In what appeared at first to be a relatively lighthearted episode that would lean into Flower’s rescue, Ghosts took audiences for a turn on Thursday night as Hetty’s cause of death was finally revealed. In what was a gradual buildup of flashbacks to her final moments of despair, Hetty takes her own life with a phone cord after feeling like she is in a hole of her own.
But how did the matriarch of Woodstone even get to such a dark, tragic place? With the episode opening up to Hetty’s last few days in 1895, her husband Elias (Matt Walsh) has gone missing and left her in legal trouble after authorities discover he has been employing children to work in their Woodstone factories. As their family lawyer, George (Brian Huskey) states, in Elias’ absence, Hetty will be convicted and the authorities will seize all assets, including the Woodstone estate. Though George promises he will help her and get in touch as soon as possible, Hetty most subtly introduces the audience to the family’s first Ericsson skeletal phone sitting idly in the corner of her husband’s library.
Fast-forward to the day that Hetty takes her own life, complete with her signature sharp updo and vibrant teal Edwardian gown, and the lady of the house is frantic. The plan was to run away and pick up her son from boarding school, but she had not heard back from George. As the authorities make their way to the mansion, the help does their best to hold them off as Hetty barricades herself in the library in full panic mode. Getting arrested would not only push Hetty into poverty, but as someone who spent a large part of her life rejecting a certain image, it would have all been for nothing. She would lose her fortune, her family, and her friends.
With the law closing in, Hetty is hopeless and frustrated over the lack of help and uncertainty about what to do. It’s this moment that also brings out a strong, robust performance from Rebecca Wisocky that is the absolute best of the season and tugs hard at your heart. Wisocky shows another layer of Hetty that not only provides a more profound perspective of why her character is the way she is, but also how suicide is a deeply agonizing psychological struggle stemming from emotional turmoil. In her last moments, as the phone rings from what is a wrong number, a sudden wave of despair paints her expression. Hetty looks at the phone with deep pain and desperately rips the cord out, alluding to her final act unseen in the series.
