Courtesy of Apple TV

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers from “The Bridge,” the finale of Apple TV’s “Imperfect Women.”

Were Mary (Elisabeth Moss), Eleanor (Kerry Washington) and Nancy (Kate Mara) — the trio at the heart of “Imperfect Women” — ever truly best friends, despite the many lies that they told each other?

“I think they were friends, but that friendship was mortally wounded,” says creator and showrunner Annie Weisman. “That’s why I think it’s painful. If you just revealed that [their friendship] was never really standing on firm ground, it wouldn’t be as painful a loss. I think they really did see each other and love each other. But once shame entered the chat, it got toxic and they broke. We land at the very end in a place of understanding and moving forward, but there’s been loss and pain.”

Over the course of eight episodes, the Apple TV limited series — which, much like Araminta Hall’s 2020 novel of the same name, is told from three alternating perspectives — gradually unravels the salacious secret that got Nancy killed, throwing her surviving best friends’ lives into disarray. In the months leading up to her tragic death, Nancy, who was married to Eleanor’s long-time crush Robert (Joel Kinnaman), had been having an affair with Mary’s husband, Howard (Corey Stoll), an underemployed academic.

As told in flashbacks, Nancy helped Howard secure a job at the experimental ballet that she was working on, initially acting purely out of a desire to help Mary and her family through another financial hardship. However, as she continued to work on a project where the director clearly valued her money more than her creative input, Nancy’s personal life began to fall apart. While her marriage to Robert appeared to be crumbling due to his excessive drinking and suspicious emails about dividing their assets, Nancy rashly reached back out to her ex-stepfather, Scott (Wilson Bethel), who had once sexually abused her.

Courtesy of Apple TV

Howard was able to give Nancy the emotional validation that she was looking for. When Nancy confessed to him late one evening at the theater about her past trauma, Howard kissed her, positioning himself as the only person who truly saw and appreciated her. The two then embarked on a torrid love affair, but the dynamic between them shifted violently when Nancy discovered that her husband was actually trying to protect her rather than divorce her. Wanting to recommit to her marriage, Nancy tried to end the affair by “ghosting” Howard. This rejection exposes Howard’s deep-seated resentment and entitlement. During the ballet’s opening night, after Nancy cruelly told him that no one would believe she’d ever sleep with someone like him, Howard retaliated by sending explicit photos to her phone while she was with her husband, effectively blowing up her life.

In the wake of Nancy’s murder, Mary discovers evidence of the affair, including a poem that Howard had previously written — with a particular phrase underlined — in the scrapbook that Nancy left behind and a ring belonging to Nancy hidden in Howard’s closet. Once he realizes that his wife is onto him, Howard uses his wit and intelligence to gaslight Mary, making her appear unstable to the police and even drugging their daughter to distract Mary from her investigation. As he threatens to sue his wife for sole custody of their children, Howard even frames Mary’s obsession with the truth as “jealousy” over Nancy’s beauty and status.

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In the finale, after they both lose custody of their children at a court hearing, Howard kidnaps Mary from her motel room and forces her at knifepoint to return to the same place under a bridge where he previously killed Nancy. Mary convinces Howard to let her call Eleanor in order to call off their plan to go to the authorities with incriminating evidence about Howard, but Mary drops her phone and pretends that she does not have a cell connection because they are in a “dead zone.”

Imperfect Women Finale: Howard Dies -- Do Mary and Robert Get Together?