The Boroughs Ending Explained: Sam, Mother, and That Final Moment

This article contains spoilers for The Boroughs, including the finale.

There’s a new Duffer Brothers-produced show in town, and it’s a rather more wholesome affair than the last horrifying Netflix show they oversaw, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Instead, The Boroughs is a sci-fi mystery wrapped in an enigma that follows a group of retirees living in a picturesque community, completely unaware that they’ll soon have to find the heroes within themselves to take down a group of vampires who need to keep drinking the blood of a mysterious creature to stay alive.

Luckily, this plucky gang of retirees are helped in their endeavors by a new old kid on the block called Sam (Alfred Molina). He immediately causes the right kind of trouble by questioning the serene town and its workings. Still, he initially struggles to get his friends in the community on board with his conspiracy theories, and he’s plagued by visions of his dead wife, who seems to be trying to tell him something important.

Let’s break down the ending of The Boroughs and what its final moment might mean for the future of the series.

The History of The Boroughs

In episode 5 of the series, Anneliese (Alice Kremelberg) explains to Art (Clarke Peters) that there are wonders in The Boroughs that are hidden, buried and tucked away. The retirement community has been built on land that seems to produce fascinating, otherworldly things.

Back in the spring of 1949, a local miner named Marcus Shaw (Seth Numrich) discovered an egg buried deep in the ground at the site. This hatched a creature they called Mother, and he discovered that drinking its blood holds you in time. You no longer age or get sick. Marcus eventually changed his name to Blaine, and he and his no longer sickly lover, Annaliese, bought the town to control their treasure when the copper mine dried up.

They soon realized they needed human brain fluid to keep Mother fed. When it produced children, he and Annalise founded The Boroughs, building tunnels underground so that they could secretly release Mother’s children upon the residents to suck out their cerebrospinal fluid, regurgitating it to Mother and keeping her alive.

Though Blaine and Annaliese found eternal life, they also discovered they had been fundamentally changed by drinking Mother’s blood. They began to exhibit physical traits of the creature under extreme circumstances, such as sudden injury or when it had been a while since they had consumed its nectar.

Sam finds a way to expose these physical traits within the rulers of The Boroughs by using old cathode-ray TV sets that mess with their blood.

Mother and Her Children

Imprisoned by Blaine and Annaliese, Mother is still able to communicate a cry for help to some of The Boroughs’ residents. She is reaching out to them because she is dying, but Blaine and Annaliese are determined to revitalize her so that they can continue to drink her blood. They convince Wally (Denis O’Hare) to help them, and he believes that giving her a transfusion of her children’s blood will do the trick. However, he doesn’t believe that Blaine and Annaliese should continue to monopolize Mother and her blood.

Mother is running out of time and has already tried to psychically communicate with a couple of different residents when the series gets underway, including Edward (Ed Begley Jr.). She can reach out to people lost in time, like Edward, who are experiencing mental decline, but they can’t do anything to help. However, Sam’s mind has only been “split” by the sudden loss of his wife, Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek). He is still reliving the day she died, and because Mother doesn’t experience time in a linear way, she is able to effectively use an avatar of Lilly and his memories of the night she died to attract his attention.

Mother eventually tells Sam that she wants to die, and that she must do so in a cave next to the tree where her egg originally hatched. She tells him that her children have been preparing the cave for her arrival. Art is already familiar with the exact location, having plucked a rare peach from it that renewed his health and vitality.

The Boroughs Ending Explained

During the final episode of The Boroughs, the residents team up to free Mother and get her to the mysterious cave, but it is not an easy feat. Blaine and Annaliese mortally wound Judy (Alfre Woodard) and Mother brings her back to life. Meanwhile, Paz (Carlos Miranda) and Renee (Geena Davis) have to convince Hank (Eric Edelstein) to set Mother’s children free.

Sam and his daughter Claire (Jena Malone) also reinforce his cathode-ray trap, which kills the frail Annaliese but doesn’t quite finish off Blaine. When Mother tells Sam that he has to take her to the cave alone, a furious and grieving Blaine pursues them and tries to kill Sam. However, when Mother lets go and finally dies surrounded by her children, the explosion exterminates Blaine.

Yet, when the explosion hits Sam, he is once again transported to the night his wife died. On this occasion, he gets to spend a little more time with the real Lilly. He is told that it’s Mother’s way of saying thank you, and Lilly tells Sam that “time is a gift.” Sam dances with Lilly one final time, hoping they will be together again one day. Lilly says they’re together, always. At that point, Sam suddenly wakes up in the cave and sees Mother’s skeletal remains, remarking that she’s finally at peace.

Sam’s Reflection in the Mirror

Following Mother’s death, everyone gathers for a party in The Boroughs, where the wound Sam sustained from the explosion in the cave is still bleeding. As he goes to tend to it in the bathroom, we see Sam’s reflection glitching in the mirror. Mother may be dead, but Sam still seems to be connected to the magic that remains in The Boroughs, and it may just be keeping an eye on him, too.

Should there be a second season of The Boroughs, we’d imagine the show will explore what happens to Sam next, and what else awaits the gang as the location’s strange energy takes on a different form. Only time will tell how that might manifest, but it’s likely that Sam will stay caught between the two worlds that exist there.

If there’s no second season, this cheeky mirror moment might just remain as a little hint that The Boroughs hasn’t given up all its secrets yet.

All episodes of The Boroughs are now streaming on Netflix.