Who Dies and Does Daniel Pick Cherry or Laura?

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the finale of The Girlfriend.

The Girlfriend’s six-episode debut has fans clamoring for more of the addictive thriller starring Robin Wright and Olivia Cooke.

The series, which premiered on Prime Video on Sept. 10, is adapted from Michelle Frances’ novel of the same name, but deviates from the 2018 book in a major way with how it wrapped up the twisted love story between Cherry (Cooke) and Daniel (Laurie Davidson).

In the book, Cherry is killed during a fight with her boyfriend’s mom, Laura (Wright), a culmination of months of tension between the women that has been bubbling ever since Daniel and Cherry began dating, but hit a fever-pitch when Laura lied to Cherry and said Daniel was dead.

From the first episode of the show, it’s clear that a major blowup occurs between Laura and Cherry, as the opening scenes paint a tense disagreement between the two, and Cherry tells Laura to “put the knife down” before a body splashes into a pool. The screen then cuts to the title card, before starting at the beginning of Cherry and Daniel’s story five months earlier.

Wright, 59, who served as an executive producer on the show and directed the first three episodes, told USA Today there were “three different ways” they considered ending the show.

“We were always trying to up the ante, every episode,” she said.

Read on to find out how The Girlfriend season 1 ended and who survived — if anyone — after Laura and Cherry’s big fight.

How did The Girlfriend season 1 end?

Cherry and Daniel got back together after she caught him and Laura at a restaurant in London, while she was still under the impression he was dead, as Laura had convinced her. Their relationship was serious again right off the bat, and Daniel was not speaking to his mom after her betrayal, but Laura arrived, uninvited, to their engagement party.

While there, police arrived to arrest Cherry for vandalizing Laura’s gallery, which further angered Daniel, though he kept the peace with his father, Howard (Waleed Zuaiter), who had separated from Laura given the depth of her obsession with driving Daniel and Cherry apart.

Laura never backed down from her drive to ruin Cherry in Daniel’s eyes, and paid a visit to Cherry’s mom’s butcher shop, where she recorded her warning about how manipulative her daughter can be.

In the last episode, Laura finally got Daniel to talk to her, and took advantage of the opportunity as she drugged him in an effort to get him to listen to the secret recording she had from Cherry’s mom. Instead, Cherry arrived at the house, found Daniel drugged and tried to escape with him, but a fight instead broke out with Laura.

Who died in Laura and Cherry’s fight?

Laura and Cherry ended up in the pool, with Laura armed with a knife, and Laura nearly drowned Cherry, before a woozy Daniel intervened and saved her. He then held his mom’s head under the water to give Cherry a chance to escape, but in his drugged-up state, he didn’t realize his own strength and inadvertently drowned Laura while Cherry yelled for him to let her go.

As the actor put it, Daniel is “so frustrated” with his mom in that moment, and “their relationship had broken down so much by that point.”

“Then she drugs him, so the combination of that and then seeing what looks like Laura drowning Cherry in a drug-fueled haze — it’s almost instinctive protection. All these things happen at once,” he told Comic Book Resources (CBR).

Killing Laura is “an impulsive thing,” Davidson said, but leads Daniel to feel “a few things.”

“One of them is almost, it’s kind of f—– up, but it’s kind of a relief. I think that probably comes later, if I’m honest. But there’s a sobering moment of realization of what he’s done. It was never his intention to kill his mom. He didn’t think he was capable of that.”

Did Daniel and Cherry end up together in The Girlfriend season 1 finale?

After Laura’s shocking death, things quiet down for Daniel and Cherry. The episode ends with a one-year time-jump that sees a married Cherry pregnant with Daniel’s child, standing happily with Howard, now her father-in-law.

Daniel, meanwhile, stumbles upon Laura’s phone, which fell under a side table during her fight with Cherry, and listens to the recording of Cherry’s mom, Tracey (Karen Henthorn), warning that her daughter is darker and more vengeful than Daniel ever knew.

“Tell your son, don’t be fooled by the good times,” Tracey said in the recording. “Sooner or later, she’ll want something from you that you’re not prepared to give, and then … she’ll find a way to get rid of you.”

The episode — and the season — ends after that eerie warning, and Davidson said that’s “the first time really the veil comes down” about Cherry for Daniel.

“What happens at the end is terrible and it’s a huge tragedy, but there was probably some … comfort in the fact that he was doing the right thing in protecting the person he loved the most,” the actor told USA Today. “And when he finds out this other information, it’s like, the rug’s just completely stripped from under him. Suddenly, it’s ‘Who is this person that I’m now having a child with?’”

Will there be a season 2 of The Girlfriend?

No announcement has been made as of yet regarding a potential renewal for the series after its six-episode debut.

Given the cliffhanger ending that left the fate of Daniel and Cherry’s marriage — and their baby-to-be — up in the air, there’s plenty of room for more drama to unfold.

What’s unclear, though, is whether Laura would return in any capacity. Wright teased that her character “could still be alive,” though, in an interview with Today.com

“If he resuscitates her, that’s not on camera,” she teased.

The ending was left “open-ended” on purpose in regards to Laura’s fate, the actress said. As for a return for season 2, Wright quipped, “We’ll see.”

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The Girlfriend is now streaming on Prime Video.