The Abandons Recap ‘This Was Meant to be My Peace’: Who walked out of the burning house?

The Abandons Season 1 Episode 7

Spoiler Warning: This is a detailed recap of the seventh episode of the first season of The Abandons. If you have not yet seen the show, please head over to Netflix before reading on.

The Abandons ended all its first season episodes, including this finale, on a cliffhanger, a lingering question on who prevailed in the final confrontation between Constance and Fiona inside the burning Van Ness house. The thing is, Constance was an aristocrat who has never done manual labour in her life. Fiona did hard, physical work on her farm every day. The two women were not exactly on equal physical terms, so it was curious that this was what the show decided as a cliffhanger. Yes, Fiona may have already been slightly weakened by Constance punching and hitting her earlier, as her men held her, but given their very different lifestyles, Fiona still would have had the clear advantage in any physical fight. Or was the show saying that Constance being mad with grief and greed gave her more physical strength than she usually had?

Constance was spiraling. When Trisha rode out into town beset with anger over what she saw – the murder of young Jenny – Constance sent Roache to get her back, not just with force, but with opium. Trisha was grabbed and pushed into a carriage by Roache and Garret before she could tell anyone what she had witnessed. Inside the carriage was a nurse who poured opium down her throat. Constance told Roache the plan was to send Trisha to a sanitarium in Portland.

Trisha regained lucidity enough to trick her nurse into coming inside her room, where she hit her repeatedly on the head with a candlestick and took her gun. Why did Trisha’s nurse have a gun? Was she instructed to shoot Trisha if she became unruly or tried to escape? We don’t know. Trisha, however, could not quite escape, for the front door was locked, and Constance was right there, sitting, drinking, drowning in her own pain. Garret’s manipulations led to a truth he did not quite expect – where Willem’s body was – and Constance’s firstborn laid on a table in her house as she stewed in anger. 

I wondered what that long gaze from Samara was about in the fourth episode, when Albert was flirting with the lovely Lucinda. Then there was that bit of flirtation from Garret in the fifth episode, when Samara walked in on him searching their shop for information on Miles. Taken together, it looked like Samara harboured some feelings for Albert, but when she realised he had his eye on someone else, and Garret started being nice to her, her affections changed. This is one of those routes I wish the show had not gone on. Samara had an interest in healing that could have been explored more. It felt off for a smart, helpful character to turn on her own father (despite their well-established disagreements) and the people she has known her whole life after being manipulated by the town’s rich kid.

Instead of coming to Miles with his discoveries about his past, Garret came to Samara. Samara was convinced of his honeyed words, that Constance could make Miles’s past go away, that they could start over with the money that Van Ness Mining would provide for their land. Miles, of course, knew this was not possible. Likely, Fiona had already passed on Jack’s warning about the hell that was coming, and so Miles prepared his guns.

What did Samara think was going to happen when she went to Garret and spilled the Hollow’s secrets? It wasn’t clear, and there wasn’t enough time to explore this. Garret took Roache’s men with him, and found Paxton just as he had finished digging up Sweetie from her grave. Poor Paxton, with Quentin’s help, also dug up the graves of his wife and children from under his house. He did not want their bodies to end up in the sludge should Constance succeed in taking over the Hollow.

And so it was that Constance finally found out at least part of what happened to her son Willem. Trisha tried to defend Elias, that he could not have known, but Constance declared they all knew. She tossed the door key to Trisha, giving her her freedom to confront the man she loved.

Elias did not deny it. He told Trisha that Willem raped Dahlia, that her family strangled them, that he loved her but that he would do it again. There was no time for more talk or reconciliation, for they needed to head home, and got there too late.

Constance got Samara’s story but Garret, but it was not the full story. She thought it was Dahlia who killed Willem, and so she sent Roache and his men to fetch Dahlia. With only Lilla there to help, they were no match to the redmasks.

Earlier that day, Dahlia had confronted Garret, and their fight had ended with her using a shard of grass to stab him. Albert found her and got her out of there before Constance lost another son, but Dahlia’s fury seemed to have reached a fever point. When her brothers took her to the church where Fiona was, and Fiona asked her what she wanted, her simple response was to see it all burn. Dahlia had been quietly dealing with her trauma all this time; now she just wanted to lash out.

It was a defiant Dahlia who faced Constance, with both hands held down by Roache’s men. Even when Constance struck her on the face with a knife that cut through her cheek, she showed no fear, nor did she mention that it was actually Fiona who killed Willem. It was Fiona herself, when she rode into the Van Ness homestead, who told Constance that she did it. She killed Willem. Constance thought she was merely trying to protect her daughter and refused to believe her. In front of the furious Fiona, Constance stabbed her knife into Dahlia’s thigh once, twice, twisting it with fury as she declared that Fiona’s pain was nothing compared to her own, a ‘true’ mother. 

With this horrific torture happening, Roache’s men did not notice that Fiona’s other children, Miles, and Quentin had gotten into position. Miles was the sniper, methodically killing Roache’s men one after another. As soon as the shooting started, Constance fled to the safety of her house. Elias and Quentin on their horses pulled a wagon of fire, and drove it toward the house, creating a powerful explosion. 

Elias soon joined Albert and Lilla in helping out the injured Dahlia, but Fiona was not satisfied with merely getting her daughter back. She walked into the burning house and found Constance in a room with drawerfuls of her treasures. The two women fought, and only one of them could be seen walking out of the blaze. 

And so we reach the end of what feels like a truncated season. How did The Abandons do? My honest opinion is that The Abandons would have worked very well as a 10 or 12-episode mini-series. The last two episodes (sixth and seventh) felt like they were rushing toward a conclusion, so I'm not sure this number of episodes was the original intent, or they had to change course mid-shoot. The thing is, when you know how many episodes you would have to set the story, then you can pace it better. When you know you are limited to a certain number of episodes, you'd trim the fat off the script. The Abandons ended wanting a second season -- and I hope they get it -- but in the tv landscape that we have right now, that just isn't guaranteed. 

Still, I’m glad we got what we got. It was brilliant to watch Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey, and the show woke an interest in the western genre in me that I previously did not have. Thank you so much for joining me on these The Abandons recaps! See you on the next one!

Rating: B-

Strays

👒Fiona told the Sheriff that Constance was gathering an army, and that she would go above him. Hmm, to whom did she mean to report Constance?

👒Garret was a smooth liar and an effective manipulator. I also believe him when he told Dahlia during their fight that he did not want to hurt her. It would be good to see his character develop should the show get a second season. Our final view of him was as he rode back home, and saw the house burning.

👒The episode title came from Fiona’s church rant, when she spoke to God about having been given a lifetime of scars, and the land that was meant to be her peace. 

👒You know an episode is not particularly strong when they miss a little thing like Dahlia asking Fiona, ‘Where is the woman who killed a man for beating her?’, and there wasn’t even a camera pan to Elias and Albert, who did not know that Fiona had killed her husband. Or did they already know, and we just were not shown it? 

👒Miles told Samara that the powerful men he worked for found out he married in secret, and demanded that he end the marriage. He could not do that, so Adam Winston went away, and he became Miles Alderton. Since Miles supposedly reported directly to Andrew Jackson, was the show saying he ordered Miles to leave his wife?

Episode Title: This Was Meant to be My Peace

Teleplay by: Kurt Sutter

Story by: Kurt Sutter and Emmy Grinwis

Original Stream Date: December 4, 2025

You can access Recap Lab’s coverage of The Abandons via this link.

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