‘Mare of Easttown’ theories: Every fan seems to have at least one

ADVISORY: This article may include spoilers for the first six episodes of HBO’s Mare of Easttown.

Mare of Easttown viewers are a suspicious lot.

In the six weeks since the HBO drama first showed us the lifeless body of beleaguered single mother Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny), the keyboard detectives of the internet have accused nearly every character within 25 miles of a Wawa of killing her and/or fathering her baby, from Guy Pearce’s washed-up novelist Richard Ryan to Jean Smart’s delightfully devious Helen Fahey.

At least one fan was somehow convinced that Kate Winslet’s Mare Sheehan was investigating a crime she’d committed herself.

And if you thought a little thing like one character’s apparent confession on Sunday night was going to end all the speculation about Berwyn native Brad Ingelsby’s Delco-centric whodunit, well, you probably also think Rolling Rock is a Spotify musical genre.

Sunday’s “Sore Must Be the Storm,” the last episode before next week’s finale, does seem to have narrowed the field of suspects, though. (The title comes from the Emily Dickinson poem, “Hope” Is the thing with feathers. Hope is also the thing that’s led some to believe that Winslet might somehow be lured back to Philly for another season of wrestling with Mare’s impossible O’s, something that seems unlikely to happen.)

On the spoiler thread for Facebook’s 2,000-member HBO Mare of Easttown Fan Group and a similar thread on Reddit, the focus following the most recent episode was largely on members of the Ross family. Few appear to think that Billy (Robbie Tann) is both the killer and the father of Erin’s baby, with suspicion for paternity, and maybe the murder, also resting on his brother, John (Joe Tippett), whom many believe to be setting up a befuddled Billy.

Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson, who’s had her eye on John for a while, is now worried about what might happen to Billy in the finale, “Sacrament.”

Young Ryan Ross (Cameron Mann), a popular choice for the killer after earlier episodes, no longer seems to be a top suspect.

But Lori Ross (Julianne Nicholson), John’s wife and Mare’s best friend, continues to have her adherents, and not just because John being the father of Erin’s baby might have given her motive to want Erin dead. She’s one of the people whose involvement would hurt Mare most, and then there’s the Law & Order theory: You don’t waste talent and name recognition on innocent bystanders.

The L&O theory probably doesn’t work, though, on a show like Mare of Easttown, which has attracted a lot of top talent. Pearce, whom British GQ last week declared to be “definitely the murderer,” definitely would be on NBC: He’s the very model of a Law & Order franchise perp. In Easttown, though, his Richard Ryan might just be who he says he is — a nice guy with some emotional miles on him who just wants to take Mare out. On a date.

Pearce, after all, won an Emmy playing opposite Winslet in Mildred Pierce. He doesn’t actually have to kill anyone for this job.

It’s probably worth remembering what Winslet herself said about Mare. “Her determination to love and take care of the people in her life who mean the most to her came before everything else. And I loved that about her. That, to me, made this not just a small-town murder story.”

Perhaps the tensest moments in Sunday’s episode had nothing (probably) to do with the death of Erin McMenamin, as Mare’s grandson, Drew (Izzy King), was being given a bath by his overtired mother, Carrie (Sosie Bacon), and appeared to slip beneath the water. (He’s fine! We think.)

In an interview before the show premiered in April, Ingelsby, the show’s creator, talked about his love for Broadchurch and Happy Valley, two British dramas that featured women police officers in smallish towns.

“They both have a really compelling mystery. … But I think what I admire about the writing of those shows is that they never lose empathy, kindness, compassion” for their characters, Ingelsby said.

“I hope the mystery works” in Mare of Easttown, he said. “But I hope what they [viewers] walk away from the show remembering is Mare and Helen and Siobhan (Angourie Rice) and Lori and the friendships and the bonds that are formed.”