‘Memory of a Killer’: Who Dies in Season 1’s Penultimate Episode?

Angelo’s (Patrick Dempsey) worlds collide in the penultimate episode of Memory of a Killer Season 1. The previous episode revealed that the Ferryman, the one who hired a hitman to go after Angelo’s daughter, Maria (Odeya Rush), is none other than FBI Special Agent Grant (Gina Torres). Angelo killed her son, Dr. Robert Parks, and so she wants revenge.

Grant makes a major move in “Shoot the Piano Player,” but she’s not the only one. Angelo has some information for her that he hopes changes things, while Dutch (Michael Imperioli) … well, he has the chance to prove that Angelo can trust him. Warning: Spoilers for Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 9 ahead!

Stefanie Gilchrist (Julie Claire) goes after Dutch for not controlling Angelo, who’s been looking into the Parks hit, but the restaurant owner strikes back, taking out her men and tying her up. When Angelo confronts him, Dutch insists he didn’t know Parks was innocent and that he’s been protecting his friend this entire time. But Angelo argues that his job is to know. “How am I ever going to trust you again?” he asks. (It seems like he’s right to have never told Dutch about his family.) After Dutch spends a bit of time with Gilchrist, as he washes his bloody hands, he tells Angelo that she doesn’t know anything about the Ferryman; she would’ve told him if she did.

Grant, meanwhile, is revealed to have done exactly what she shouldn’t have: replaced drinking with her obsession of Angelo, with a wall in her home covered in her research into him. She also meets with Earl (Ian Matthews), who killed Angelo’s wife in a hit-and-run, to take out Maria while she has someone moving on Angelo’s brother Michael (Richard Clarkin). When he expresses concerns about getting into Maria’s house, however, she just assures him she’ll handle it. That’s where Angelo’s love interest Nicky (Michaela McManus), who’s indebted to the Ferryman, comes in. Nicky killed her abusive ex-husband in self-defense to protect her daughter, and Grant, while interrogating her as an FBI agent, used that to blackmail her into working for her. Nicky tries to refuse, but Grant leaves her no choice, and so Nicky approaches Maria during yoga again, invites herself over to help baby-proof the house, and disarms the alarm system while there.

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As for Michael, he calls Angelo from his care facility asking for help, and when the suburban dad/hitman goes to check on him, he finds a new nurse looking after him — and snooping in his drawers. In a sweet moment, Angelo also shows Michael a photo of Maria and tells him he’s going to be a grandfather and his brother is going to be a grand-uncle. He also laments that his wife couldn’t be there because this is all she ever wanted.

Nicky calls Angelo to apologize and tell him she’s leaving town but going to fix what she did, without saying what it is, before she does. Angelo then follows Grant into a cafe and thanks her for the work she did on his daughter’s case. As she points out, when someone tries to kill your child, it stays with you. “Family is everything,” she says, “and if you’re anything like me, there’s absolutely nothing you wouldn’t do to protect them.” When Parks’ widow, whom Angelo met as “Arthur” in a grief group at her house, walks over, the hitman learns that Grant is his victim’s mother. Angelo lets his frustration out in his car, ripping the rearview mirror out and slamming and breaking it.

That night, Grant calls Angelo and tells him that before him, she was someone who helped people. “You turned me into this, into someone who manipulates victims and threatens innocent people. We’re the same now. Both of us. Monsters,” she tells him. He can’t bring her son back, but he can give her something else, setting a meet. He assures her that if he wanted to kill her, she’d already be dead.

In an abandoned warehouse, Angelo introduces her to Gilchrist, the person who turned both of them into monsters. He makes Gilchrist explain why she hired him to kill Robert: The safety issue he uncovered would’ve cost the company billions. While she argues she didn’t pull the trigger, as Grant sees it, she might as well have and she kills her. But Grant also warns Angelo that she’s not done with him — and two of his loved ones are about to die. He has two lives, but he can’t be in two places at the same time.

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And so Angelo hurries out, calling Maria over and over as he drives as Earl breaks into her house and Michael is attacked at his care facility after a piano performance. But Maria’s ready — Nicky warned her — and she shoots Earl even as he taunts her that she doesn’t have it in her. But when she goes downstairs and calls 9-1-1, he comes up behind her. Before he can shoot her, however, Angelo kills him. “Dad?” Maria asks in shock.

As for Michael, when Angelo gets to the facility, there is a dead body in the rec room — the piano player’s. The new nurse was hired by Dutch to protect Michael as soon as Angelo said someone was coming after him. While Angelo may not know if he can trust him, Dutch assures him that he’s been protecting him and his brother from the start, like always.

What did you think of the penultimate episode? What are your predictions for the finale? Let us know in the comments section below.

Memory of a Killer, Mondays, 9/8c, Fox

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