ciara finds him there and confesses everything, and Oliver confesses everything back to her and apologizes… He then passes out, likely drowning. That’s where the cops find his decomposed body, and Ciara has managed to wipe every trace of herself from the murder (or so she thinks). The book ends with her calling her sister (named Siobahn in the book) and getting ready to tell her the truth.
So yeah, all that stuff at the end, from framing Finch to running away to a tropical island together and having a baby is all made up for the TV show. Wild!
Will There Be A 56 Days Season 2 On Prime Video?
It’s definitely too early to tell if the show will be picked up for a second season. Technically, it’s a limited series, and everything seems to be wrapped up nicely at the end of the day. But never say never, as there are plenty of options to continue 56 Days if it’s a hit. For example, you could follow the cop duo of Lee and Karl as they investigate a new mystery over a new 56 day time period – after all, they’re seen entering a new apartment at the end. Or there’s Ciara and Oliver, who are left with a storm on the horizon, about as unsubtle a metaphor as you can get. Perhaps their perfect life in paradise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Or alternately, 56 Days could go the anthology route with new characters in an entirely new situation. Regardless, we won’t know for a while, as Prime Video generally takes its sweet time announcing pick-ups and cancellations. Stay tuned as for whether we’ll get 112 Days sometime in the future.
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