Ripley Netflix Ending Explained: What Happened to Tom and What Inspector Ravini Discovered?

The series Ripley is one of the most interesting proposals in the Netflix catalog for lovers of intrigue and psychological thrillers, which is why thousands of subscribers to the streaming platform have already enjoyed its 8 episodes. However, many have likely been left with some doubts about the exciting outcome of the first season. If that is your case, don’t worry: in the following lines, I present the ending explained (ending explained) of the production. Pay attention! It is worth pointing out that the television show is based on the popular novels by Patricia Highsmith, previously adapted in the Italian film “A Full Sun” (1960) and, later, in the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999), starring by Matt Damon. This time, the lead role is played by the talented Andrew Scott, who steps into the shoes of a con man who enters a world of wealth and privilege after accepting a unique job in Italy. However, to achieve the life he wants, he must weave a web of lies.

It is not the first time that the character of Tom Ripley has been brought to the small or big screen. It had been Alain Delon, Matt Damon, John Malkovich, and Dennis Hopper, but now the sociopathic criminal created by the fervid imagination of the American writer Patricia Highsmith has the face of the cold and indecipherable Andrew Scott in the miniseries Ripley (here is our enthusiastic review), created, written and directed entirely by Steven Zaillian and on Netflix starting Thursday 4 April. A story, the one told by the series on the streaming platform, which broadly follows that of the first and most famous novel of the thriller saga dedicated to the character of Tom Ripley, which in 1999 also gave rise to a highly successful film adaptation directed by Anthony Minghella and with Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. In our explanation of Ripley’s ending, we will try to unravel Ripley’s narrative skein and truly understand what happens in the last minutes of the eighth episode of Zaillian’s show, at the same time clarifying the criminal actions that the protagonist has previously committed, and their unpredictable consequences.

Ripley Netflix Series: Plot Summary

In New York in the early 1960s, Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) tries to stay afloat by engaging in small scams and scams. He manages to get by on these little means until he is contacted by a very rich man (Kenneth Lonergan), who hires him to go to Italy and convince his rebellious and vagabond son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), to return home at all costs and take responsibility. Ripley accepts the assignment and goes to the beautiful country, where he ends up finding himself immersed in a complicated web of deception, fraud and murder that will take him on a real tour of the Italy of the “Dolce Vita”. Tom will become increasingly fascinated by the figure of Dickie, so much so that he will commit an abject murder to replace him, stage a fake suicide and pass himself off as the wealthy Englishman traveling around Italy and away from suspicious eyes and ears.

Tom Ripley passes himself off as Dickie Greenleaf, and from the beautiful coastal town of Atrani on the Amalfi Coast (with the subsequent murder of the English boy in the boat, off the coast of Sanremo), Tom moves to Rome, without saying anything to Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning), Dickie’s partner, even suggesting that her boyfriend wanted to commit suicide. He succeeds but generates suspicion both in the American woman and in Inspector Pietro Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi), tasked with solving the cold-blooded murder of Freddie Miles (Eliot Sumner), Dickie’s great friend. Tom had met Freddie in Naples, but he never expected to find him on the doorstep of his new apartment in Rome, convinced that he was standing in front of his close friend and not Tom Ripley. Freddie’s suspicions are too many, so he kills the boy with a crystal ashtray and gets rid of the body (with no small difficulty) leaving it isolated inside a car in the heart of the Appia Antica.

Ripley Netflix Series Ending Explained: What Happened to Tom and What Inspector Ravini Discovered?

Inspector Ravini’s investigations force Tom/Dickie to abandon Rome, to move first to Palermo, then to Venice, where he regains his true identity and convinces the authorities that Dickie Greenleaf’s suicide was only a suicide. In Venice, inside his luxurious new apartment, Tom is first visited by Ravini (to avoid being recognized, he disguises himself with a wig and a fake mustache), then by Marge, who continues to suspect him. The woman, however, changes her mind when she participates with the protagonist at an exclusive party, where she gets drunk and attracts the attention of the other guests by telling the tragic story of Dickie. However, the tranquility and the web of lies built by Tom are threatened by the arrival in the lagoon city of Herbert Greenleaf, Dickie’s father, and the private investigator hired by the family, who we had already seen at the beginning of the first episode, the He was the only one who seemed to know Tom’s true identity.

To circumvent the American investigator, Tom Ripley invents a story according to which in Sanremo, on the fatal boat, Dickie had confessed his unrequited love towards him, thus supporting the idea that the character played by Johnny Flynn was truly a suicide. Herbert, Marge, and the detective fall for it completely, and Tom can therefore continue to live his life undaunted, selling the various movable and immovable properties inherited from Dickie without his knowledge, including a priceless painting by Picasso. A painting that Tom will send to England to himself but in a new disguise; those of the elusive Timothy Fenshaw, thanks to a passport provided by a mysterious forger (played by none other than an ex-Ripley film, John Malkovich) that our dangerous protagonist had met some time ago in Venice.

The Book that Changes Everything?

In the last episode of the miniseries, Inspector Ravini had also visited Marge in the town of Atrani, and on that occasion, the woman reveals to the Italian agent that she is about to publish a memoir entitled “My Atrani”, suggested by Tom himself before he suspiciously moved to Rome months ago. A book and a title which, however, will be a double-edged sword for our protagonist, given that in the last scenes of the series we see Ravini leafing through the first pages of the book just published by Marge Sherwood, but on the dust jacket there is a photograph of the real Dickie Greenleaf, who does not correspond to the man with whom Ravini had confronted in Venice shortly before.

Thanks to Marge’s book, the inspector finally discovers the truth: he had never met the real Richard Greenleaf, but the very clever and perverse Tom Ripley, who all that time had passed himself off not only as the English boy on his trips to Rome and in Palermo, but he had made Dickie’s father, the American investigator, and Marge believe that he had really committed suicide out of love. Now the truth has come out, but the dangerous New York criminal had already foreseen everything…

The Murder of Freddie Miles?

When we had already become accustomed to Dickie’s idyllic life on his beachfront estate, Ripley beats him to death on a boat in the middle of the sea off the coast of San Remo after he confesses that his parents don’t trust him. him and ask him to leave his house and leave him and Marge alone for a while. After disposing of the body in deep water and the boat with Greenleaf’s blood, Ripley begins to weave a web of lies to avoid the consequences of his actions. From Rome, Palermo, or Venice, the letters he sends to Fanning’s character and Dickie’s parents written from his former friend’s typewriter under his name, added to his stay in hotels and residences where he pretends to be him, imitating him. his signature, they make everyone believe that he is still alive. However, everything gets complicated when Freddie Miles (Eliot Sumner), Dickie’s friend, tries to visit him after discovering his supposed new accommodation.

But there is only Ripley, who tries to convince him that Dickie has gone out to run some errands. The situation, already tense because neither of the two characters can stand the other, becomes complicated when Miles begins to imply that he knows that Ripley has done something to Dickie, which prompts Scott’s character to repeatedly hit him in the head. with an ashtray to death when he threatens to go to the police. That same night, he disposes of the body by simulating a robbery and leaving it lying in the middle of nowhere inside a Fiat 500 that, shortly after, a police officer finds, which begins an investigation carried out by Inspector Pietro Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi).

Ripley‘s Disappearance?

Ravini’s visits to the one he thinks is Dickie (let’s call him the fake Dickie) continue relentlessly. Not only is he the last one who seems to have seen him alive, but, after finding the boat with blood, the disappearance of Tom Ripley is added to the investigation, whom, coincidentally, the fake Dickie is also the last one to have seen at that time. walk along the coast of Sanremo, which makes him the first suspect in two murders. While he is busy defending his innocence, he is also in charge of continuing to send those letters to Dickie’s parents (in which he affirms what a good person Tom is) and to Marge, whom he makes think that he is avoiding by not telling her where. it’s found. While she waits for him in Atrani, where they lived together, he begins to suspect that Dickie loves Tom, so she ends up sending him a letter breaking up their relationship and telling him that she doesn’t want to see him again.

Ravini contacts her and discovers that she has seen Ripley in Rome at a time when she tried to see Dickie, but only met Tom. However, no hotel or boarding house has Ripley registered among her guests, so the inspector assumes that she has lied to him. Meanwhile, Ripley, who has fled to Venice, where he has registered under his own name, reads in the newspapers that the police consider him missing, so he decides to pay a visit to the local agents to tell them that he is still alive. The Venetian police notify Ravini, who pays a visit to Ripley at his house. But far from recognizing him behind the wig and mustache, he accepts Tom’s version of events: Dickie has disappeared and has not even told him, his faithful friend and confidant Tom, where he has gone.

Tom Ripley or Dickie Greenleaf?

After reading in the newspapers that the police have found Ripley‘s whereabouts, Marge decides to go see him in Venice to spend some time with him. In one of her conversations, she tells him that she sent Dickie a letter in which she broke up with him and Ripley hints that this could have driven him to despair. Is it, then, suicide? She begins to suspect her ex-partner, who also seems to begin to get along better with Tom. However, a new moment of tension grows between them after she discovers that he has Dickie’s ring, but he explains that his friend gave it to her before disappearing (in reality, he took it off her fingers after killing him). Suspecting that she has just discovered him, he prepares to kill her when she comes to another conclusion: Dickie would never have gotten rid of her ring unless he didn’t need it anymore.

Added to this is the letter that the fake Dickie sent to the landlady who rented him his house in Rome, in which he thanked her for her hospitality and stated that he regretted some acts committed and that he could get rid of everything. that the house contained: his furniture, his paintings, and the correspondence with the banks because he was not going to need any of that anymore. The case seems solved: Dickie killed his friend Freddie and then committed suicide in the open sea (thanks to Ripley, the police already suspected that he had taken a boat to Tunisia, although there were no records that he had reached Africa). After convincing Ravini that the case is solved, Ripley changes her identity and goes on the run once again. The last scene shows Ravini receiving a package from Marge. It’s the book she was writing about her stay in Atrani. On the first page, she writes a dedication: “To Richard Greenleaf, with whom I shared the dream of Atrani”. She is accompanied by a photograph of her ex-boyfriend. It is then that Ravini realizes that she never spoke to the real Dickie Greenleaf.

What Does the End of Ripley Mean?

Yes, because in the last moments of the final episode of Ripley, thanks to a very tight montage of scenes from the past and topical moments that we spectators experienced in close contact with the main character, we retrace the crimes and the diabolical plan of Tom Ripley, the murder of Dickie Greenleaf, that of Freddie, and the devious machinations to make people believe that it was not his direct responsibility. But now the authorities will have a very tough nut to gnaw with Ripley, given that by the time Ravini discovers the true identity of the criminal, the true face and name of the man in the shadow, the latter is already on his way to the ‘England in a new, disguised guise.

Now, only Timothy Fenshaw exists, heading toward Great Britain with a priceless painting by Picasso next to him acquired from the very rich inheritance of a dead man, Richard Greenleaf. Will the authorities be able to catch Tom Ripley once and for all? The series of novels dedicated to him and a possible second season for this successful series on Netflix tells us that this unstoppable force of crime and deception will still give a hard time to the agents of legality in every part of the world where Mr. Ripley will decide to escape. And change identity.

It turns out that Marge sends a copy of her book “My Atrani” to Officer Ravini, who reads that the text has been dedicated “to Richard Greenleaf, with whom we daydream about Atrani.” Then the cop looks at the photo of the real Dickie and realizes that Ripley tricked him… by pretending to be Greenleaf the whole time. He finally understands that the guy is a murderer! However, it is too late to go after him, as our protagonist has acquired a new identity and has disappeared from the area for a long time. The truth is that the character once again demonstrates that he is always a few steps ahead of the people who suspect him, evidencing how far some people can go to preserve material wealth and their social status. In this way, everything is ready so that Netflix can continue with the story in a new installment. Would you like to enjoy the second season of the television show?