The Ending Of Netflix’s ‘The Survivors’ Is Really Quite Bad

Netflix’s new mystery, The Survivors, still has retained its 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I’m having a hard time agreeing with that now that I’ve reached the end. While I was compelled to keep watching over the course of the series, it began to fall apart and, by the end, did not work at all.

Here are the issues I had with the ending of The Survivors:

• Ash almost was accused of murder because he didn’t want to admit to sleeping with someone random when the truth would have fully exonerated him (which it eventually did). Awful logic even for a very dumb guy.
• There was a whole mini-drama about the dead boys, Finn and Toby, possibly messing around with the 14 year-old Gabby to the point where a cop covered up the fact that she had been on the boat with them because he found her backpack in her locker. But between that and the photo, it was very much proven she was on the boat with them! So that still should have been questioned outside of finally figuring out how and where she actually died, yet it’s never brought up at all. I’m not sure why it matters whether she was on the boat during that exact storm or a different time.
• The whole concept that a cop would purposefully misdirect an entire town and her family about where a girl died because something looked vaguely weird about the boys on the boat with her is absurd, and again, there was proof of that anyway, which everyone seemed content to ignore.

• The premise that Kieran was “covering” for Olivia implied she was just a horrible person who was content to dodge responsibility for what happened that day for 15 years, and continues to do so by the end of the series even as all this was unfolding. But either way, it doesn’t matter that she called the boys as if that would have drawn more blame in that situation than Kieran. It wouldn’t have mattered.
• The idea that Sean ditched Gabby in the cave because she rejected him is…I suppose plausible for a stupid teen. Bronte showing him a single photo of a scratched signature in the cave and him killing her a minute later was absurd. She was going to the cave, but it would have been insanely difficult to prove that Sean was both there at the exact same time and was literally responsible for her death. He could have completely kept the kiss and ditching her part to himself, and worst case, said it was an accident he was too guilty to admit to all these years. Better than eventually going to jail for literal murder. The entire struggle on the beach for the camera was dumb as if getting the camera would have made any difference at that point. Also, he knew that was there the entire time! He could have scratched it out years and years ago!

The end result of all this is…a young girl died in a cave because of the tide. Two boys died in a storm. A girl was murdered because there was a remote chance she might find where the girl died. This isn’t satisfying, I’m sorry. This seemed a lot more interesting than it eventually ended up being, and I wouldn’t recommend this over, say, Secrets We Keep or Dept. Q on Netflix. Watch those instead.

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