What would you do if you had a twin brother, someone identical to you? How would you take advantage of the fact that another person, exactly like you, exists out there even with your very same DNA? Although these are not exactly the most innovative questions someone has asked when telling a story, are the ones Australian writer Vanessa Gazy used as the basis for her new Netflix production, Echoes.
Now, if in the midst of the twin sisters, betrayals, dead bodies, secrets of the past, psychopaths, and even lost pregnancies, you have been left with a certain degree of confusion, don’t worry, because now and without further ado, we begin the Analysis and Explanation of Echoes, of course including the ending.
1 ^ Who was the evil twin? Leni or Gina?
Although that term «evil» is certainly relative, in Echoes the evil twin is Leni. And not without reason. As a child, Leni suffered a severe emotional trauma that left her with certain traits of psychopathy, which in the end created a hole into which all the people around her fell. Starting with her twin sister Gina.
2 ^ What does Leni see in the bathtub? How did the mother of the twins die?
Maria (Tyner Rushing), the mother of Gina, Leni and Claudia, was suffering from terminal cancer that had a huge negative impact on the McClearies. Since her illness was no longer treatable and she did not want to continue being a burden to her husband and her daughters, Maria asked her husband Victor (Michael O’Neill) to drown her in the bathtub, a kind of quick euthanasia at home. What they did not count on was that Leni would witness the event, generating a trauma that would last her a lifetime.
In fact, every time Leni is near a bathtub, or a container of water, she remembers again the event in which she saw her father drowning her mother, of course, without having the very necessary clarification that it was her own wish. Her mother wanted to die there at home, in her bathtub, with apple petals around her.
3 ^ What happened to Claudia?
After Maria’s death, Leni began to develop manipulative and violent behavior, in which her twin sister, Gina, supported her. In the first dark episode, while still children, Gina and Leni find themselves fighting over a doll that is clearly not marked, because they had made a pact to share everything, Claudia tries to stop the fight, remarking that they must mark their belongings, after which Leni pushes her. Claudia falls from a considerable height, which injures her back, leaving her paraplegic.
The thing is that Leni manages to convince Gina that they would accuse her, and therefore she should change places. Leni posing as Gina (Leni/Gina, from now on) blames herself, for which Gina’s name is forever linked to Claudia’s tragedy.
4 ^ Did Leni really want to protect Gina?
No, Leni’s plan was in fact quite simple: taking advantage of the fact that she had a twin, she would create two different personas, a good one, holy and pure, which would obviously be her, and another, rebellious, violent and manipulative, which she assigned to her twin sister. This way Leni could do whatever she wanted and she would always put the blame on Gina.
Gina never really understood Leni’s plan, because she always believed that her sister did everything to protect her, like in the case of the fire.
5 ^ What happened in the church fire?
Leni and Gina continued exchanging identities until their adolescence, Leni took advantage of being Gina to do whatever she wanted and Gina received, from time to time, the advantages of being the good daughter.
But when Leni started dating Jack, and even to pursue a serious relationship with him, Gina began to understand that she needed a life of her own, and even when Leni was willing to share Jack, Gina could not take that idea out from her mind. So when Dylan James showed up at Mount Echo, Gina started a relationship with him.
Leni, seeing that she couldn’t control Gina anymore, and that she might lose her alternate identity, decided it was time to eliminate Dylan, and she did so by setting the church on fire, in which an innocent person died in the flames.
Although Dylan and Gina survived, Leni convinced Dylan that he and Gina would be sent to jail and that it was best for him to run away, to protect Gina, moving all suspicion onto him. Of course, Leni later convinced Gina that Dylan was indeed guilty and that’s why he had run away.
6 ^ Where is Mount Echo? Where was the Echoes series filmed?
Mount Echo is an unincorporated town near Bethlehem, in West Virginia, in the United States. But the Mount Echo of the series is not the same, because it is in Virginia, not in West Virginia, so we can assume that it is a fictional town.
The series, indeed, was filmed in the town of Wilmington, North Carolina, south of Virginia.
7 ^ Why did Gina go to Los Angeles?
Tired of always being under Leni’s control, Gina (Michelle Monaghan) applied for a scholarship at UCLA, and after being approved moved to the West Coast, where she was finally able to confront her frustrations in his relationship with Leni. There, in her second year of college, Charlie (Daniel Sunjata) took her case and finally opened Gina’s mind so she was able to write a book, which was a bestseller.
Gina was happy, and had her life under control, until she lost her first pregnancy.
8 ^ Since when were Gina and Leni changing places?
We already know that Gina and Leni swapped each other until their teens, until Gina left for L.A. But as adults, they exchanged again after Gina lost her baby and Leni had postpartum depression, in a kind of win-win. And from that moment on, every year they switched on their birthday, on their exotic exclusive trips as twins. But Gina soon understood that Leni wanted to control her again, like a child, until she saw Dylan James (Jonathan Tucker) again.
9 ^ What was Gina’s plan to get rid of Leni?
Once Gina approached Dylan again, and confessed that she assumed the identity of Leni from time to time, it was clear that she did not want to continue being tied to her sister’s game, much less when she became pregnant.
The idea was to fake a robbery, and his disappearance, to entertain Leni, while she withdraws money from her accounts and escapes with Dylan. But Leni was much quicker and she managed to withhold the money transfer, while she confiscated the passports and tickets.
10 ^ Who killed Dylan James?
Leni killed Dylan, once it became clear that Gina wouldn’t stop until she ran off with him, not caring about Jack or Mattie. Once she was with him in the cabin she stabbed him. Gina found him dying, but James simply asked him to get rid of her sister, before he bled to death.
Gina orchestrated a plan with Georgia (Celia Weston), Dylan’s grandmother, to frame Leni, but Floss (Karen Robinson) couldn’t keep her in jail, due to lack of evidence, and couldn’t keep Gina for the same reason about the church fire.
11 ^ What does the final scene of Echoes mean? Gina died?
After being released, and Victor’s death, Gina confesses to Leni that her mother’s death was planned and not a violent act of her father, even so Leni insists that they have to be together, after which Gina simply jumps off a waterfall, without Leni seeing her come out.
To the question of whether Gina is dead, the answer is no. First of all let’s remember that Gina took diving lessons with Dylan, so she could perfectly swim underwater without anyone seeing her. And secondly, let’s also remember that the airport employee informed Leni that she had seen someone identical to her, headed for Kansas.
Now, at the end we see that Charlie wrote a book and a woman asks him what happened to Gina’s body, Charlie says that they never found it, and then we see that one of the twins is living with Charlie, but he is not sure who he is living with.
12 ^ What twin is living with Charlie in the end?
Everything indicates that it is Leni, since she was the only one who saw Charlie as a lifeline, now that her relationship with Jack and Mattie was already a thing of the past. Although the fact that Charlie knew about the exchanges and that she could distinguish the twins by their scent is still relevant. So why can’t he do that now?
13 ^ Was Gina the blonde woman at the press conference?
To answer this question I have two theories, in the comments you can tell me which of the two seems more plausible:
Theory 1 : Indeed, the blonde woman is Gina and simply happened to watch Charlie from afar to avoid being identified, and perhaps gloating a bit that she successfully faked her death.
Theory 2 : This is the darkest theory. After Leni went through security at the airport, headed to Australia, and was told by the clerk that her sister had gone to Kansas, Leni skipped the flight and went on the hunt for her sister. She at some point found her in Kansas and eventually took her down.
The blonde woman at the press conference was indeed Leni, who was doing it to add a touch of mystery to Charlie, who was always attracted to the mystery and the puzzle that the two sisters represented.
Theory 2 makes more sense to me, since Gina had no intention of returning to any of the lives she had before seeing Dylan James again, so it was not logical that she would appear in disguise to see Charlie.
14 ^ Will there be a second season of Echoes?
Echoes is labeled as Limited Series which indicates that it should not have a second season, but that rule already seems to be a thing of the past since Big Little Lies decided to make a second season. So, you never know. I will keep you posted.
Questions? Annotations? More doubts? The comments section is open just below this post so feel free to use it. See you in the next installment of Ending Explained here at El Sabanero X.