Poker Face Finale Introduces Charlie’s Ultimate Nemesis in a Shocking Reveal — Plus, Grade It!
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Poker Face’s Season 2 finale.
Poker Face’s Charlie Cale just met her match.
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Thursday’s Season 2 finale picks up right where we left off, with Charlie and her oyster-shucking pal Alex heading to find mob boss Beatrix Hasp, who’s in witness protection. But as FBI agent Luca warns them, they’re actually leading The Iguana —aka “the world’s greatest assassin” —right to Beatrix’s doorstep. If Charlie blows Beatrix’s cover, she’ll spend the rest of her life in federal prison, Luca warns. But we all know Charlie doesn’t give up that easily.
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R16e4kr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R26e4kr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframeWhen she and Alex stop at a roadside diner, she’s paranoid that every person she passes could be The Iguana in disguise. Beatrix testifies in two weeks, so they just need to stay safe until then, Charlie decides. But then Charlie spots a dude at the counter nursing a hand wound… the same wound The Iguana had at the wedding reception. She and Alex make a run for it, screaming for help, and they drive off as a group of guys beat up on the wounded dude. He even yelled “oyster girl” after them as they ran, so he must be The Iguana, right? Well…
Poker Face Season 2 Finale Patti Harrison AlexWhile Luca tries to convince his superiors to give up Beatrix’s secret location, Charlie is already there, pulling up outside of a house in suburban Indiana. (Alex offers her a stick of Big Red gum first, taking one herself.) When Charlie knocks on the door, there’s no answer, so she sneaks around the side… and spots blood dripping from a dead cop on the roof. And when she runs back to the car, Alex has vanished. She makes her way into the backyard and into the house, passing several more dead cops on the way —and then finding Beatrix inside with a bullet in her forehead. A terrified Alex emerges with a gun held to her head, but Charlie isn’t surprised: “Hey skank, cut the s–t. Come on out. I know who you are.”
It turns out Alex was just holding the gun to her own head —she’s The Iguana! Charlie remembers her saying she had a severe cinnamon allergy, and yet she was able to chew Big Red. So she can lie, and Charlie can’t tell?! Charlie decides Alex must be “the world’s biggest sociopath,” and Alex tells her all about her life as an assassin, seducing victims and killing royalty. But by the time she murdered a CEO in his underground safehouse in Alaska, she realized: She was bored. She almost gave up the assassin life altogether, but then she got a call about a mob boss who needed to be silenced… and her associate, who’s a human lie detector.
Alex took that as a challenge, tracking Charlie down and testing to see if she could lie to her, suppressing all of her body’s natural reactions so Charlie wouldn’t catch on. It worked, and it made Alex feel alive again: “Lying to you was like great sex. I assume. I don’t really do physical pleasure.” She took advantage of Charlie’s do-gooder nature, and later hired the world’s second-best assassin to kill Kirby at his wedding —before killing the assassin herself. (Oh, and she slashed that guy’s hand at the diner and asked him if he wanted an oyster to frame him as The Iguana.) She calls Charlie “the greatest challenge of my career,” adding: “I really wish I didn’t have to kill you.” But she’s interrupted by a fire alarm: Charlie turned up the heat on a saucepan on the stove, starting a fire and alerting the authorities!
Poker Face Season 2 Finale LucaLuca sees the alarm and sends a barrage of cops to Beatrix’s house, knowing Charlie and the killer must be there. Alex holds Charlie hostage at gunpoint, peeling out in Charlie’s Barracuda with the cops in hot pursuit. Alex tells Charlie she already fooled “the closest thing I’ll have to a nemesis,” so what’s left? “This is the end of the road,” she declares as she speeds towards a deadly cliff. But Charlie tells her she doesn’t think Alex can actually lie to her now: “You’ve never done it when I’m trying to catch you, and I don’t think you can.”
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R1ee4kr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R2ee4kr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframeSo Alex tests her with a game of 2 Truths and a Lie, offering to stop the car if Charlie wins. She tells Charlie she once had a dog named Puddles, she’s double-jointed, and “I’m gonna drive us off this cliff no matter who wins this game.” Charlie says the first two are true, and the last one is “bulls–t.” She’s right, Alex concedes, and she hits the brakes —but the Barracuda’s brakes don’t work! (Charlie curses her crappy old car.) They soar over the cliff and into the air, Thelma & Louise-style, and we get a freeze-frame, along with the words: “To Be Continued.” Huh???
Thankfully, we don’t have to wait for a possible Season 3 to find out what happens: We rewind back to the car heading over the cliff, and Charlie manages to bail out before it makes the jump, clinging to the side of the cliff for dear life. Luca helps pull her up to safety, and they’re both pretty sure Alex bailed out, too. (Sure enough, the wrecked car is empty.) Luca warns Charlie that she aided and abetted a known murderer and got a government witness killed: “You’re officially wanted by the FBI.” He gives her a head start, though, along with his FBI jacket, and after they say a tearful goodbye, Charlie hits the road again, picking up a dog along the way and hitching a ride with a trucker. When he asks her where she’s headed, she replies, “That’s a deceptively profound question.” Well, for Charlie Cale, it sure is.
Give the Poker Face finale —and Season 2 as a whole —a grade in our polls, and then hit the comments to share your thoughts.
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