The Couple Next Door finale finally revealed who was shot in the Starz show’s cold open, which characters were killed, and who Danny (Sam Heughan) truly loves. The Couple Next Door Episode 6 “Crimes of Passion” ends with a tense stand off in a cabin in the woods and an ambiguous exchange between Danny and Evie (Eleanor Tomlinson) that none other than Sam Heughan broke down for us…
**Spoilers for The Couple Next Door Episode 6 “Crimes of Passion,” now streaming on Starz**
The Couple Next Door Episode 6 opens with Danny discovering that not only does his wife Becka (Jessica De Gouw) know about his secret deaf son, but that she’s organized a play date between little Olly (Daniel Bell) and their own son, Ethan (Noah Holdsworth). Danny has nowhere to hide now and finally comes clean about, well, everything with Becka. Just in time for an unhinged Evie to lure Danny to a cabin in the woods where she claims her Christian cult leader father (Andrew Woodall) is holding her hostage.
While this is going on, Pete (Alfred Enoch) comes to realize that, yeah, duh, Evie is sexually obsessed with Danny. He goes to Evie’s family and then, with a gun in hand, goes to confront Evie and Danny and poor Becka in the aforementioned cabin in the woods.
Once all four main characters are in this little vacation cabin, it’s clear that while Danny and Becka might be a dysfunctional couple, they nonetheless love each other and are not crazy. The same can not be said for Pete and Evie.
Evie is absolutely convinced that Danny is her soulmate, that their sexual chemistry is true love. She begins spouting off scripture like it’s a magical binding contract between them. She keeps doing this even as Danny is like, “Dude, there’s nothing between us,” and Becka is like, “I already know about the police station and the baby and everything else because my husband actually loves me and told me.”
The situation escalates even further when Pete bursts in with the gun. He blames Danny for ruining his marriage and whines about how the fitter guy “belittled” him by, I don’t know, carrying a washing machine into their house.
What no one in the cabin knows, however, is that the local corrupt dude that Danny and Pete ruined hired a literal hitman to take aim at Danny with a sniper’s scope. The assassin is instead, hilariously, murdered by Evie’s dad.
After the gunshot goes off, Danny attempts to wrestle the gun away from Pete. Evie runs away, revealing the circumstances behind the show’s the cold open. Pete gets the gun and runs after Evie, prompting the totally sane Becka to insist they go after him. Eventually Pete shoots Danny in the leg. Evie calmly approaches Pete and after a poignant moment, tells him she doesn’t love him anymore. Then she shoots Pete! When she realizes what she’s done she begins to sob, holding him in her arms.
The final scene of The Couple Next Door reveals the cops finally arrive and have arrested both Evie and her father. Pete is still alive and being tended to in an ambulance. As the cops take Evie away, she locks eyes with Danny and smiles flirtatiously at him. What does it mean??? Well, Sam Heughan told us…
What does Evie’s final smile mean? Does she still think she has a shot with Danny after all that insanity?
When DECIDER chatted with Sam Heughan about The Couple Next Door last month, we straight up asked him if Evie is “delulu,” and he not only confirmed it, but revealed there was a version of the ending where Danny was a little unhinged, too.
“I think she’s delulu, but we did play with that shot, actually, quite a bit,” Heughan said. “We also played where Danny smiled at her back, which was kind of interesting, but we thought it was maybe a step too far.”
So there’s a version of The Couple Next Door Episode 6 “Crimes of Passion” that end with Danny still leading Evie on!
More importantly, Heughan teased that he doesn’t think that Evie’s done with Danny.
“I think she’s got plans and who knows what would happen in the future, but she’s definitely obsessed and I think kind of scary,” he said. “I think Danny at this point, I think he doesn’t know what to think. I think he’s also worried about his situation and about the full force of the law that he’s about to feel as well.”
Maybe? Channel 4, the British broadcaster behind The Couple Next Door, has ordered a second season, but there’s no confirmation that Starz is involved. There might be a Sam Heughan-related reason for that.
You see, The Couple Next Door Season 2 won’t follow the lives of Danny, Evie, Becka, or Pete. Instead, creepy neighbor Alan (Hugh Dennis) will return alongside a quartet of new sexy neighbors played by Sendhil Ramamurthy, Sam Palladio, Annabel Scholey, and Aggy K. Adams.
We’ll have to wait and see if Starz will pick up a new season of The Couple Next Door that doesn’t star one of the streamer’s biggest homegrown stars.