Cash doesn’t buy class. But as the women of Wild Cherry find out at the end of the six-part BBC thriller, streaming exclusively on Paramount+, it certainly buys an alibi. This series from the UK centers on the residents of a gated community called Richford Lake, the poshest section of which is dubbed “The Island.” (Because it’s cut off from the “riff-raff,” get it?) Here, Juliet Lonsdale (Eve Best) and her Queen Bee daughter Allegra (Amelia May) rule their respective roosts, surrounded by sycophants, users, and haters. Each has but one true bestie.
These besties live on the other side of the Lake, a place where homeowners must actually work for a living. They are Lorna Gibbons (Carmen Ejogo) and her daughter Grace (Imogen Faires), Black women who know that they must be “better than everyone else” because they’re outside the ultrawealthy bubble of Juliet and her hangers-on, but who also believe that their closest friends have their backs. In Richford Lake, however, loyalty is conditional. In the end, everyone is out for herself.
Read on to find out how the drama leaves off, and how juicy the intrigue really gets.
Key facts
- Series: Wild Cherry
- Season: Season 1
- Episodes: 6
- Season finale: “I Don’t Put Anything Past Teenage Girls”
- Stars: Eve Best, Carmen Ejogo, Amelia May, Imogen Faires
- Where to watch: Paramount+
- Spoiler warning: Major Wild Cherry ending spoilers ahead
How does Wild Cherry end?
Big-time warning: SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. If you want to remain as unspoiled as, well, a ripened cherry, watch every episode of Wild Cherry, now streaming. Then return here to analyze that deliciously tart ending.
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In the Season 1 finale, “I Don’t Put Anything Past Teenage Girls,” Wild Cherry ends at a soiree thrown by Daniel and Frances Frederick (Daniel Lapaine and Sophie Winkleman), parents of teenager Jocasta (Isabelle Allen). It’s here that Juliet and Lorna discover that it’s Daniel who leaked their children’s revealing photos from the student-run Catalogue app, where local high schoolers upload photos of themselves and vote on each other’s hotness, to a public URL. The text message that Iris (Catriona Chandler), another of their daughters’ pals, sent to Lorna before she died – “We are but demons who dream” – is the name of the chatroom where the illicit pics have been circulating, and the site is registered to the Fredericks’ house.
Daniel, suspecting that Grace also has found out about the leak, and has learned too about his relationship with her teen friend Noori, pursues Grace deep into the forested area of his property. Juliet, Lorna, and Allegra catch sight of the scene and ambush Daniel. A flurry of blows ensues, and Daniel collapses onto the ground, dead.
Luckily, Gigi Gladstone (Nicôle Lecky), a neighbor accustomed to conning her way out of most everything, has come upon the event, and is happy to cover up the ladies’ mess. For a price.
What happens to Iris?
Iris goes missing during a house party thrown by K Rizz (Jason York), an influencer who has accepted Allegra’s bribes in exchange for featuring her in his videos, thereby boosting her social media following. Also in attendance at the party are Grace, Jocasta, and Noori. The clique spends the party ostracizing Iris, whom they suspect of tipping off teachers about the Catalogue app. When Iris vanishes, it seems like a simple case of a rat laying low until her cohorts’ anger blows over.
That is, until Iris is found dead in a nearby lake, a wound on her head. The police begin searching for reasons why someone might want a teenage girl permanently out of the way.
What happens to Lorna and Juliet?
Juliet refrains from revealing to the investigators that she spotted Allegra and Grace returning home from K Rizz’s party, and she also deletes the surveillance footage that shows their late arrival back to the Lonsdale mansion. Lorna, meanwhile, attempts to figure out the meaning of the text that Iris sent to her during the final hours of the party. Though the pals try to convince both the cops and themselves that it was K Rizz – not their daughters – who killed Iris, the influencer has an alibi during the time-frame of the murder. Grace and Allegra, on the other hand, have been caught in a series of lies. As the girls’ stories unravel, Lorna and Juliet begin to wonder what their daughters are capable of.
What happens to Grace and Allegra?
Grace and Allegra sink deeper and deeper into hot water. Allegra long has been bullying Iris because she’s suspected her pal of being the one who blabbed to a teacher about the existence of the app. Allegra and Grace even filmed a video where they playfully threatened to kill Iris for the transgression. Now Iris is dead, her phone has mysteriously appeared in Grace’s purse, private Catalogue photos have leaked into the world, and the police have caught Grace and Allegra in more than one lie. In the end, though investigators have serious doubts about the girls’ innocence, there isn’t enough evidence to pin Iris’s death on them.
Who really killed Iris?
Noori killed Iris. At the Fredericks’ party, Grace sees how emotional Noori gets as she watches Daniel and Frances dance with one another. Putting this together with Noori’s other strange behavior, Grace realizes that Noori is in love with Daniel, and that she gave him access to the photos on the Catalogue app.
Iris has learned about Daniel’s involvement in the chatroom, but mistakenly believes it’s Grace who’s romantically linked to the older man. When Iris tries to warn Grace about the wickedness of the person she’s fallen for, Grace is confused: In fact, Grace has feelings for Iris. Iris leaves K Rizz’s party intending to tell Lorna everything about Daniel and the leak. Noori, who has followed Iris out, is terrified that Iris will reveal Daniel’s predatory behavior to Grace’s mother and destroy her secret relationship. Desperate to protect her beloved, Noori strikes Iris over the head, killing her. Before dying, Iris manages to send out her text, “We are but demons who dream.”
Noori arranges Iris’s body in the lake and plants her phone in Grace’s purse. Her forbidden romance is safe for another day.
What does the Wild Cherry ending mean?
In the end, friendships are shattered by secrets, and an outsider gains the upper hand.
Noori tells Grace just enough about the night of Iris’s death to allow Grace to fill in the blanks. Grace understands that Noori murdered Iris to protect a pedophile who callously used her to gain access to pics of underage girls – his own daughter included – but ultimately she keeps her friend’s secret. After all, she has secrets of her own. She lied on countless occasions. She tried to frame K Rizz for crimes he did not commit. She helped plant Iris’s phone in the coat pocket of Daniel Frederick, a man that she participated in killing.
Speaking of Daniel, his corpse has been handily disposed of – for a fee. Gigi enlists her younger brother Jacob (Will Bagnall) to destroy any evidence of the crimes committed by Grace, Allegra, and their mothers, and Juliet pays the young man a big wad of money. In return, Juliet agrees to keep Gigi’s secret: No one will ever know that Gigi, the American socialite who married into the gated community, is actually Sadie, a British con artist. The Richford Lake elite are now playing by a grifter’s rules.
Where can you watch Wild Cherry?
Wild Cherry streams on Paramount+ for subscribers to any plan. Watch all six episodes now.
Wild Cherry
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