Netflix Obsession recap guide: All 4 episodes explained

Netflix Obsession episode 3 recap: Learn to love the questions

The penultimate episode of Obsession begins with a dinner party celebrating Jay and Anna’s engagement. Anna and William sneak off to have an almost-dalliance in the bathroom, where Anna makes it clear that the Paris rule break was a one-time thing that cannot happen again. William tells her about the texts, and she pays Peggy a visit afterward. Anna brings Jay along but asks him to stay in the car.

Inside, Peggy is shocked that Anna would accuse her of sending those messages. She’s never gotten involved in Anna’s messy love life before, why would she start now? Jay ignores Anna’s request and approaches the door anyway. Peggy buzzes him in, and they meet quickly, but Anna rushes him out. Jay is growing frustrated with how furtive Anna is and the fact she doesn’t seem to let him into her life. She promises he’ll meet her mom at the engagement party.

In the flat, before having sex, Anna and William discuss other potential suspects behind the texts. William suggests his colleague Nadia, who has never much liked him. Anna tells him to invite her to the party, and there, she chats with Nadia. Anna doesn’t think it’s her.

At the engagement party, William gets another text message threatening to divulge his secret if he doesn’t tell his wife by the end of her speech. Ingrid’s speech begins with an ominous tone as she admits she rifled through William’s things at the office one day when he wasn’t there.

It sounds like she’s about to tell everyone her husband is having an affair, but instead, Ingrid says she found some old photos of them as a young couple and was touched he kept them after all these years. The speech ends up being very sweet and a heartwarming way to invite Anna into the family. If only she knew!

We also meet Anna’s mother, Elizabeth, at the party, and she’s something of an odd duck. When she meets Jay for the first time, she’s shocked by how much he looks like Anna’s late brother, Aston. Anna is mortified her mother would say such a thing in front of him.

Later, Elizabeth watches William during Ingrid’s speech. He grows so tense during it that he shatters a champagne glass in his hand. Elizabeth helps him clean it up in the bathroom, where Anna intercepts their conversation. Elizabeth implies she knows what Anna is doing with William and that’s it par for the course for her daughter.

Back at the Farrow residence, Anna and William sneak off to have sex again in the dark, hidden in the alcoves of the garden. While there, Anna reveals just how bad things got between her and Aston. William asks if it’s true, what her mother said, regarding Aston and Jay looking similar. Anna claims it’s only the barest resemblance.

But we learn that Aston was more than infatuated with her. He was abusing her for years. It was only when Anna finally said no to him that he snapped and killed himself. She’s always blamed herself.

During Sally’s dress fitting, she admits to Anna that it was her sending those texts to her dad this whole time. She found the torn diary page in William’s coat pocket and assumes it’s from a woman he’s sleeping with, which is correct. But Anna admits it was her who wrote it and that William found it and was keeping it for her until he could retrieve it. She manages to convince Sally that the whole thing was nothing and that her dad is not cheating on her mom.

The episode ends with a chilling revelation as William and Jay celebrate his engagement at Jay’s stag party. William makes an offhand comment that Jay should “learn to love the questions” that often arise with Anna and that’s something Anna always says to him (and in general).

Jay is shocked and asks William where he heard that. William says it was from a poem, but Jay is unconvinced, especially because he’s already been growing suspicious of what Anna is hiding from him. Jay secretly follows William out of the restaurant and onto the subway.