Cabinet of Curiosities episode 8, “The Murmuring” recap and ending explained

Cabinet of Curiosities ends its first season on a subtle, emotional note rather than with a bang. “The Murmuring,” directed by The Babadook‘s Jennifer Kent, is a powerful meditation on grief. It’s more of a somber ghost story in the vein of Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House than a creature feature like some of the entries in this season.

Essie Davis and Andrew Lincoln each deliver phenomenal performances in the leading roles of Nancy and Edgar, a couple still grieving the loss of their baby daughter, Ava. The tension of the hour is amplified by the fractures growing in the couple’s relationship, primarily due to Nancy’s inability to grieve her daughter.

Edgar and Nancy are dedicated ornithologists who have traveled all over to study birds in 1951, specifically dunlins and their “murmurations.” If you’ve ever seen a bunch of starlings together in the air, swooping and soaring to form strange shapes and spheres in the sky—that’s a murmuration. The couple believes their methods are fascinating because they’re almost a form of “bird telepathy.”

Together they go on a retreat to a coastal area where the dunlins congregate every year. A couple in the research group offers to let them stay in a house on the island, so they don’t have to camp in tents.

Cabinet of Curiosities ending: What happens to Nancy and Edgar?

But as they stay in the house, it becomes apparent to Nancy that something strange is occurring there. She starts experiencing supernatural phenomena that grows more intense each night. She hears footsteps and eventually sees an apparition of a child who whispers, “I’m so cold.”

As Nancy becomes more concerned with whatever is haunting the house, it creates more distance between her and Edgar. Edgar thought that the trip will give them a chance to reconnect and repeatedly tries to initiate intimacy with Nancy. She rebuffs him each time.

Eventually, things come to a head when Edgar admits that he can’t understand why she cares more about the people who lived in the house than her daughter. He thinks it’s strange that Nancy hasn’t cried over Ava.

It’s clear that Nancy’s grief is manifesting much differently than Edgar’s, and she’s struggling to deal with it. She continues to obsess over the house and the family that lived there before, learning that a woman was living in the house, which, becoming when her husband, a soldier, left her. She grew resentful of her son, drowned him in the bathtub, and then killed herself by jumping out a window.

Nancy ultimately comes face-to-face with both ghosts, the little boy and his mother, and helps them move on. Only then can Nancy finally confront her grief over Ava, and Nancy reaches out to Edgar to let him know she’s ready to talk about their daughter.