The following article contains major spoilers for Eric, including its ending.
At the end of Eric, kid's TV guru Vincent — a deadbeat dad who sees the light, played in a perpetual state of mental unravelling by Benedict Cumberbatch — is reunited with missing son Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe) and has at least started the long journey to reclaim his lost marbles. But the mystery doesn't end there. Spurred by Edgar's case to look into the recent disappearance of a forgotten street kid, Detective Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) uncovers a conspiracy of corruption going to the top of city hall.
When the NYPD rushed to close the case of Marlon Rochelle, a young Black gay hustler, it was presumed to be the usual cop racism. Unlike Edgar, a white kid with a milk carton-ready grin, his case did not receive the same press attention or police resources, and the resilient pleas of his grieving mother went ignored. Alas, it was somehow worse than that, as Ledroit bleakly discovers: Marlon was murdered by NYPD detectives to cover up his paedophilic abuse at the hands of a city hall big wig.
So, in dramatic terms, Edgar's disappearance unfolds as something of a ruse. “There's just something intriguing about writing a very simple fable, a very simple kind of Hansel and Gretel story,” says creator Abi Morgan, speaking to GQ. “It's a Trojan horse for something else.”
Meanwhile, Vincent seems to have reconciled his personal demons — for now, at least — but Eric, the hairy, hulking puppet that haunted him throughout the week of Edgar's absence, lingers in the background. Here, Morgan breaks down the Eric finale and some of the series' major moments.
GQ: Why did you set Eric in this grimy, dystopian interpretation of '80s New York?
Abi Morgan: When I was writing it, I was thinking about those films and TV shows where New York has been such a muse. So that is like Taxi Driver, undoubtedly, but also Kramer vs. Kramer and Tootsie, which move through from the ‘70s, ’80s and ‘90s.
I first went to New York when I was 18 years old as part of my gap year… I think at 18 I was starting to see the start of that dark underbelly. Then I came to London in the early ‘90s, and I remember thinking New York woke me up to bigger themes and bigger ideas. I’d seen [so much] play out during that time, which was this vibrant party scene, and you're 18, and you're looking for fun, but I also saw that world of disparity, and that homelessness, and I really then started to see it in London.
Edgar's disappearance opens the door to another investigation being continued that, in the end, exposes corruption within the force. It's the key that opens that lock. You described it as a Trojan horse.
100 per cent, and I think it works much more as a metaphor by the end. This boy does find his way home, and that's in part to do with his privilege, and that there is a sense that he has had parents who have come to see him but he's also had a press profile on him, there's a sighting of him… Whereas Marlon, the boy who will never come home… It's marrying those two things, and how those two things coexist.
Inadvertently the investigation around Edgar also becomes the trigger to reignite Ledroit's sense of responsibility and activism within himself to go, ‘No, actually I’ve ignored another kid, and I'm being told to silence, and to not look at that other kid, and I'm gonna look at that other kid.' And they are all our children. That's the idea at the end, that we have to do better for our sons.
There are such strong parallels about how Vincent and Ledroit behave in the world and react to the traumas with which they've been shouldered. They're all grieving in real-time: Vincent's son is missing and he feels some responsibility for that, but then also Ledroit's partner, William, is dying of this terrible new disease in AIDS.
Growing up in the ‘80s in a theatrical environment where I knew gay people from a very early age, and realising that… we were being told such myths and lies, and there was such weaponisation and vilification of sexuality at that time — that’s hard to shake. That still haunts me. There's an Instagram page which I signed up to, which is a kind of AIDS memorial page, which I find profoundly moving, when you realise that it was a disease that affected so many, but they had to be so silent at that time. I wanted to make that connection for Ledroit to impending grief, but also having to deny who he really was.
There's a very key moment in episode three, where Vincent is being interrogated by Ledroit, and Vincent, who's always mercurial and trying to make a connection, says: ‘Oh, your father’s a military man, me too.' I think the legacy of a war where they did not fight, ie. Vietnam, is hanging slightly over the idea of Vincent, and that they both had these authoritarian fathers; they both had this idea of what it meant to be “a man” at that time.
Speaking to how you've reflected on the AIDS crisis, there's a key moment which illustrates the societal taboo around the virus: he goes to the hospital, and has to flash his badge to get to the door to the ward to see William's dead body. Why did you include that scene?
It's a really key moment about what makes up a family, and who are we allowed to love. The thing about Ledroit is he's kept as an outsider, and he's caught between a rock and a hard place. So it's about these two different versions of family and home, whereas society is going: “No, I'm not gonna consider you as a partner.” And that's [something] that even William's sister, Caroline, also challenges him on. I was playing with how family was being defined at the time, and how intimacy was being defined at the time.
There's been some beautiful writing on that subject from Russell T. Davies, with It's a Sin, where I thought he did that so beautifully, through to Tony Kushner and Angels in America, and [Larry Kramer's 1984 AIDS play] The Normal Heart. I've also grown up with a number of friends who've gone through the HIV experience, are going through the HIV experience, and are surviving because medication has changed.
There's a line in episode four where Vincent says, ‘I believe in a world where a kid can walk to school and come home safe.’ And that's at the heart of it. I'm not just talking about that child, I'm talking about a man should be able to go to a gay bar and have a good evening and come home safe.
Later in the series, it's revealed that Edgar actually followed a homeless person, Yuusuf, into the subway system, where he has hidden since his disappearance. Why is this where he goes?
I think I'm playing with creativity. I'm playing with the idea that he's drawn to the artist, and Yuusuf is an artist. I think what I'm talking about is the dark place is also where creativity happens. So he's drawn by this man, who leaves this graffiti trail, and that leads him to realise that there is this subculture. I think, somehow, like any child, there's a curiosity and interest in the city he walks in. He's also at that point where he's ready to stray a little bit from his father's side. Obviously, his father's not listening to him, so I think he's looking for alternative male figures.
Creativity is the thing that saves them all; it's the map on the wall that helps Vincent lead him underground, that Edgar has left behind, but it's also the creation of Eric, which is born out of Edgar's drawing, but is also the thing that ultimately saves Vincent.
At the end, the name of Good Day Sunshine is revealed to have come from Vincent's dad. Do you think he forgives him?
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. If you're a parent it's almost impossible not to make mistakes; I guess it's about owning and acknowledging them. There's a key moment in episode six which is really an echo of the fight that Vincent and Cassie have had in episode four, where she says, ‘I don’t know what happened, but there's this toxic thing between us.' And in episode six, he says: ‘It’s me. I'm that toxic thing.'
[In the final scene] I think what you're seeing in Edgar is him starting to re-inhabit a moment in his childhood, and he's reclaiming Eric, and he's getting inside the monster. It's the olive branch that Edgar says, I'll play with you again. I'll be a kid with you again. For Vincent, it's a moment where he has to start to listen to his kid, and not become the father who raised him. He's got to break that cycle. I don't think it's an instant happy reunion. It's probably an ongoing conversation.
In the final shot, we see that Eric still lingers in Vincent's periphery. What does that represent for you?
We went back and forth with that. I think it's that the monster doesn't go away, we just learn to live with him. And I guess it's about our demons, and sometimes in knowing our demons, we can hold them and let them live with us. Eric is the best and the worst of Vincent, and most monsters, they're conflicted — they know they should be one thing. I always say, Hitler loved his dogs. [Laughs.]
If you make someone just a monster, they're powerless and incapable of collusion, and responsibility. But if you make a monster who also has to see his good side, then you're dealing with the basis of any good drama. So I guess that's what it represents at the end: the monster doesn't go away. He just sits on your shoulder or lingers in the background, and you just have to be aware of it.
Eric is now on Netflix.
