Obsession ending explained: What happens to Anna and William?

Netflix's latest erotic thriller Obsession has captured the attention of the nation.

Based on the 1991 book, Damage, the series revolves around successful surgeon William (The Stranger's Richard Armitage) and his fiery affair with, of all people, his son's fiancée Anna (Happy Valley and Peaky Blinders star Charlie Murphy) – which, unsurprisingly, doesn't end well.

At the end of the book, William's character is seen living a solitary life abroad, gazing wistfully at photographs of Anna and his son.

However, the ending of the show is much more ambiguous, and has left fans with many burning questions.

So, without further ado, read on for everything you need to know about the finale of Obsession.

Obsession ending explained

We enter into the Obsession finale on the same surprise episode 3 commute William has taken to get to the apartment where he meets Anna at. But unbeknownst to him, his son Jay is following him after his father hurriedly left his stag do.

He follows his father up to the steps of the building, calling his mother Ingrid (Indira Varma) to ask her whether she knows where William is tonight. We then see that William is now inside the apartment going up to an awaiting Anna who is blindfolded.

When Ingrid presses Jay on the phone to tell her what's wrong, he doesn't answer and instead takes the open door as a sign to run upstairs. He goes up to the top of the staircase, hearing moans from the other side of a front door and when he forces it open, he's shocked to see his father and fiancée having sex.

William immediately looks up and Anna pulls her blindfold off, but when William walks up to Jay, Jay backs away out of the apartment. He's visibly disgusted and continues walking back, his hand slipping off the rail – and he falls to his shock death.

William runs down the flights of stairs to find his son bleeding out and Anna is visibly shocked but compartmentalises the events, instead getting changed and walking out of the building, past curious onlookers, a crying William and Jay's body.

The following morning, we see William return home and also immediately hear Ingrid's screams and banging. She and Sonera have heard the news of Jay's death, with Sonera asking him if it's true. She says: "What the hell have you done to us?"

Ingrid tells William that Jay had called her just before he died. She is so distraught, she continues to bang her head against the cabinet she's sat up against. She then asks William plainly, "What did you think it was? Some kind of love?" She continues: "That's our son, look what you took from him and from me. You've taken him from me."

Later, she remarks that William should have killed himself as she would've been able to bury him, rather than her son. At the funeral, William may be grieving but it's clear his mind is elsewhere, looking around for Anna instead.

There, her mother Elizabeth approaches him and gives her condolences, comparing it to when her son Aston committed suicide. When William asks her about her daughter's whereabouts, she remarks that "this is what she does" but even so, William waits outside after the funeral for Anna, much to Ingrid's disgust.

She tells him that it's the last time they are to ever see each other and although we don't see Sonera, we're left to assume that it's the last he sees of his daughter, too. Back in his car, he calls Anna again and leaves her a voice message stating that he needs her. Later, he barges into Peggy's office and yells at her in front of her colleagues, demanding to know where Anna is.

We then see Anna back at her mother's house, getting ready to return to work, and it's then that we get to the crux of this tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. When Elizabeth remarks that Aston loved Anna so much, Anna is left seething at the prospect that her mother knew about her childhood abuse.

"You seemed happy to me and he was enthralled by you," Elizabeth says. "I was a child," Anna states.

What happens to Anna and William in Obsession?

After Anna storms out, we're transported to a pool and find out that Anna has come to France on the would-be honeymoon that was booked for her and Jay. There, she sparks the interest of another holiday-goer who we later find out is there with his wife. On a fraught night out, Anna comes across another stranger who doesn't take "no" for an answer and when she makes a run for it, returns back to her hotel to find William standing there.

He bathes her and the next morning, Anna remains detached and relatively mute. She admits that they can't separate who they both are from what they've done, but William thinks that they can't let their affair be for nothing. Anna says, though, that she wishes they had never met and for William to never try and find her again.

We then see her drive off and later, back in her London office, she grows anxious and calls a mystery someone. We're led to believe it's William but actually, Anna has called Peggy who consoles her about Jay's death as Anna returns to the flat for what seems to be the last time.

At the same time, we see another shot of William meeting an estate agent at said flat, being given a tour, and there he finds Anna's diary hidden in the fireplace. The final shot of William is of him reading her diary sat in the living room, seemingly having bought it to live in and hearing Anna narrate her final passage, which she wrote on that fateful night before her wedding and the night of Jay's death.

The final shot of Anna, however, is of her first therapy session where her therapist asks if she would like some rules for their sessions. As the camera pans in on his face, we realise that he holds similarities to Anna's brother Aston and Jay, which Anna seems to be seeing for the first time herself, as she remarks: "How strange."

Who was texting William in Obsession?

Disaster strikes for William and Anna in Obsession when he starts receiving threatening texts from an unknown number ordering him to reveal the affair to his wife – or they will.

While initially it seems like the culprit could be Anna’s friend Peggy, who Anna confides in her about the affair, in the end the sender is revealed to be none other than William and Ingrid's daughter Sally, who grows suspicious her father might be cheating after finding a couple of pages of Anna’s diary in his jacket.

However, when Sally later confides in Anna about the diary pages, Anna manages to convince Sally that her father isn't having an affair after all and is just holding onto the pages for her after stumbling upon them.

If you have been affected by any of the issues discussed in this article, you can visit the NSPCC website or call 0808 800 5000 for support. Help can also be found at ChildLine.

Read More:

• Obsession cast: Full list of actors and characters in Netflix series
• Netflix's Obsession fails in what it sets out to do as an erotic thriller
• Obsession's Richard Armitage explains "guilt" he felt filming thriller
• Richard Armitage reveals all about Obsession: 'Let's not be British about it'
• Who is Charlie Murphy? Meet Obsession and Happy Valley star
• Charlie Murphy discusses 'empowerment' of sexual role in Obsession
• Richard Armitage on Obsession: 'I knew it would be intense before I read the script'

Obsession is available to stream on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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