Echo Valley Ending, Explained: Did Claire Actually Kill Her Boyfriend?

How far would you be willing to go to protect your child?

Apple TV+’s thriller Echo Valley, which was released on June 13, asks this question. The movie stars Julianne Moore as Kate Garrett, a farm owner grieving the loss of her wife, Patty, and Sydney Sweeney as her daughter Claire, a drug addict who struggles with maintaining sobriety.

Echo Valley finds Kate in a bind: her farm is failing after she abruptly stops offering riding lessons for months on end to grieve the death of her wife. She goes to her ex-husband Richard (Kyle MacLachlan) for money, but the two get into an argument about Kate enabling their daughter and her addiction by giving her everything she asks for, including cash.

When Claire shows up at Kate’s house after a fight with her boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan), she gets revenge on him by throwing his belongings off a bridge. However, one of the bags she disposes of contains a supply of drugs — leaving their dealer, Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson), to come calling.

As Kate scrambles to pay her debt, Claire disappears with Ryan on a camping trip. When she returns, she’s alone — and covered in what she says is Ryan’s blood.

Kate goes to extreme measures to conceal her daughter’s crime, preparing her with an ironclad alibi and dumping the dead body into a nearby lake. But as the days go on, the truth behind the incident is revealed, adding a new layer of complication to their fabricated tale.

So, how does Echo Valley end? Here’s everything to know about the thriller’s conclusion, including all of the twists and turns along the way.

Warning: Echo Valley spoilers below!

How did Echo Valley end?

After Kate seals her fate and goes through with the plan to protect her daughter, her family appears to be in the clear, at least for a few days. Kate eventually confesses her transgressions to her friend Les (Fiona Shaw), who whisks her away to rest at her house before they figure out what to do next.

However, it’s a short-lived break from reality. Jackie shows up at Kate’s door and states that he knows about the body at the bottom of the lake. He uses his leverage to demand more money from Kate, giving her a couple days to gather the funds before taking matters into his own hands.

Kate comes up with a plan to set her barn on fire to collect the $100,000 insurance payout. It’s not enough for Jackie, though, so he encourages her to burn down the barn with the horses inside, two of which are insured for $25,000 each.

Kate suggests she pay him in installments as if he were an employee of the farm, so the payments wouldn’t get flagged. That night, Kate sets her farm ablaze.

However, things seem to take a turn when an officer tells her that the fire was set intentionally after finding a stand for a road flare in the destroyed barn, and the discovery of a body inside the apartment above the property.

Kate is brought down to the station for questioning and tells them about Jackie, who she says is a friend of Claire’s whom she hired at the farm, setting her master plan in place. The officer lets her know they’ve already questioned Jackie, and he claims to not know who Kate is and to never have worked at Echo Valley.

When the officers return to Jackie, they share that they have a bank statement that proves he, in fact, did work at the farm, and an eyewitness confirms he worked at the property. Jackie tries to backtrack and says he’s going to tell the officer the entire truth before Kate’s plan is revealed.

In a flashback, Kate and Les are seen going back to Marsh Creek Lake at night to get the body out of the water. While the barn burns, Les and Kate drop the dead body into the apartment and go back to save all of the horses from the blaze.

Jackie tries to convince the officers that they were all being played by Kate, but they have photographic evidence that he purchased the flares that were used to set the barn on fire. Jackie is arrested on the scene, while Kate goes free and is picked up by Les.

Kate settles back into her normal life at the farm as things start to rebuild. She listens to an old voicemail from Patty and Claire, where her daughter apologizes for her behavior and choices. In the final scene, Claire returns home, leaving the mother-daughter pair to stare at each other before the screen cuts to black.

Is Claire’s boyfriend Ryan dead?

When Claire shows up to her mom’s house with someone else’s blood on her clothes, she confesses to getting into a fight with Ryan while they were on their camping trip.

At first, Claire says that while they were fighting, she pushed him hard and he fell down, hitting his head and starting to bleed out. After her mom points out that she should have called the police and wouldn’t have been to blame for the accident, Claire confesses the truth (or at least, what Kate believes to be the truth): she and Ryan were fighting and she felt threatened, so she threw a rock at his head.

After Claire disappears again, Kate is left wondering where her daughter escaped to and whether she is safe. Using an iPad, she finds Claire’s location, approximately 60 miles away. When Kate shows up at the house where Claire’s phone was detected, she discovers that Ryan is alive and well and he and Claire make an escape before Kate can get any answers.

Whose body did Kate dump into the lake?

When Kate discovers that Ryan is alive, she spirals, unsure of whose body she dumped in the lake. Kate returns to the scene of the crime at Marsh Creek Lake and repeatedly dives underwater in the spot where she dumped the body to see if she can discover the corpse, but comes back unsuccessful.

When Jackie arrives at her house later to blackmail her, he reveals that he had concocted the entire plan, but didn’t believe that Kate would ever go through with it. He says that Ryan owed him $10,000 for the drugs that Claire tossed and started to deal to earn the money back.

However, Ryan got impatient and cut the drugs with fentanyl to stretch them, leading to an overdose from one of his customers. Claire and Ryan immediately went to Jackie, who concocted the plan that Claire would pretend she killed her boyfriend to tap into her mom’s blind loyalty.

Kate is stuck at the farm with no phone, keys or contact with the outside world after Jackie takes her belongings, but she’s able to access the iPad. After deserting her mom, Claire is able to communicate with Kate through the device and shares the name of the person whose body she dumped — a boy named Greg Kaminski.

After Les and Kate place Greg’s body in the apartment above the farm, his remains are discovered in the aftermath of the fire. Kate pins his death to Jackie, telling the officer at the station that the only person she saw hanging around Jackie at the farm was a person named Greg Kaminski.

What happens to the Echo Valley farm?

Echo Valley was on a downward trajectory. After Patty’s death, Kate ceased giving out riding lessons, canceling months worth of lessons from clients in her state of grief.

When she goes to Richard to ask for money to repair the roof of the barn, he scolds her, and says that he never wanted her to buy the farm in the first place and doesn’t owe her any money because they are not married anymore. He also knows that Kate was canceling lessons, losing out on money that could be used for the necessary repairs.

After Jackie is arrested, things at the farm seemingly go back to normal. A construction crew cleans up the devastation left by the fire, and work on the new barn is set to begin. Kate is back giving riding lessons to clients, though she’s still reminiscent of the past, listening to voicemails from her late wife.