Bloodline Season 1 Finale Recap with Spoilers: “Part 13”

The season one finale of Bloodline begins four days after John (Kyle Chandler) killed Danny. John learns that he’s on the shortlist to become the next sheriff of the county – despite the fact this his brother, Danny, who is wanted for murder, is “missing.”

Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz) meets with the Widmars, who are considering selling the marina to him and his family once again, because their pending deal fell through. Meanwhile, Meg (Linda Cardellini) interviews for a new job in New York.

In flashbacks, we see what happened directly after Danny drowned. John – barely holding himself together – manages to call Meg, who arrives to find Danny’s floating body, while John seems to be having a heart attack. She drops him off at the hospital and picks up Kevin, just as Belle (Katie Finneran) is dropping by to tell him something.

A doctor tells John that he didn’t have a heart attack, but his chest pain was due to high blood pressure. Kevin and Meg go back to the shore, where they stand over Danny’s body, wondering what to do. When some kayakers approach in the distance – they snatch up the body and put it in the trunk of Meg’s car.

They figure that they’ll need to move Chelsea’s car as well, which Danny drove to the shore, so Kevin fishes the keys out of Danny’s pocket and takes it away. The siblings agree not to do anything until they talk to John, but when Kevin gets to the hospital, John has been put under a strong sedative.

Sally (Sissy Spacek) goes to the hospital and is surprised to find Kevin there. She has plenty of questions for him, which he tries to duck, encouraging her to leave the hospital and not to worry. 

Meg is driving away when she very clearly hears movement in the trunk. The shock causes her to swerve, and she’s pulled over by the police. She tells the officer that she was distracted because her brother is sick, and he let’s her go freely after checking her license and registration 

When Meg gets home, the intro scene from many episodes ago ensues, with Meg getting a call from Danny, presumably from inside the trunk. She goes outside to pop the trunk but finds Danny dead. John has Danny’s cell phone and called her from the hospital. Meg is unable to explain much to John, when Marco (Enrique Murciano) shows up to console her.

Marco asks Meg if she needs help with whatever is in the trunk, and she quickly makes up a story about how she was just packing the trunk with her New York luggage early. Finding that odd, he asks her about it, making her snap. She yells at him, telling him to get out of the car and leave.

At the hospital, Sally talks to John, asking if he’s spoken to Danny. She can tell that everyone is behaving oddly and wants to know what’s being kept from her. She tells him that he simply cannot give up on family. He says that he can no longer help Danny.

John leaves the hospital to meet with Kevin and Meg, who ask about what happen. Meg assumes that John acted in self-defense, but he explains that Danny was walking away when it happened. Kevin and Meg fill him in on what they did with the body and the car. John declares that he will not throw his life away over this. His siblings tell him that they’re behind him on this; they’re all in it together. The three of them move Danny’s body into their cargo section of a boat, filling it with ice.

In the morning, John and Kevin go to Danny’s abandoned house. John goes through the pile of mail, finding a bunch of money and some photographs. He also finds his name, “John Rayburn,” written on a piece of paper. When John and Kevin leave, we see that someone unknown was watching them from outside.

Later that day, Kevin and John stage a phone call with Danny in front of Sally, so that she will think Danny has run away. The three siblings create a fake narrative that Danny left town, thinking he was being hunted down. John tells her that he made a deal with the feds, who will allow Danny to come to the pier dedication ceremony but will then talk to him afterwards.

At the pier dedication, Sally gives a speech about how “lucky” she has been with her family. Belle attends the ceremony afterwards and tells Kevin that she’s pregnant with his child. John leaves, telling Sally he has to talk to the DEA about Danny being a no-show at the dedication. Instead, we see a short clip of John in the rain with Danny’s body, alluding to the flashbacks of other episodes. 

That night, John, Meg, and Kevin discuss the future. John tells his siblings that he loves them, and thanks them for everything they’ve done. They agree that it’s time for them all to move on with their lives, free to pursue happiness.

The episode cuts back to the present, four days after Danny’s death.

John sits at a dinner table with the group of people he needs to impress to get the sheriff job. He tells them that he wants to clear the air about his brother, ready to tell them everything. When he speaks, we hear the voiceovers that have opened and closed almost every episode of Bloodline so far. “Sometimes, you know something is coming,” “we’re not bad people, but we did a bad thing,” etc.

As he tells them the story, we see short shots of him carrying Danny’s body through the rain and to the boat. He finishes his story with the voiceover in which he said, “wherever he (Danny) is, I hope he’s okay, and I hope he knows that I love him.” It seems as if his speech has won over the dinner guests.

Elsewhere, Sally meets with Lenny (Frank Hoyt Taylor), the detective who was on Sarah’s case long ago. She says she is ashamed, because she is the one who told the siblings to lie about what happened to Danny. She asks Lenny to find Danny, “before something terrible happens.”

Danny’s body is found, charred and floating in the surf, some days later. Sally is absolutely distraught.

Diana (Jacinda Barrett) talks to John about Danny’s death, and it’s clear that he hasn’t told her anything about what actually happened. Marco interrupts their conversation to tell John that he’s wanted at the station for questioning.

The autopsy revealed that Danny didn’t die from burning and had drowned. They assume this means that someone was just trying to get rid of the body. Marco starts questioning John about Danny suspiciously, and then, he reveals that the DEA found an enormous amount of narcotics at Danny’s Miami residence. They explain their theory of what happened to Danny, which lines up perfectly with what John, Kevin, and Meg staged.

In a flashback, we see that John never got rid of all the cocaine and instead had hidden it, eventually moving it to Danny’s Miami home. We also see Kevin and John send a text message to Chelsea on Danny’s cell phone, saying that he would be going to Miami for a few days. Then, John called Wayne Lowry with Danny’s phone, doing his very best Danny impression.

When John blew up the boat, he made sure to do it in the exact same manner that Lowry’s people had blown up the immigrant women. Marco and the DEA fall for everything exactly, piecing the evidence together in the exact manner that John planned, down to the finest detail, including the fact that John dressed Danny’s body in the suit he would have worn to the pier dedication.

The episode cuts to one month later. Meg meets with Alec in New York for the first time since arriving in the city with her new job. Kevin and Belle are living together again at their house, excited about the upcoming baby. John has been offered the sheriff job, and his family discusses whether or not he should accept over a nice dinner.

Sally meets with Lenny again. He tells her that he did find out “some things” about Danny and that her children are all lying to her.

At John’s dinner, a teenage boy approaches the family – the same person who watched John and Kevin enter Danny’s home the month previously.

He wants to know exactly what happened to Danny, his father.