Jed Mercurio’s most recent thriller is a cerebral mind twist full of suprises that leaves many a viewer baffled by its conclusion. Therefore, we’re going to cover Payback ITV ending explained to try to make sense of this story that covers a rather convoluted money laundering scheme in which capital goes from one place to another.
Starring Morven Christie in the lead role of Lexie Noble, a mom whose life becomes a complete hell when husband Jared ends up dead in what seems to be an unmotivated attack. However, the moment Jared ends up dead, things get worse for the now widower Lexie, because she finds out that Jared had been involved with some really bad people.
Payback ITV Plot Explained
Lexie Noble is a seemingly happy and married mother of two children, she lives in a nice house, her life seems ok, and she’s married to Jared, an accountant who provides for her and her family in Scotland in a nice, fancy, big house.
But not everything is at it seems. One day, Jared ends up dead, he’s been stabbed to death by a gang of kids in what seemed a rather random thing. Lexie is destroyed and appalled that her perfect life now is upside down. She was once a happy stay-at-home mom and now she’s a widower and a single mother of two.
When the cops start digging into Jared’s murder, Lexie finds out that her hubby accountant had been indeed very good at his accounting work; one that involved turning ill-gained profits into legitimate money. Yes, Jared was a money launderer working for a man named Cal Morris.
But Jared wouldn’t have seen the end of those pointy knives hadn’t he stolen nearly £27 million from his employer by using a complex scheme of shell companies, shady bank accounts and all those things that accountants know how to do.
Cal Morris, played by Peter Mullan, isn’t happy about the now-deceased Jared swindling him out of £27 million because it got in the way of his purchase of a nice piece of real estate in Scotland. So, Cal, being the diligent mafioso he is, goes and pays a visit to Lexie the widow and her kids with an offer she can’t refuse: Either she tells him how Jared took his millions or he takes her kids and Lexie’s lives.
To make matters more complex for Lexie, the cops investigating Jared’s murder think she’s the main suspect. And have been dogging her all along, listening to her conversations, following her every movie.
But one of the cops investigating Jared’s murder thinks that the dead accountant might’ve been working for another target in the cops’s radar: Cal Morris, and since Lexie was his wife: It’s the ideal opportunity to nail down Cal Morris using the grieving Lexie and her kids as bait.
Lexie tries to move the money around for Cal, meanwhile, the cop in charge of listening to Lexie’s conversations and electronic moves sends her a few anonymous messages to tell her that the other cops are using her as bait to track down the money so they can nail Cal Morris.
Now Lexie has a bit of a catch-22: Either she helps Cal the mob guy get his millions and avoids getting killed, or she helps the Cal the mob guy get the millions and gets nailed with Cal by the cops who won’t hesitate in making her an accessory to money laundering when they present the case to the prosecutors.
So, Lexie finds out that there’s a bunch of money hidden in a shipment of garments, she goes home and finds Call the mobster kindly playing with her kids, in a rather dark, menacing gesture. Cal wants to know where is the money.
Payback ITV Ending Explained
When Lexie encounters Cal in her house playing with her kids, she tries to explain the situation, Jared had been using an antique dealer, meanwhile, the cop that’s listening in the bugs planted in the house connects the dots and makes sense of it all: The antique dealer, a potential witness is in danger, so the cop goes to contact the antique dealer.
In the meantime, Lexie is forced to travel on a car with Cal, his wife, and one of his goons to the piece of property he wishes to buy. Cal might be a mobster, but he’s a green mobster because he wants to buy a part of the property to set up some electric windmills to make money out of thin air.
While on the property, Lexie has an exchange with a woman that she knew Jared had been contacting, she put two and two together by realizing that that woman was wearing a piece of jewelry that Jared had bought with Cal’s cash. The woman in question, Manda, tells Lexie that it was she who was protecting Jared all along from Cal’s goons.
Was Manda Having An Affair With Jared?
No, all Jared did was replace a piece of jewelry Manda lost when one of Cal’s goons, Aaron, in a fit of rage destroyed it. When Manda didn’t feel safe because of Aaron’s short temper, she went to Jared and asked her to buy her a night at a hotel. Jared and Manda weren’t having an affair.
Who Killed Jared?
Jared was stabbed to death by a group of four teens, out of those four killers, one is dead, the other is on the run, and the cops know nothing about the other two. Since Lexie realizes that the cops are not going to protect her, she invents a story to convince Aaron leading him to the money, and tells the cops so they can nail Aaron, who in a fit of rage and jealousy orders the hit on Jared because he thought he was having an affair with Manda.
How Does Aaron Get Nailed?
Lexie makes an immunity deal with the cops, but the cops want Cal on tape acknowledging that he’s been doing some money laundering. The cops plant a recording device on Lexie’s sleeve, Lexie calls Cal for a sitdown, Lexie calls Aaron to tell him where the money is, and then she lets the cops know where Aaron is so they can take him down.
While it seems like the pieces of this puzzle are going to fit, there are a few caveats: Cal meets Lexie at a place where the signal from the recording device gets muffled. At that same location, Cal and another of his goons are torturing some poor dude who fenced jewelry using Cal’s stolen money.
Cal followed the money trail, and Jared didn’t steal the money for himself but gave it to charity. Lexie, realizing her situation, gets Cal to admit that indeed he’s laundering money, all the while she’s making Cal think that his goon knew where the money was all along.
Cal Puts Two And Two Together
Cal figures out that Aaron could be the one trying to screw him. Listening to Lexie he figures out that Manda was meeting Jared, that Aaron knew one of Jared’s killers. And the moment Aaron finds the money, he is shot by Cal’s goons.
Then, the cops move in on Cal, charge him, and send him to jail. As for Lexie, she’s safe, but there’s one more thing, Jared dad tells Lexie that the £27 million Jared put into charities are in fact trust funds for the kids, and gives Lexie an envelope containing a box with a necklace.
The cop doing the listening and the financial movements realizes that Lexie is now living a new life, and instead of bringing Lexie to justice, he discards the evidence and lets her move on because he’s angered that his colleagues used her and her kids as bait to knock down a mobster.
