‘Who Is Erin Carter?’ Ending Explained on Netflix

The hit UK thriller about a seemingly normal substitute teacher with a shady past doesn’t skimp on answers.
Photo: Daniel Escale/Netflix/Daniel Escale/Netflix

Over the past week you may have noticed that some show called Who Is Erin Carter? shot up to the top of the Netflix Most Popular TV Shows list and stayed there. For a while. If you’re like me, you probably found yourself asking out loud, yeah, Netflix, who is Erin Carter? and thinking you were just so funny. Well, I’m not funny but it is a great question. The good news is the hit UK thriller about a seemingly normal substitute teacher with a shady past doesn’t skimp on answers. Whether you haven’t been able to watch the seven-part series and are dying to know Erin Carter’s deal or you’ve watched and need a little clarification, look no further. Below, find the answers to not just the titular question but to all the whens, wheres, whys, and hows of Erin Carter. All the major question words are covered, really. Our elementary-school Language Arts teachers would be so proud!

Well, wouldn’t you like to know. Oh. Wait. You probably would. The answer is two-fold, my friends! The Erin Carter (Evin Ahmad) we meet at the beginning of the series is a woman who, five years prior, mysteriously traveled from England to Barcelona with her young daughter Harper (Indica Watson) and eventually married a Hot Nurse named Jordi (Sean Teale), made a real case for wearing shorts with blazers, and became a substitute teacher at an international school in the area. One day, Erin makes an impromptu pit stop at a grocery store so Harper can use the bathroom and stumbles upon a robbery in progress. This substitute teacher takes on one of the robbers with such ease it’s almost as if she’s been trained for it. When she lifts the dying man’s mask, he recognizes her but calls her Kate. Weird right?

The series doesn’t stretch out the mystery too long. By episode four, there’s a flashback in which we get the real answer to this question. Abandoned by her mother at age six, Erin/Kate/??? survives a childhood in and out of foster homes and winds up in the police academy. She’s very good at it! But when she breaks a fellow trainee’s nose because he’s being a real dick and definitely deserved it, she gets kicked out. That very day, she gets a visit from one Mr. DI Jim Armstrong (Jamie Bamber) who recruits her to work for him undercover as part of the Centralized Intelligence and Operations Division. If her first mission — infiltrating a gang with plans to commit a massive robbery of gold bullions — is a success and she figures out who is bankrolling this gang, Armstrong will get her a permanent job with CIO. Here she takes on the moniker Kate Jones (from a list of names Armstrong gives her that also includes, you guessed it, Erin Carter).

While undercover, Kate forms a strong bond with a woman named Lena (Denise Gough), who has worked for their boss Tommy Ramsey (Ian Burfield) for a long time and who … dun dun dun … has a young daughter named Harper. The bullion job goes south pretty quickly, the police rush in thanks to Kate’s tip-off, and people start dying. No one attempts to pull Kate out ,and when she believes Lena to be dead, she grabs Harper to protect her. She tells Armstrong to go fuck himself for treating her as if she were disposable and runs off with some leftover gold and Harper, taking the kid to the place Lena dreamed of building a new life — Barcelona. Oh, and she becomes Erin Carter.

Yeesh, Erin Carter has a lot of bad luck. Not only does she pick the one grocery store in all of Barcelona that is being robbed by two people she betrayed on her botched undercover mission, but she also picks a neighborhood full of pretty shitty neighbors to live in. I’m only partially talking about Penelope (Charlotte Vega), who starts off as a real stuck-up thorn in everyone’s side but eventually won me over when she assumed that when Erin, said “people are trying to kill me for telling the truth,” she was telling Penelope that she shouldn’t allow herself to be silenced in her marriage and should get a divorce, even while Erin was basically bleeding out right in front of her. I’m real Team Penelope by the end of things. It was the biggest twist of all!

The most troublesome neighbor, however, is Emilio (Pep Ambròs), Jordi’s best friend and a police officer who blackmails Erin into helping him with his gambling debts and dealings with local crime lords after seeing footage of the robbery and how skilled Erin is at killing people. Sure, Emilio helps her bury the body when the second robber comes after her, but that body disposal does not come without strings. Strings that include putting Erin in the crosshairs of very powerful, very bad people. Emilio meets his end at the hands of those very bad people in the middle of a bull-fighting ring and, I’m sorry to say it, he deserved it. Be a better neighbor, Emilio!

One of the wildest parts of this show, aside from that time Erin gets shot in the stomach and left for dead in the mountains and walks miles until she finds a first aid kit at a campsite and patches up the gaping hole and then walks more and steals a truck and drives herself home and survives, is the fact that Erin is still actively substitute teaching throughout this entire thing. Like, not only does she have to put up with car chases and being dragged across rooftops and shot at over and over, she also has to deal with the most annoying teacher problems. Administrators standing in the way of promotions! Parent/Teacher conferences! Troublesome kids refusing to take a test and instead drawing dicks all over it! Doesn’t this woman have to deal with enough? Somehow, after moonlighting as “person involved in gunfights within the seedy underbelly of Barcelona” this woman gets up and heads to school to teach annoying children their history lesson. Talk about juggling it all! In a twist I have to assume teachers across the world find hilarious, the father of the worst kid in her class turns out to be not only the crime boss who kills Emilio but also the mysterious guy who was bankrolling that gold heist Erin ruined back in London! Quite the small world, huh? Suffice it to say, that particular parent/teacher conference is pretty awkward.

Remember that thing I mentioned about Erin getting shot in the mountains and incredulously surviving? Well, there’s several things happening all at once there, which is sort of Erin Carter’s whole deal. First, Very Bad Dad Daniel Lang (Douglas Henshall) is on to her and having her house surveilled. Meanwhile, Lena — yes, Harper’s mother whom Erin thought was dead Lena — was actually in prison this whole time and figures out that Kate Jones has Harper in Barcelona. So she breaks out of prison (it looks kind of easy, to be honest), dons the worst wig I’ve ever seen, and tracks down Erin/Kate. She’s actually the one who shoots her and leaves her for dead in the mountains, isn’t that special? When Lena goes to Erin’s house to find Harper, Daniel’s men take Lena and they all have a good laugh when they figure out Daniel was the big boss of the gold heist and his son’s teacher was the undercover cop who ruined it all. He makes a deal with Lena: If she brings him Erin/Kate, he will make sure Harper is returned to her unharmed.

Meanwhile, Erin has to, you know, not die. After being stitched up on the dining room table by her Hot Nurse Husband, Erin sends Jordi and Harper away and prepares for the fight of her life by stabbing herself with adrenaline so that even though she’s been bleeding profusely for several hours, she is able to fight multiple henchmen in various locations throughout her neighborhood. It does the trick!! Eventually though, Lena tracks her down. Now, Lena is no idiot. Daniel has Harper and Jordi as collateral and there is no guarantee that when Lena hands Erin over, he won’t hurt them anyway. They both want to keep Harper safe. So what do these frenemies decide to do? Oh baby, they’re teaming up.

Admittedly, I’m an easy target, but still. I was not expecting to be so moved by the bond between Erin and Lena, two women who have, quite frankly, beat the shit out of one another more than once. But here we are! When the two women take on Daniel at his…marina, I guess, they discover they are vastly outnumbered. Erin realizes the only way to save Harper (and Jordi, poor guy is very second fiddle here) is for one of them to distract the henchmen and sacrifice themselves so the other can save their daughter. Erin offers herself up, but Lena won’t allow it. What life could Lena, a fugitive with — again, it must be said, terrible taste in wigs — really give Harper? Even with Erin’s untraditional life plan, she can still do more for Harper. And so, Lena sacrifices herself and dies, taking out almost every one of Daniel’s minions with her. It’s very emotional!! And then Erin confronts Daniel, shoots him in the head, and gets her daughter and husband safely out of there. Also emotional, albeit in a different, thank god we won’t have to sit through parent/teacher conferences with him again kind of way.

Well, it’s a real TBD. At the very end of the finale, post all the bloodshed, we find Erin, Jordi, and Harper vacationing somewhere very sunny where the margaritas are plentiful. Jordi is getting used to the fact that his wife is not your average substitute teacher. Harper seems very well-adjusted considering everything. Erin seems to have plans to continue teaching at the same school even though literally everyone in the neighborhood saw her bloodied and racing through the community pool, the community tennis courts, and that hoity-toity restaurant not too long ago. They seem happy.

And then who should show up but good ol’ DI Jim Armstrong. He’s finally tracked Erin down after all these years and he is both angry and also wants to give her another job. You never know what this guy really wants! Erin turns him down and he’s basically like “lol that’s so cute” and implies he’ll be in touch.

They never once tell us her real name. In the end, she tells her husband to keep calling her Erin. Maybe it will be a little treat in season two if we’re good. Or maybe not! Maybe she will only be Erin Carter henceforth because deep down, all this time, she has always been Erin Carter on the inside. Who Is Erin Carter? is very existential that way.