Popular police drama, Coroner is a crime drama that through its different episodes and seasons gives its audience an insight into the police investigative procedures.
The show’s creator, Morwyn Brebner, has revealed that the show takes heavy inspiration from author M.R. Hall’s crime novels set around the character of Jenny Cooper.
M.R. Hall’s character Jenny Cooper is the lead of his crime novels and this series as well. The character is played by actress Serinda Swan, who is a widowed coroner in the show, tasked with the responsibility of investigating the deaths of those who may have died under suspicious circumstances.
Other members of the cast include actor Roger Cross, Andy McQueen, Eric Bruneau, Nicholas Campbell, Kiley May, Lovell Adams-Gray, and so many more.
The show premiered its first season in 2019 and has since then put out a total of four seasons, with the fourth one getting wrapped up in 2022.
The show has managed to find for itself a devoted fandom, along with positive reviews from the critics. The show does well in introducing intricate cases that get solved with the help of Jenny’s meaningful insights and knowledge.
Not only do the actors, especially Serinda Swan, perform their characters extremely well, but the writing of the show also feels real and well-researched.
Serinda’s character is not just an arrogant know-it-all but quite the opposite. If you have watched the show, you will be able to discover new layers of complexities to her character that the makers of the show have nicely incorporated into her character.
With the fourth season of the show out and done, actress Serinda Swan revealed that she would be parting ways with the show, and though many fans were obsessed with the show because of her, she has said that she does not want to get tied down to one show and instead wants to explore different creative sides of herself, including directing.
While it is sad that she has officially bid goodbye to the show, let us take a moment to revisit the fourth season of the show, Coroner, and dive deeper into its ending.
Coroner Season 4 Ending Explained
The first season introduced to us the character Jenny Cooper, who is shown as this newly widowed coroner, out to investigate more suspicious deaths. Throughout the episodes and even seasons, we have seen the makers of the show address societal issues of class, wealth, and diversity in the city as a commentary on our real world.
While the investigation of the mysterious deaths is interesting to witness, the ending of season four is something even more baffling as it left many who watched with a lot of unanswered questions and in need of the next season.
Jenny started her journey as a coroner after the death of her husband and has been since surrounded by death for the past four seasons. At the beginning of season four, we actually get to see a new side of Jenny, one where she is finally as comfortable as one can be in a job like hers.
Themes Of Understanding and Forgiveness
She seems to have made peace with her job, a feeling that was absent throughout the previous three seasons. But season four was confusing for many different reasons, as the last episode made us question whether Jenny’s entire life in the show was a dream or whatever went down with her mother, Peggy.
This season brought more light on Peggy, Jenny’s mother, and explored more of what their relationship was. Director Adrienne Mitchell revealed that they had wondered a lot about whether to push these two apart or bring them closer by the end of the season.
We were told that Peggy left Jenny alone when she was young, and Jenny’s natural reaction to this was to hate her mother for abandoning her, all the while being curious about her.
Season four explored the trauma of Jenny, which was a much necessary change from the constant death investigations she is surrounded by.
Peggy and Jenny are brought face to face, and they are immediately thrown into a battle for life. While this season also had a separate case of death, the more important aspect was definitely Jenny and Peggy’s story arc.
We are told that the mother-daughter duo gets caught in a car crash, winding up in a struggle for their lives.
The two are brought to the hospital, and a dreamy sequence cues, which director Adrienne Mitchell explains as the doctors performing an “autopsy on Jenny and Peggy’s psyche.” The scene is hazy and confusing but suits the theme well.
Jenny gets to hear her mother’s prayers one last time and finally understands her mother, developing a sense of empathy for her. She does her best to understand why her mother absolutely had to leave her when she was young, even making efforts to understand the pain her mother must have felt after parting ways with her only daughter.
Season four seemed to be all about Jenny’s understanding and resolving her conflicts and traumas. Not only did she make peace with the fact that her husband was not with her, but she also did her best to be comfortable with her job, where she was constantly surrounded by death.
A Confusing End
Lastly, she also makes peace with the fact that her mother left her, but it must have been just as difficult for her mother as it was for her, and she finds herself on the path of forgiveness even.
Finally, in one scene during the end, we see Jenny opening her eyes after being in the crash, looking around and giving a meaningful smile.
This part confused many as well, as it made us question whether all that happened between her mother was real or not. While we question Jenny’s reality, Mitchell reveals that Jenny wakes up from her near-death experience with a weird feeling of calm over her. She has a new sense of peace in her life, along with a newfound wisdom.
The entire scene feels like a dream and is confusing to watch because we constantly wonder if it is actually happening or if it is a fragment of Jenny’s imagination. Jenny’s knowing smile after she wakes up is confusing as well, though it feels positive.
We are supposed to feel like Jenny knows everything that went down with her mother, but this cannot be possible considering she was in a car accident and was unconscious throughout. Jenny smiles like she knows everything about her mother’s life, why she left her, how she forgave Peggy, and is now ready to move on with her life, having accepted her fate.
Though we do not know if all of the scenes between Peggy and Jenny actually happened or if they were exactly how they were filmed, like a dream, Jenny accepting her mother’s life and decisions, along with all of the other scenes, feels wrong because she was unconscious throughout, so the question of whether Peggy was real or not still remains.
Our Thoughts
Director Mitchell seemed impressed by the fact that the episode was shot in a way that felt ‘meta’ and properly depicted the phrase ‘autopsy of the psyche’ through the camera work and post-editing. It felt dreamlike for sure, but the episode overall did not make much sense, giving us absolutely no context.
Jenny turns out to be an unreliable narrator, and we do not know whether what happened to her throughout the last episode was real or not. The scenes did not seem connected at all, and in an attempt to make things dreamy, the makers forgot to write proper scenes.
They do not reveal to us anything about Jenny’s mother, Peggy, and we are not told anything about her being alive or not. Peggy’s prayer, Jenny forgiving her mother, and her knowing smile after waking up in the hospital all seem like a hallucination than something that actually may have happened.
We can only assume the thought behind the last episode, as even Jenny’s smile right after she wakes up gives us nothing. The episode was like a fever dream, with a lot of things happening without any thought or sense being put into it.
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You have to look a little deeper to understand this ending. All through the series, Jenny has blamed her mother for abandoning her. Even when she tries to improve things with her mom, the little girl in her still shows up, hurt and angry. In the final segment, she fails to reach her mother and get her out of the car, though in her near-death-experience she does so. She learns the gift her mother gave her, of compassion for the dead, is the thing that has driven her life. She finally sees just how mentally ill her mother is/was and sees her as an individual with her own hurts, pains, and broken heart. Before, Jenny thought it was all about her own pain. She’s kind of in a state of total knowingness, as often happens in NDEs, and sees the futures of her friends. As she awakens, she feels blessed, but also has the knowledge that her greatest fear was also her truth: everyone she loves dies, as it is evident that her mother is dead in the car behind her. It’s unclear as to whether she, herself, will live or die as one scene had the folks at the mortuary speaking about how they miss her.