Summary
The Trap ends on a note of potentially frustrating ambiguity, and the reveals don’t feel as big as they could be, but ultimately it’s a satisfying enough payoff for a so-so series.
The Trap is, at its core, a murder mystery. It might posture as a psychological chamber piece, but its knotty plot and nested flashbacks are the giveaway. This is a whodunnit. In the ending, as in the beginning, the key question is the same: Who killed Anna? Episode 6 is brazen in a sense, since it doesn’t provide a concrete answer. However, it does provide a reasonable explanation for who did the bulk of the damage to Anna, as well as a very strong implication about how to fill in the blanks. The note of ambiguity might be a little frustrating, but sometimes that’s what you want.
Since the plot’s kind of all over the place, a bit of breakdown will probably be useful to those who sped through all six episodes and found themselves a little confused. So, let’s discuss who killed Anna, who might have killed Anna, and whether, in the end, it all makes any real difference.
Robert Set Lisa Up After All
Despite going to extraordinary lengths to gaslight Lisa into believing that she killed her own sister and he didn’t have anything to do with it, it turns out that Robert did indeed stab Anna — but only six times, not eight, as detailed in Lisa’s new novel. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
After convincing Yuma to take her into town to visit her parents, Lisa learns that Robert visited them and, calculatedly, read them an excerpt from the manuscript, notably the chapter about Anna’s murder. This kind of psycho behaviour makes Lisa understandably sceptical of Robert’s intentions, especially in light of all the evidence she discovered in the penultimate episode, so she tracks him down to his parents’ house through Katrin.
And Robert cops to it. He admits to playing the music after learning how it would affect her based on her medical history. He confesses to having put GHB in her water and a hallucinogen in her coffee. He admits to bribing the photographer into helping out. He deliberately gaslit Lisa into believing she killed Anna to cover his own tracks.
Robert Stabbed Anna — But Only Six Times
As it turns out, Anna was Robert’s mistress. He was married to Alexandra at the time, but they fell in love and carried on an affair behind everyone’s backs. However, when Alexandra fell pregnant again — or so he claims, anyway — he tried to break it off with Anna, who flipped out and threatened him. He lost his temper and stabbed her six times.
From there, Lisa arrived, and Robert legged it, but since Anna had kept her word and maintained complete secrecy around their relationship, nobody knew to look for him. Robert also knew that Anna deeply resented Lisa’s success and their relationship was fractious, so it was obvious that everyone would suspect Lisa. And perhaps they were right to.
Robert is careful to reiterate the fact that he only stabbed Anna six times. The implication is that Lisa finished her off. However, Lisa tries to escape, hitting Robert with his ashtray, and by the time he catches up to her outside, Norbert and Pia have arrived with the police on the phone. Robert takes his own life.
So… Is Lisa Guilty?
The Trap‘s ending is deliberately shady about whether Robert is right in his accusation that Lisa stabbed Anna an additional two times to finish her off. However, the implication is very much that she did. There’s still an outside chance that maybe she was wrong about the total number of wounds and put the wrong description in her manuscript, but her behaviour suggests otherwise.
For one thing, she recorded Robert’s confession. However, after re-listening to the bit where he implicates her, she deletes it. Again, that could just be because she didn’t want to have to sit with the memory, and didn’t need the evidence since Robert killed himself and both Norbert and Pia could attest to that. But it’s much likelier that she was covering her own back.
And then there’s the flashbacks, which took on an increasingly dark, hostile tone throughout the show, and the fact that the last we see of Lisa, she finally has a smile on her face. That’s a fairly strong implication that she feels like she has gotten away with it, with whatever darkness she’s hiding finally creeping to the surface.
We’ll never know for certain. But I think we could hazard a solid guess.
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