The Stranger: 15 Questions We Still Have After Binging The Netflix Show

For eight pulse-pounding episodes, viewers binged Netflix’s The Stranger, following family man Adam Price as he searched for his missing wife, uncovering lies and deceit about his friends and neighbors along the way. The series, based on Harlan Coben’s novel of the same name, peeled back the layer of superficial perfection in a cozy UK suburb, exposing the deception lurking just beneath the surface.

The series seemed to wrap up most of its loose ends by the finale, but with such a tangled web of mysteries, there were bound to be some stray threads left dangling. From what happened to Olivia’s mother after the poison scandal to whose teeth were on the alpaca leg, here are 10 questions we still have after binging the Netflix show.

Updated April 12th, 2020 by Kayleena Pierce-Bohen: As more and more fans of true-crime and mysteries are turning to streaming services to entertain themselves, we’ve taken another look at The Stranger, one of the most entertaining thrillers on Netflix. Even though the mystery seems to be solved, a re-watch has only inspired more questions.

15 WHO BIT THE ALPACA?

When DC Johanna Griffin discovers the body of the decapitated alpaca, Louis, she notices something else odd about the animal’s body; there’s a bite mark on its leg. Given the crescent pattern of the bite, she deduces that it was done by a human.

Mike Tripp is the culprit of the gruesome crime, having decapitated Louis with a shovel while under the influence of PCP. However, close inspection of Mike’s teeth throughout the series reveal that he has all his teeth, unlike the perpetrator who bit the alpaca who was missing a bicuspid. So who did bite the alpaca?

14 DID OLIVIA’S MOM GET ARRESTED?

Thanks to the investigative skills of the Scooby Gang comprised of Thomas, Mike, and Daisy, the source of Olivia’s illness is tracked to her mother. Perpetually sick, Olivia didn’t know what was wrong with her but trusted her mother to provide her care, never knowing her mother was secretly injecting her with rat poison.

In the final episode of the series, her father divulges this information to fellow police officer Johanna Griffin. It’s unclear whether or not Johanna believes him because soon after, he’s trying to kill her for discovering his involvement in the death of Heidi Doyle, leaving viewers wondering if Olivia would be forced to live with Auntie Carol.

13 WHY DID MARTIN KEEP THE BODY AT HIS HOUSE?

Martin Killane is a retired police officer, who only left the force to devote himself to being a full-time single dad after his wife disappeared. Eventually, it’s revealed that his wife didn’t go missing – he murdered her for wanting to leave with his child.

He wraps her body in a garbage bag and conceals it in the walls of his home. Covering his crime turns out to be the reason he doesn’t want to sell when developers want to put up condos on his block. Why did he keep the body there for so many years? And if he knew he couldn’t stop the gentrification of his neighborhood, why didn’t he move it?

12 HOW DID ED PRICE HAVE MARTIN’S POSSESSIONS?

Aside from being Adam’s father, Edward Price is the head of the development firm trying to bulldoze Martin Killane’s neighborhood and put condos in its place. When Killane can do nothing more to stop the demolition process, his house is destroyed, and in the rubble, workers find the body of his wife Natasha.

After Martin Killane is arrested for murder, Adam still feels like he has a connection to his own wife’s disappearance and wants access to his possessions. His father just so happens to have Killane’s things in a storage facility. How did this occur when everything should be in police custody, or at least part of the crime scene and inaccessible to civilians?

11 HOW DID KATZ SHOOT TRIPP IF HE WAS ALREADY IN CUSTODY?

In the final episode, Adam confronts his neighbor Tripp out in the middle of the forest standing over Corrine’s burial site. When Tripp confesses to killing her, Adam is overcome with grief and rage and uses Katz’s gun to shoot him. When DC Johanna Griffin arrives on the scene, she wipes the prints to clear Adam’s name.

Netflix’s The Stranger: Every Main Character Ranked By Intelligence

She hides the gun back at The Stranger’s apartment in the hopes that Katz will be implicated in Tripp’s death. However, he’s already been taken into custody for Ingrid’s death by the time Tripp is shot by Adam. If the police could determine Tripp’s time of death, they’d know there was no way Katz could have shot him.

10 DID OLIVIA EVER GET PUNISHED FOR LEAKING PICTURES OF ELLA?

When it’s discovered that Mike Tripp was the individual responsible for decapitating the alpaca and running around like a lunatic while on PCP, it leads to the laced blunt he was given by Daisy out of revenge for something she perceived he did to her sister Ella.

Nude photos of Ella (who’s only 14) were shared with people at her school, and she’s obviously traumatized. It’s later revealed it was Olivia who sent them, to try to ruin Ella’s reputation because she was convinced Mike fancied her. Only Thomas knew the truth, but what happened when Daisy found out? Or Ella? Was Olivia held responsible?

9 WHY DID JOHANNA GET BACK TOGETHER WITH HER EX?

Six months after Patrick Katz has been framed for Tripp’s murder, Johanna and Adam run into each other at his son’s football match and acknowledge the dark secret they both share. Johanna is there with her husband, who she tells Adam she’s trying to work things out with.

Johanna had been so against getting back together with her ex after their separation, even after he tried to win her back with a romantic picnic. What would prompt her to change her mind, even though she stated they both knew they were better off without each other?

8 WHAT HAPPENED TO MIKE TRIPP?

It’s established by the end of the series that while Mike Tripp did behead an alpaca, he probably wasn’t responsible for what happened to Dante. Thankfully, he also never sent explicit pictures of Ella to her schoolmates – that turned out to be Olivia.

However, Mike’s fate is unclear when the series wraps up. During the ending sequence at a football match involving Adam’s youngest son, we see Thomas and Daisy cheering from the sidelines as a couple, but Mike isn’t anywhere near his friends. Did he go to live with his mother after his father was killed?

7 WHY WASN’T THE STRANGER ARRESTED?

When The Stranger dives to put herself in front of the bullet intended for Adam Price, it seems like a heroic act. She’s taken to the hospital for a shoulder wound, and while she’s recovering from her injury she informs Adam her valiance was born of her need to protect her brother.

Even though she did a good deed for Adam, the act doesn’t absolve her from the fact that she spent the entire season blackmailing and extorting people. Some deserved it, but other innocent people died because of her actions. She isn’t arrested and appears at the end of the final episode to leave the series open for a sequel.

6 IS ADAM THE FATHER OF HIS SONS?

When The Stranger first approaches Adam with the truth-bomb that his wife had faked a pregnancy a few years prior, she also advises him to do a DNA test on his sons. She implies that if Corrine was lying about her pregnancy, she could have also lied about her sons being Adam’s biological children.

He almost uses their hair follicles to perform a DNA test but stops himself, throwing the test out and deciding to give his wife the benefit of the doubt. But that doesn’t change the fact that the series never resolves if Adam is or isn’t the father of his boys.

5 WHY DIDN’T CORRINE JUST TELL ADAM ABOUT THE FOOTBALL CLUB MONEY?

While the series makes it a point to focus on the fact that Adam and Corrine were drifting apart for some time before she faked her pregnancy, there’s still the issue of the fact that Corrine never told him about the football club money that Tripp was stealing.

She could have easily explained to Adam that Tripp had taken the money, but seeing that he was his good friend, she was giving him time to pay it back and make amends. Adam would have been able to understand the circumstances, and it didn’t need to be a life or death situation.

4 WHY WASN’T KATZ’S GUN HIDDEN AT KATZ’S HOUSE?

Knowing it’s imperative that Katz be painted as a lone wolf “serial killer” by the authorities, Johanna hides his gun at The Stranger’s apartment, the same gun used to kill Tripp in the middle of the forest. Nevermind the temporal anomaly resulting in him being unable to be in two places at once, why didn’t she hide it as his house?

Not only could Katz not have killed Tripp because he was already in custody, but his gun should have been hidden back at his own house, not Chris’s apartment. When would he have had time to hide it, and how would he know where to hide it?

3 WAS NO ONE SUSPICIOUS OF CORRINE’S BODY?

Beyond the connection of Corrine and Tripp through the football club, why wouldn’t authorities question why their bodies were found out in the forest together? Adam is the only person that ties the two of them together, and Katz would have no motive for shooting Tripp.

Beyond the implausibility of Katz being convicted of two additional deaths, there’s the fact that Corrine’s body was vastly more decayed than Tripp’s. Any coroner would realize that the timeline involving victim’s deaths doesn’t add up.

2 WHY DID DAISY TAKE DANTE’S CLOTHES?

Dante was established as a “weird kid,” especially given the nature of his father’s vocation and the fact that he’s known for being an outsider at school. But did that give Daisy the right to get upset with him for awkwardly coming on to her?

Daisy takes her revenge on him in a pretty brutal way, leading him on and then leaving him naked in the woods. Why did she steal his clothes? And perhaps more importantly, why weren’t her friends more upset about it, especially since Mike knows she’s capable of dosing people on PCP?

1 WILL ADAM MEET THE STRANGER AGAIN?

Now that Adam knows he has a half-sister somewhere in the world, will they reunite somewhere down the line? She wasn’t arrested, even though she committed numerous heinous crimes, so it’s possible she’ll contact him again.

It’s clear that she may want something to do with Adam and his family as they try to move on from the tragedy of Corrine’s death, since she was seen watching them from the football game in the season finale. Perhaps if there’s a second season Chrissy will make a reappearance, and try to make amends with her father.

About The Author

Kayleena Pierce-Bohen
(1343 Articles Published)

Kayleena has been raised on Star Wars and Indiana Jones from the crib. A film buff, she has a Western collection of 250+ titles and counting that she’s particularly proud of. When she isn’t writing for ScreenRant, CBR, or The Gamer, she’s working on her fiction novel, lifting weights, going to synthwave concerts, or cosplaying. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, she plans to continue pretending to be Lara Croft as long as she can.

More From Kayleena Pierce-Bohen