Pieces of Her ending explained: Breaking down the season’s biggest twists (spoilers)

Brace yourself because a lot happens throughout the first season of Pieces of Her, and the show can be very dense and overly complex at times. I tried to cover all of the big questions that arise throughout the season and specifically toward the end.

SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t watched Pieces of Her yet, make sure you do that before reading any further. The following article contains heavy SPOILERS for the show, so read with caution. 

One of the most challenging components of breaking down this show is that many things are suggested or implied rather than stated outright, so there are some instances where the content could be debated or left up to interpretation. Some moments were also addressed in really quick lines of dialogue or blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments.

But without further ado, let’s get into Pieces of Her and dissect all this season’s crazy mysteries and twists.

Pieces of Her explained: Who is Laura Oliver?

Let’s start with Laura’s identity. Laura Oliver is really Jane Queller, daughter of pharmaceutical tycoon Martin Queller and part of the ridiculously wealthy Queller family. Jane has two brothers, politician and aspiring vice president Jasper Queller and her beloved brother Andrew Queller. Jane even named her daughter Andrea “Andy,” after Andrew.

The reason Jane became Laura is that she entered the witness protection program and relocated to Belle Isle, Georgia to hide from Nick Harp and raise her daughter in relative peace. The shooting and subsequent news broadcasts shatters the carefully constructed WITSEC life.

We also later learn that Nick is Andy’s real father, and the “Jerry Randall” guy that supposedly died in a car crash when Andy was a kid was just a made-up part of the witness protection profile.

Who is Paula Kunde?

Paula Kunde turns out to be…well, not that important. Paula was a member of the Army of the Changing World and ended up getting sentenced to 80 years in prison for her involvement in Martin Queller and Alex Mapecrofts’ murders, despite not killing either of them. It’s easy to see why she’s angry at Jane and harbors resentment for what happened. However, after Andy visits Paula in prison, we don’t see or hear from her again, so it doesn’t amount to much, although she is present in the flashbacks.

What really happened in Oslo?

The Oslo economic conference where Martin Queller was shot and killed onstage is a significant moment in Pieces of Her that we return to repeatedly throughout all eight episodes. Martin was supposed to go head-to-head with professor Alex Maplecroft. Nick and the Army of the Changing World, including Jane, orchestrated the professor’s kidnapping so they could collect ransom money and insert one of their members into the conference to stage a demonstration that would cause Martin to get covered with a cloud of fake blood to show how all the money he earns is blood money.

Martin’s company invests in a drug called Haldol, a particularly lucrative drug for them. Grace Juno’s husband is prescribed large doses of Haldol during a trial and ends up murdering their three children and then himself. Grace has a personal vendetta against Martin, who she blames for producing the drug and, by extension, her family’s deaths. Plus, she looks enough like Maplecroft that the group is able to put her in disguise and get her into the conference.

We know that Grace then pulls a gun and shoots Martin and then herself on stage. That was never part of the plan. Jane told the cops that Nick had given Grace the gun, but she was the only witness that supposedly saw him do it.

In reality, Jane gave Grace the gun by bringing an identical purse with a gun inside it and giving Grace the option to take it. They switch bags. While Pieces of Her never outright says it, it is heavily implied that Martin was abusing Jane throughout most of her life, possibly sexual but definitely emotional and maybe even physically, (there are repeated comments made about how possessive Martin is over Jane, he’s almost obsessed with her), hence why she would want her father dead. Even if I misinterpreted that, it’s clear Jane worries for her daughter’s safety and is tired of how her father controls every facet of her life.

Not only that, but when he finds out she is pregnant with Nick’s baby, he tries to kill baby Andy by drugging Jane’s drink. I think that’s the final straw for Jane and what motivates her to slip Grace a gun. Nick actually sees the nearly-imperceptible exchange of glances that happens between Grace and Jane just before Grace takes out the gun, and he realizes what Jane has done. He’s the only person who knows what she did.

How does Jasper factor into everything?

It’s not just Jane that had an ulterior motive going into the Oslo conference. Jasper and Nick met beforehand with a plan to humiliate Martin onstage, forcing him to resign so Jasper could take over the company. The conversation is recorded on tape. A tape that Jane keeps and uses as leverage for years afterward.

What happened between Nick and Jane?

Jane and Nick were in love, and their relationship began around the time Nick started to act in an increasingly erratic fashion. Right around when he started to create the Army of the Changing World, which became dubbed a domestic terrorism group by the FBI and landed Nick on their most wanted list. Jane was part of the group for a while during their relationship.

Even though Nick didn’t actually have blood on his hands regarding the Oslo incident, he did commit plenty of other horrible crimes, including murdering Clara, Andy’s caretaker, while Jane was in prison.

He also created what was essentially a cult and he murdered the real Alex Maplecroft while the group was holding her as a hostage. The plan was to release the professor a few days after the conference, but she got loose and attacked Jane. Nick intervened, and the professor stabbed him through the hand with a piece of rebar which he then used to slit her throat. It’s the same trick Jane uses in the first episode, and it’s clear that’s where she learned it from.

Nick also violently attacked Jane on the night she tried to leave him. After the Oslo conference, the FBI finds the Army of the Changing World’s hideout. One of their group members dies, and Andrew is shot trying to escape. Nick refuses to let Jane take him to a hospital, so she tries to leave him and take Andrew anyway. Nick doesn’t react well to that. That’s where we get the line about him “scorching the earth” to find her. It’s also the night Nick leaves that nasty scar on Jane’s shoulder, though we don’t see exactly how that happens.

To make matters worse, Jane was already pregnant during the attack, although Nick didn’t know that at the time. Either way, by the time Jane gets to a hospital, it’s too late for Andrew, and he dies. Jane chooses to turn herself, into the FBI and serve her time in jail as long as Jasper promises to keep Andrew’s name out of everything. She wants to protect his memory.

What happened to Charlie?

Toward the end of the season, someone (Nick) crashes his car into Charlie and Andy. Charlie dies, and it is implied that Nick killed him, either through the crash itself or afterward. He only bothers to save Andy so he can take her back to the old house in the woods where she grew up and where he met her for the first time when she was a child.

How does Pieces of Her season 1 end?

The Pieces of Her ending is a little frustrating because there are a lot of loose ends. It seems like the writers might have wanted to leave room for another season. The finale mostly features a showdown between Nick, Andy and Jane. After the car crash, Nick takes Andy back to the house she grew up in with Clara and Eli, two members of the Innocence Project and former cult members that look after Andy while Jane serves her prison sentence.

Nick digs through the suitcase, searching for the tape with the recording of him and Jasper planning part of the Oslo incident, as the confession sounds like Jasper planned Martin’s death. It’s great blackmail over him, especially since he might soon become the vice president. In the process, Andy starts a fire, and a scuffle starts between Andy, Nick and Jane. Jane chases Nick into the woods and tries to shoot him, but Andy stops her just as the cops arrive to arrest Nick.

Later, Jane gets a call from Jasper, who implies that he knows what she did in Oslo after listening to Nick talking to his lawyers. He’ll keep quiet for a price. Jane asks him what he wants, and he tells her, “we’ll be in touch,” before hanging up.

There’s also Jane’s love interest Michael, the U.S. Marshal. We don’t find out if he gets fired or not, and the last conversation he has with Andy is over the phone when she leaves him hanging after realizing the truth about what happened in Oslo. Their earlier conversation was a better place to leave their relationship because it gave us hope that they might get a chance to go on a normal date, so I found it weird that the show added that additional phone call. Andy probably could have solved it without calling Michael.

We also don’t know for sure what will happen to Nick. The last we see of him, he’s in a holding cell, but Jane thinks it is inevitable that he’ll get out of it one way or another. There are a few different places a second season of Pieces of Her could go if the show is renewed.