The Boroughs Ending Explained: What Was the Entity? What is Sam’s Connection to It? Do the Residents Defeat It?

The Boroughs Ending Explained: If slowly waiting for death wasn’t bad enough, fighting monsters who are taking your life force might just come a close second. The Boroughs showcase the despair and hopelessness of getting old and no one taking you seriously, giving old people one last grand adventure, but are our unlikely heroes able to save themselves and the residents of their idyllic retirement home?

The series has a runtime of 8 episodes, each with a runtime of around 50 minutes.

The Boroughs Ending Explained

What Was Really Happening at The Boroughs?

Throughout the season, the residents are shown to be slowly dying one after another, but considering it’s a retirement community, it was assumed due to old age. The big break finally comes when Sam sees a creature attacking Jack, which pushes him to investigate further. He attacks the creature and eventually uses the blood and a makeshift particle accelerator to show Wally his big discovery. Soon, Judy joins their squad as well, and the three start to dig further.

Eventually joined by Renee, Paz and Art, they come to realise that the creatures that have been attacking them are babies of an entity that Blaine and Anneliese are using to stay alive for decades. Blaine had found the creature as an egg buried beneath the Earth and had then used its blood over the years to keep him and his friends alive and young. So the real bad guy wasn’t the creature, but it was Blaine and Anneliese.

What Was Happening to the Residents?

The residents were being used as an easy target for the creatures to acquire spinal fluid when they were sleeping, so that they could take the fluid to Mother and keep her alive. The residents, being old and frail, couldn’t get away, and no one would believe their claims either so they became an easy target for opportunists like Blaine and Anneliese.

Were Blaine and Anneliese Killed? What Happens to the Entity?

Blaine and Anneliese were eventually killed by Sam using the particle accelerator, although Blaine is able to stay alive till the end. Mother, who has had enough of being tortured by greedy opportunists, asks Sam to take her to the plum tree within the forest so that she can finally die and get some peace. It’s here that Mother, in her last moment, kills Blaine as well.

What Happens to Sam?

Throughout the season, Sam seems to be having a psychotic break as he keeps seeing Lily everywhere. However, it eventually comes out that it was Mother who was using Lily to communicate with Sam and asking for his help to free her. When Lily died in Sam’s arms, his psyche was split, leaving one piece stuck at that moment. Mother used that piece to communicate with him, just as she was able to communicate with residents who were stuck in their own minds.

What Happens in the End and What Does it Mean?

In the end, Mother dies and gives Sam the closure that he needed to move on with his life. She takes him back to that exact moment when Lily died and bids her farewell, finally able to get out of that moment mentally. The last scene shows the residents still in The Boroughs, but all of them are enjoying their time with one another and are ready to have a new adventure, whatever that may be.

Ultimately, the ending is about accepting loss and ageing and not letting grief completely consume us. Wally’s struggle with his own morality made him almost do what Blaine had been doing, but he eventually realised that it would be completely against who he is. In the end, he is able to accept his impending death and live his life to the fullest, which also goes for Sam, who finally accepts Lily’s death and tries to make the most of the time that he has left.

Mother represents what it means to stay alive beyond the time given to us, and it’s not fun for anyone. Death isn’t so terrible when staying alive feels like a prison. The ending, thus, showcases the residents not just waiting around to die, but living life to the fullest until it’s their time to bid farewell.

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