Entertainment

Apple TV’s Criminally Underseen Thriller Is Still a Perfect 2-Part Weekend Binge

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When production for Apple TV’s thriller series The Last Thing He Told Me was first announced, it seemed to have all the right ingredients to make for a TV hit. Not only was the series based on a best-selling novel, Laura Dave‘s 2021 book by the same name, but the series would star beloved Hollywood actress Jennifer Garner in her return to TV, and be produced by Reese Witherspoon‘s hit-making production company Hello Sunshine. Unfortunately, however, the series, which first released in 2023, has yet to hit its stride and find the right audience.

With a discouraging 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, one thing is for certain: The Last Thing He Told Me has been underrated and underappreciated since the beginning. After all, not only does the series feature an interesting, unexpected story told through compelling performances, but Season 2 is even better than the first. So, while the critical reception might be enough to turn viewers away, the series is not only worth watching, it’s also the perfect weekend binge.

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What Is ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ About?

One important thing to note before bingeing The Last Thing He Told Me Seasons 1 and 2 is that the installments are quite different from one another. While Season 1 is all about Owen’s (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) disappearance and his murky past, and how his wife Hannah (Garner) bonds with her stepdaughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) to keep each other safe and find out what happened to him, Season 2 flipped the script. In the sophomore season, which began airing on February 20, 2026, Owen’s been living off the grid for five years and working undercover for U.S. Marshal Grady (Augusto Aguilera). After getting as much intel as he can, Owen becomes set on dismantling the powerful and ultra-wealthy Campano family. By doing so, Owen’s new mission once again endangers his family, and threatens the newfound stability Hannah and Bailey have found together after the events of Season 1.

As such, while Season 1 is largely a mystery with puzzle pieces being distributed across its seven episodes, Season 2 is all about a family reuniting under pressure. After all, while Owen’s goal of finishing the job, getting out clean and returning home seems simple, things don’t exactly go to plan and his chaos quickly disrupts Hannah and Bailey’s new reality. That’s especially the case when Hannah gets mixed up with a member of the Campano family, Quinn (Judy Greer), despite everyone warning her against it. As a result, Hannah gets stuck in the middle trying to protect her stepdaughter while also figuring out what kind of life they can have with Owen, which is why Season 2 isn’t less of a whodunit and more of a pressure-cooker story about whether this trio can stay together once the truth finally stops being optional.































































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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

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🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

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What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





02

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Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





03

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How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





04

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What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





05

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What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





06

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Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





07

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What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





08

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What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





09

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How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





10

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What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…
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Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

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You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

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You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

Oppenheimer

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You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

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You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

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You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Is an Underrated Thriller

With such an interesting premise, filled with unexpected twists and turns all throughout, The Last Thing He Told Me has established itself as a must-watch on Apple TV, even though it’s not found itself as a streaming or critical hit yet. According to Collider’s very own Tania Hussain, the second season of the show found a sweet spot. “This time, the plots and characters move with more direction and purpose,” Hussain wrote in her review. “The pacing is also a lot tighter, with higher stakes that feel earned instead of carefully plotted. Even when the season leans into more action or larger set pieces like a fight scene or even a car chase, the writing never loses sight of the story’s emotional center.”


Apple TV’s ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Just Blew Up Its Entire Premise With Its Biggest Twist Yet

Garner and co-star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau tease what’s next after that ‘Last Thing He Told Me’ Episode 4 shocker.

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With that said, while the Rotten Tomatoes scores might discourage viewers from tuning in, The Last Thing He Told Me is not only a worthwhile watch, but it’s a series that grips viewers with a mystery in Season 1, and keeps the intrigue going with heightened tensions in Season 2. Most of all, while the first season was entirely based on Dave’s novel, Season 2 expands the show beyond the source material, making it an installment with more creative liberties, giving their characters more depth, expertly changing up the genre, and highlighting the individual performances on the show more than ever.


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Release Date

April 13, 2023

Network
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Apple TV

Showrunner

Laura Dave, Josh Singer

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Directors

Olivia Newman, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Lila Neugebauer

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Writers

Josh Singer, Laura Dave, Jamie Rosengard, Isaac Gómez, Harris Danow, Allegra Caldera, Erica Tavera

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  • Jennifer Garner

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    Hannah Hall

  • Angourie Rice

    Bailey Michaels

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