‘East of Eden’ Ending Explained: What Happens to Florence Pugh’s Cathy, Cal & Aron, and What Does ‘Timshel’ Mean?
What happens to Cathy at the end of East of Eden?
Cathy, played by Florence Pugh, dies near the end of the series.
Earlier in the story, Cathy marries Adam and gives birth to their twin sons, Cal and Aron.
However, she does not want to stay with the family. She shoots Adam and leaves, later taking the name Kate.
She eventually runs a brothel, where she becomes increasingly cruel and controlling.
As the series reaches its end, Cathy becomes increasingly afraid that people will discover she killed Faye, the former owner of her brothel.
She begins thinking about her childhood and the events that helped shape her life. In her final scenes, she imagines speaking to Charles, who had passed away years earlier. She also sees a younger version of herself.
Cathy ultimately takes her own life.
In an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, Florence explained that the scene brings Cathy back to the age when she first experienced abuse.
“The beginning of it all, the beginning of not being listened to, the beginning of not being believed, the beginning of being abused, created the knock-on effect that allowed her to make the decisions that she did throughout her whole life,” she said.
The series suggests something terrible happened to Cathy when she was five years old, but it never fully explains what took place.
Zoe Kazan explained her own interpretation of those events.
“In the book, Steinbeck really blames Cathy for those things and uses them as evidence of her evil nature. I see it really differently,” she said.
What happens to Cal and Aron?
Cal and Aron are Cathy’s twin sons, played by Joseph Zada and Joe Anders.
Both boys grow up believing their mother is no longer alive. However, Cal eventually discovers the truth and visits Cathy at her brothel.
The meeting leaves Cal afraid that he might become like his mother.
Later, Cal tries to help his father by giving him money he earned investing in soybeans. Adam refuses the money because Cal made it by taking advantage of wartime demand.
Upset by his father’s reaction, Cal reveals the truth about their mother to Aron. Aron visits Cathy at her brothel and is devastated by the discovery.
“That moment of meeting his mother is so horrific in his eyes,” Joe told Tudum.
“I think it’s also an awful turning point for Cathy, in her realizing what she’s really done and the misuse of the power that she thinks she has. That facade of Aron thinking that he’s older than he is, is completely broken by the fact that he is a motherless child.”
Aron leaves college and joins the army, where he is later killed during World War I.
Cal feels responsible for what happened to his brother.