The summer ends at a beach house. Jemma gets her apology. Hercy doesn’t get his year back. Emma knows something nobody else does.
The finale opens the way “The Hills” used to — convertibles, voiceovers, the Pacific Coast Highway doing what it always does for a certain kind of Los Angeles story. Nicole driving, then Dylan, then Emilie, then Emma, then Hercy, then Jemma. Each of them carrying something into the last episode that the summer either resolved or didn’t.
Nicole: “F—k you, Emma Medrano. Not you gaslighting me into thinking I’m a bad friend.”
Dylan: “Having to apologize at 23, 24 for what a 17-year-old kid did — to come back as adults and have my head on a stick because of it, it’s just ridiculous.”
Emilie: “You can’t control what other people think. You’re gonna be a villain in somebody’s book. Sometimes you lose certain people in your life but it makes room for more. But as of now, I’m just living and being hot.”
Emma: “I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to be this loud, obnoxious, mean girl. But feeling like an outcast, like people are teaming up on you — that does not feel good for anybody.”
Hercy: “I have the mindset and the knowledge to know I got to be successful. But if I don’t get my last year of eligibility, I just don’t know what path I’ll take.”
Jemma: “I think I finally need to have that conversation with Dylan that I’ve been dreading having the whole summer. And that scares me a lot.”
Six voiceovers. Six people who came back to Calabasas for the summer carrying different weights. One beach house left to get through.
Sterling & Brynn
Before the beach house, Sterling is home with Brynn. She’s starting a new teaching job in Orange County two days a week and floats the idea of them being roommates. He says maybe when they’re married.
Sterling tells the cameras that he’s been balancing the start of a career and a relatively new relationship at the same time, and sometimes one takes neglect over the other. He’s trying to find where the line is.
Brynn says she’s been burned by so many people growing up — girls who wanted to be her friend because they knew her from “Dance Moms,” or were jealous of her because of it. She tells Sterling he gives everyone the benefit of the doubt even when they don’t deserve it. He agrees.
Dylan & Sabrina
Dylan sits outside with his sister Sabrina over drinks — his non-alcoholic — and the conversation goes somewhere the show hasn’t gone before. He tells her that at one point, he didn’t want to be here anymore.
Sabrina gets emotional. She didn’t realize how much he’d been struggling. He tells her he didn’t want to burden her. She says she changed his diapers. She basically raised him.
Dylan tells the cameras: “I don’t make it a point to express my emotions to people. I would rather keep quiet because it’s nobody’s job to fix it but mine.”
He tells her that going through all of it is what got him here — wanting to take initiative, wanting to be present, wanting something. She tells him he was raised to treat women well. She tells him to leave people better than he found them. He listens. He doesn’t say much. He doesn’t need to.
Hercy, Alexie, Sterling & Raine at the Park
They take rescue dogs to a park and have a picnic. Hercy talks about the NCAA — people assume he’ll get his year back because his dad is the coach, but the NCAA doesn’t care who his dad is. Raine says she can probably relate. They all agree their parents have one goal in common: they don’t want their kids to struggle.
Raine says she loves modeling, but at 25 you’re old in the industry. Alexie says not to tell her that because she’s moving to New York for it. Raine already knows modeling isn’t her forever — she wants to open a dog rescue. The dogs at the park, completely unaware of any of this, are having the best day of their lives.
Sterling tells the cameras his biggest fear about bringing Brynn to the beach house is her hating everyone and sitting alone in a corner — and him feeling like he has to choose between the two.
The Beach House
The group rolls in. Brynn meets everyone. Emilie and Emma ask if she’s taught Sterling to dance. She says they swing dance.
Dylan pulls Suede aside and asks where he stands with her. Hercy calls everyone to dinner before she can answer.
At the table, Preston makes a toast. He says things can get hostile between them but there’s so much love, and tonight is proof of it. Sterling’s toast: “There’s wood ships and good ships and ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships, and may they always be.”
Rose & Thorn
Suede suggests Rose and Thorn.
Suede: rose is meeting Dylan, thorn is it not working out.
Dylan: rose is seeing old and new faces and being able to be around each other, thorn is being broken up with by Suede twice.
Hercy: rose is the summer itself, the friendships, the memories. His thorn is that the NCAA officially called — he didn’t get his year back. Basketball is over. The table goes quiet for a second, then love pours in from every direction. Jodie tells him he’s a man of many talents. Kimora tells him he’s a businessman like his daddy and to be proud of it. Hercy tells the cameras he knows any other person would feel like their world is over. He doesn’t. There’s more to him than basketball. It ain’t over.
Jemma: rose is building a stronger friendship with Nicole, thorn is seeing the true colors in people she didn’t expect.
Nicole: rose is moving back to Calabasas, thorn is also moving back to Calabasas.
Alexie: rose is her new best friend Raine, thorn is Preston promised to take her out on a date all summer and never did.
Emilie: rose is the dinner, getting everyone together, and meeting Ben. Thorn is that summer’s ending, but there’s a lot to look forward to.
They toast.
Jemma & Dylan
Jemma pulls Dylan aside. He tells her upfront he’s not going to have the conversation if it turns into what happened at the rooftop. If she’s ready to be mature about it, then yes. She tells him she’s not mad — she’s frustrated. She says it’s hard to watch him happy when she’s still dealing with the effects of what he did.
Dylan: “Jemma, I went through hell and back a year ago. So yeah, I am f—king happy that I’m clean and comfortable in my own skin. But you’re sitting here trying to say that me being happy is me saying ‘f—k you, you don’t matter’ — and that’s not the case at all.”
Jemma: “Who did you call when you ran away from home? Who did you call when you were down? It’s me.”
He says looking back, he wasn’t a kid who loved himself, so how could he have loved anyone around him. Hurt people hurt people. He was hurt and pissed off. She was one of many he hurt.
Jemma tells him it’s hard for her to hate him. She had so much love for him. He was the first person she ever felt that thin line between hate and love for, and she doesn’t know how to handle it.
The Apology
Dylan: “Of course I have love for you. I’m sorry. I truly am. You were just a victim of my own mental warfare.”
She thanks him. He says he hopes she accepts his apology. She says she needed it — some acknowledgment that he feels bad for the things he did. He says he definitely does. She says she thinks she’s been holding onto a version of him that doesn’t exist anymore. She wants to start fresh as friends. She introduces herself as Jemma. He introduces himself as Malibu’s Cowboy. They hug.
Dylan tells the cameras: “If I had known that ten years from that hookup we’d be in the spot we’re in now, I would have never done it. I’ve lived with guilt. I still live with guilt. I just hope she can get back to that point where she can be all right.”
Jemma walks back out. “The war is over.” Everyone cheers.
Jemma tells the cameras: “I’m feeling a lot of closure. I think I healed a lot. And I’m honestly surprised with Dylan. If you had told me at the beginning of this summer that I’d say Dylan has changed, I would have laughed in your face. But this is what life is all about. Sometimes I hold grudges. This summer I was forced to take accountability, understand my feelings, and let go.”
That night, everyone heads to bed. Jemma knocks on Dylan’s door. He opens it. She walks in. The door closes. Preston peeps it from down the hall.
The Last Morning
Preston mentions over breakfast that someone was getting rowdy last night.
Sterling & Brynn
Sterling finds Brynn outside and checks in. She says she’s okay — but he says she’s not very convincing. She starts crying. She says she’s so happy for him but she can’t relate to anything in that room. She doesn’t want to take away from him having fun.
Brynn tells the cameras: “He’ll be really excited about something and sometimes I’ll second guess it. I know there’s been times after he hangs out with them where he feels like, ‘I’m just kind of there and nobody ever asks me about myself. I’m always asking about their lives.’ And I don’t ever want him to feel that way because he’s just so pure.”
Sterling doesn’t want her to feel left behind. She doesn’t want him to feel invisible. They’re both trying to protect the other person, which is either the most functional dynamic in the cast or the most quietly heartbreaking, depending on the night.
Suede & Dylan
Dylan and Suede talk on the balcony. She says the door is closed, but it’s open, but it’s closed — and she also doesn’t want him going off with one of her best friends. He says let’s take a walk. She’s down.
Emma
Everyone heads to the private beach. Emma is alone on a towel.
She tells the cameras: “I’m with all these people and I feel so alone. I might as well actually be alone. It’s like a form of self-sabotage — if I cut off everybody before they can cut me off, then it didn’t count, right?”
Then she drops the episode’s quiet bombshell: Ben and his girlfriend broke up one day before the rooftop party. Emilie doesn’t know. Emma does. He asked her not to say anything. “Shit gets unfolded,” she says. “Everybody you’re hiding shit from is gonna figure out everything.” She says she may be destined to make other friends.
Ben & Emilie
On the beach, Ben tells Emilie he’s kind of falling in love with her and asks her to come visit him in New York. She says that’s when she’s supposed to say “me too.” She tells him she’s been falling in love with him too but was scared to say it because he was leaving. He tells her she has a place to stay in New York. She says she’ll take the first flight out. They kiss.
What Emilie doesn’t know is sitting twenty feet away on a towel. What Ben knows and hasn’t said is still there too. They look happy. Summer happiness is its own kind of real.
Alexie & Preston
Alexie and Preston finally talk, just the two of them. She doesn’t know why he’s been avoiding her. He says the group setting made exploring anything between them impossible. He wants to do this without everyone watching. He’s going to Miami in a few days and asks if she wants to come. She does. They’ll get one-on-one time, assess where they are, and not tell anyone. He misheard her and thought she said “we have sex from there.” They both laugh.
It took eight episodes and a beach house to get here, but Preston and Alexie finally have a plan.
The End
Hercy gathers everyone to put their feet in the water. They run around, laughing. The group that spent the whole summer on opposite sides of every fault line is suddenly, briefly, just people at the beach having a good time.
Dylan’s closing voiceover: “I was hesitant coming back into a group of people who knew a version of me, worried if they were going to let me breathe or hold me to it. I learned a lot about myself, about who I wanted to be. I’m in control of my fate.”
He walks over to Jemma, sitting on a towel facing the water. He sits beside her.
“Was that a fun summer?”
“Yeah, it was.”
“It really sparked some shit.”
“Yeah.”
The voiceover continues: “You don’t need to have hate in your heart or weight on your shoulders when it’s not needed. There’s no need to hold on to things that once were — just focus on what is and what can be.”
The camera pans to Suede on “once were.” It comes back to Jemma and Dylan on “what can be”, their backs to the camera, looking at the water.
The season ends.
What the Finale Is Actually About
The finale of “Calabasas Confidential” is about what you have to put down before you can move forward. Hercy had to put down the basketball dream — or at least the shape it had always taken — and figure out what else he’s made of. Jemma had to put down the version of Dylan she’d been holding onto for years, the one that was still a 17-year-old who made her feel worthless, and make room for the one sitting next to her on the beach. Dylan had to put down the guilt long enough to actually say the words out loud to the person who needed to hear them. Sterling had to figure out how to let Brynn into a world she doesn’t feel like she belongs in without making her feel left behind.
Nobody did it perfectly. All of them tried.
The show ends exactly where it started — Jemma and Dylan, no resolution that’s clean enough to frame, a summer that was exactly as messy and real as Calabasas always promised it would be.
It really did spark some shit.
Calabasas Confidential Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.
Want a refresh on past episodes?
- ‘Calabasas Confidential’ Episode 1 Recap: Everyone Gets Hungry at Midnight
- ‘Calabasas Confidential’ Episode 2: The Biggest Carnival In Alaska
- ‘Calabasas Confidential’ Episode 3: He Needs Five More Years to Cook
- ‘Calabasas Confidential’ Episode 4: I Believe In Action
- ‘Calabasas Confidential’ Episode 5: You Got the Rat
- ‘Calabasas Confidential’ Episode 6: Tell Me You Don’t Want Me
- ‘Calabasas Confidential’ Episode 7: Nobody Has Her Back
For more “Calabasas Confidential,” check out our Full Calabasas Confidential Guide here.
Want the daily reality TV drama — no spam, just the good stuff?
Subscribe
Leave a Reply