Season 2 Finale: ‘I Want to Know’

Celeste has receipts.

In the court battle we’ve all been chewing our nails waiting for, Celeste wastes no time in showing that her sickness is, in fact, not the one the judge should be worrying about.

To ensure she keeps her kids, Celeste’s mission is twofold: Reveal that Mary Louise raised a monster, and that Mary Louise is one herself. Celeste manages both. She does the first by showing some footage that is disturbing not only for its content, but for how it came to be.

Buried somewhere in Celeste’s collection of sweet videos of Perry playing the idyllic father is one taken by Max and Josh unbeknown to their parents. It captures one of Perry’s savage beatings of Celeste behind what they must have thought was a closed door. It leaves no question: Perry was a brutal abuser. Celeste knew it, her kids were exposed to it, Jane has her scars from it, and now the whole courtroom sees it. But Mary Louise had no idea. Or so she says.

But how surprised could Mary Louise possibly be when, as Celeste argues, she was an abuser as well?

Celeste makes that case by finally giving us the answer to how Perry’s brother, Raymond, died: It was a car accident in which Mary Louise, having lost her temper, became distracted at the wheel. But she blamed Perry for the whole thing, telling him it was his fault for distracting her. As Perry told it to Celeste, he then endured years of mental and physical abuse by his mother that were rooted in that accident.