The Watcher follows the Brannocks who move into a house in Westfield and find themselves being terrorized by an unknown surveillant named The Watcher.
Created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, The Watcher is based on the story of a real-life couple – Derek and Maria Broaddus – who started receiving letters from a person named The Watcher soon after moving into their newly bought house in Westfield, New Jersey.
In the letters, the Watcher claimed to be part of a family that has been keeping watch on the house for decades. The Watcher features Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, Mia Farrow, Noma Dumezweni, and Richard Kind, among others.
The Watcher Story Summary
Dean (Bobby Cannavale) and Nora Brannock (Naomi Watts) are out with their children Ellie (Isabell Gravitt) and Carter (Luke David Blumm) to check out a new house in a posh suburban locality in Westfield.
The mansion-like house impresses the couple with its beautiful interiors and royal exteriors. The dumbwaiter particularly catches the fascination of Dean and Carter. After being mesmerized by the beauty and the royalty of the house, Dean decides to go ahead and make an offer.
Dean moves into the presumably safe house with his family, investing all his money into the house. Six weeks later, the family is still settling in when strange things start happening. It all starts with Ellie hearing some music playing. Later, to Dean and Nora’s horror, they get a letter from a man who calls himself “The Watcher”.
In the letter, the man reveals that somebody has been watching Brannocks’ house, 657 boulevard, for years. The letter informs the couple that various people over time have been assigned as the Watchers of the house, and it’s finally the turn of the letter’s author to keep a watch on the house. The Watcher particularly inquires about the kids in the house whom he refers to as “young blood”.
When the couple goes to the police station, they are told by Detective Chamberlain (Christopher McDonald) that it is probably a prank pulled by Jasper Winslow (Terry Kinney), a neighbor of Dean and Nora who’s often reported for doing weird things. The detective promises the couple that he will be getting a DNA test done on the letter and sending a patrol car by the house occasionally.
Back at home, Dean comes across the neighbors from the other day who introduce themselves as Mitch and Maureen. They hit it off on a wrong note when Dean questions Maureen for trespassing on his property. While bidding farewell, Maureen tells Dean that she will be keeping an eye on Dean.
On lunch with Karen, Nora reveals that she and Dean have been going through financial troubles after making some bad investments. Karen is an old friend of Nora who also works at the real estate company that listed the house at 657 boulevard. Nora also tells Karen about the letter she received and shares her suspicions about the sender being one of the interested buyers.
Meanwhile, things hit a high at the house when Jasper is found riding the dumbwaiter after entering the house without permission. Dean gets into an argument with Jasper’s caretaker Pearl Winslow (Mia Farrow) when Dean threatens Jasper. Pearl, who is a member of the Preservation Society, argues with Dean for planning to make changes to the pristine and historic house. Like Maureen, Pearl also tells him that she will be keeping watch on Dean.
Deciding to hike the security, Dean and Nora hire Dakota (H. Hunter Hall) who runs a small security alarm company and offers a great price for the camera system. While surveilling the property, Dakota also gets into a flirty encounter with Ellie. Later that night, somebody breaks into the house and kills Carter’s pet ferret. When asked to do something about it, Detective Chamberlain merely offers an increase in the frequency of patrols around the house.
With the safety system in place, the family starts feeling a bit safer than before. But the feeling doesn’t last for too long as another letter from the Watcher comes the family’s way. This time, The Watcher reveals how he has been controlling the house for more than two decades and has been responsible for the departure of the past three families who lived there. When he enquires about the kids and their whereabouts, it sends Dean into a frenzy. The Watcher keeps calling Ellie and Carter “young blood”, worrying Dean and Nora about their kids’ safety.
At this point, Chamberlain suggests that Dean list the house in order to bait the one who’s writing the letters to scare the Brannocks – an idea that Dean hates. Instead, Dean hires the jazz singer-turned-private eye, Theodora Birch (Noma Dumezweni), who’s also suffering from cancer.
Also, Dean and Nora decide that Nora and the kids will be sleeping at a local motel nearby and Dean will be staying in the house for some weeks while the house’s renovation is in progress. On the first night itself, Dean wakes up abruptly when somebody rings the bell, only to find nobody there. At the motel, Nora also gets a blank call with only the sound of a man’s breathing coming from the other side. Unbeknownst to the couple, the call to Nora’s room came from Boulevard 657.
Through Theodora, Dean meets Andrew – a former resident of the house – who went through the same ordeal as the Brannocks. He also noticed strange occurrences around the house and received letters from a man called the Watcher. Moreover, Andrew’s son claimed to have witnessed a ritual at Mitch and Maureen’s. Andrew’s son saw a group of old people drinking blood from the slit throat of a baby. Things got worse to the point that Andrew’s wife killed herself even after moving out of the house.
The renovation gets started at the house, drawing the ire of Maureen who gets irritated with the noise. Dean suffers a shock at work when the expected promotion at work doesn’t come in. The next day, Dean and Nora find out that Mitch and Maureen killed themselves, blaming Dean’s threats for their actions in the suicide letter. In the night, Dean wakes up from the alarm that goes off when Jasper trespasses on his property.
Dean continues to investigate the strange occurrences with the help of Theodora who informs him about Jasper’s history. Jasper used to be completely fine until September 1995 when something happened to him, and he went mute suddenly.
Karen attempts to convince Nora to sell her house and convince Dean for the same. Although hesitatingly, Nora decides to talk to Dean. On the other hand, Ellie tries to hide her relationship with Dakota from her father. But Dean eventually comes to know about Ellie’s relationship from a man named John, who claims to be the building inspector. However, he finds out later that there is no building inspector named John in the city. Peculiarly, before leaving, John does ask Dean to start going to the church.
Meanwhile, Theodora has dug into the history of the house on 657 boulevard and found some crucial information from police files that she arranged with the help of Chamberlain. She finds out that the Graff family headed by one John Graff (Joe Mantello) lived in the house until 1995. Soon after moving into the house, John Graff lost his job – a fact that he hid from his family by stealing money from his mother’s account.
John kept the façade but soon he started getting letters from the Watcher. Just like Dean, John Graff’s relationship with his wife and daughter was tarnished. The lack of physical intimacy between John and his wife and his daughter Pat’s growing inclination towards boys was a concern for John.
Things changed for the worse when John one day killed his entire family. Before doing so, John cut himself from all the family photos. The dead bodies were found days later with all the blood drained from the bodies. In the basement, empty bottles used to store the blood were found. John was never seen again. It was Jasper Winslow who found the dead bodies in 1995. On hearing about Theodora’s findings, Dean quickly realizes that John Graff was the same man who visited his house pretending to be the building inspector.
Nora and the kids return to the house as the work in the kitchen is finished. After Nora also discovers the house’s history, Dean and Nora try to find out more from the real estate company that listed the house. However, the owner denies having any such information.
As Dean’s obsession with the investigations grows, the distance between him and his family does too. Dean discusses selling the house with Nora and Theodora as he suspects that John Graff is the one who’s writing letters to him. However, Theodora rubbishes the theory because she has found out that Dakota uses the name ‘The Watcher’ while playing video games.
Dean also finds out about the pictures that Ellie and Dakota have been exchanging. He grounds Ellie and confronts Dakota about harassing his family as the Watcher. Dakota agrees to give his DNA sample to match it with the DNA on the letters and prove that he is innocent. To get back on his father, Ellie records a video and releases it on the internet claiming that her father is a racist who’s against her relationship with an African American.
At work, Dean’s boss receives a video in which Dean can be seen sleeping while a young girl roams around the room. When Dean sees the video, he realizes that the girl is Pat Graff, who died in 1995. Nora also receives the same video. Dean realizes that Dakota fixed a camera in Dean’s bedroom to keep an eye on him as he suspected that Dean could be the Watcher. But upon questioning him, Dakota denies setting up the girl and only agrees to setting up the camera in the bedroom.
When an angry Nora asks Dean to leave the house, Dean sets up camp outside the house to keep an eye on his family. To his shock, Dean witnesses Mitch and Maureen, who were presumed to be dead, returning to their house. Nora looks up Dean’s phone records and discovers that the call to the motel came from the house. She concludes that Dean is the one who is writing the letters so that Nora agrees to sell the unaffordable house.
Theodora goes on to gather evidence to substantiate Nora’s claims and finds that Dean invested all the money into the house and took a loan above that to renovate the kitchen and the basement. Moreover, he also got passed on for the promotion to partner his firm. From Pearl, Nora gets the information that Mo and Maureen never died. At a luncheon, Maureen reveals the truth to Pearl and Nora that she put up the whole suicide act to cover up a murder that their son Christopher did to get insurance money. Maureen also reveals to Nora and Pearl that she suspected Christopher to be the writer of the letters when she came to know them first.
On the contrary, Pearl reveals her suspicions about Jasper being the writer as five years ago she received a letter with the title ‘Ode to a house’. Back then, Pearl suspected that Jasper wrote the letter to prevent the repainting of the house. On the same note, Pearl suspected that Jasper wrote the letters to the Brannocks as well.
Dakota helps Dean to prove his case in front of Nora. According to the video footage from the house’s security cameras, it is proved that the girl in the video appeared out of nowhere as she cannot be seen entering the house. However, Dean agrees that he wrote the last letter to get himself out of the loan by selling the house. Setting the differences aside momentarily, Nora decides to investigate more about the Watcher.
The DNA test reveals that the letter was written by a female. Dean is welcomed back into the house, and Nora and Dean continue their investigation into the identity of the Watcher. The couple deduces that the writer could be someone who could gain from the house’s sale.
The next day, Karen calls Nora to convey that an LLC is ready to buy the house at USD 1.9 million, which is way lower than the USD 3.3 million paid by Nora and Dean. On a visit to the Country Club, Nora finds Karen with Detective Chamberlain. Nora and Dean confront Karen and Chamberlain for setting up the whole plot to make them sell the house at a lower rate. According to Dean and Nora’s theory, Chamberlain shared the history of the house with Karen, who in turn pretended to be the Watcher to make the Brannocks sell the house cheap.
Back home, from the information Nora shared with Ellie, Ellie digs out that ‘Ode to a house’ is a Facebook group full of students from Westfield High School. ‘Ode to a house’ is a much-loved assignment in which the students were asked to write a love letter to a house they loved. It was given by the English teacher and Westfield resident Roger Kaplan. On seeing Roger, Nora quickly identifies that Roger Kaplan was at the house on the Open Day. He was one of the visitors to the house on the day Dean and Nora first visited the house.
The conversation is interrupted when Dean and Nora are asked by the contractor to have a look at a secret tunnel that his team found while renovating the basement. In the tunnel, Dean and Nora come across a mysterious figure who runs away at seeing the couple. They also find a secret lair, confirming that somebody was living there all this while.
The Watcher Ending Explained
Chamberlain shoos away Dean and Nora when they approach the detective to investigate the mysterious man after the accusations the couple made against him the other day. Dean and Nora now turn to Theodora for help.
Theodora has talked to Roger’s ex-wife. Theodora reveals to Nora and Dean that Roger Kaplan lived an unfortunate childhood in a small house, but his love for the houses in the suburban area’s posher side was pretty much known. His obsession with the various houses that he had seen since his childhood was such that he was devastated when he couldn’t buy a house that he loved a lot.
Working at Westfield High School, Roger created the ‘Ode to a house’ assignment out of his love for the many beautiful houses in Westfield. Post-retirement, Roger started writing letters to 55 Oak Terrace. He sent one letter each year for ten years until one day the tone of his letter changed to that of anger. From the next letter onwards, the letters started coming under the name of the Watcher. As the owners knew about Roger Kaplan’s ‘Ode to a house’, Roger was the prime suspect, but the police refused to do anything about it.
Was Roger Kaplan The Watcher?
Dean, Nora, and Theodora pay a visit to 55 Oak Terrace to talk to Carol Flannagan, the owner of the house. Carol reveals that she stopped getting the letters one day after she discovered that she was being watched. Although Carol did not see the face of the man, Carol did shout at Roger assuming it was him.
Theodora stops Dean from confronting Roger Kaplan for threatening his family as the Watcher. Nora and Dean decide to tail Roger to find some evidence against him. In a supermarket, Nora and Dean confront Roger, but Roger denies all allegations, claiming that he was at the open house only because an old friend of his who lived at the house died.
The next day, Dean and Nora find Roger standing in front of their property to get back on the couple for publicly humiliating him in front of his wife. He promises that he will be watching them from thereon.
At Pearl’s house, a meeting of the Preservation Society convenes. Pearl and Jasper are present at the meeting along with the man who appeared at Dean’s house claiming to be John Graff. It appears that the unnamed man has been just keeping surveillance on the houses of the neighborhood to note any transformations the house owners could have been bringing upon their houses. Dean tries to search Pearl’s house to find where the tunnel in his house led to, but he only manages to get his hands on a hint that somebody else is also there with Jasper and Pearl.
After failing to uncover the identity of The Watcher, Dean and Nora finally decide to pack their bags and leave. They list the house and find a buyer who’s ready to buy the house at a higher price than what the Brannocks paid.
But the sale gets awry when the buyer backs out owing to an article sponsored by Karen, who wants to take revenge on the Brannocks for humiliating her. Over the following weeks, Dean and Nora find it difficult to attract any buyers as the string of malicious articles continue. However, Nora finds some success at work as her art show gets completely sold out.
In the meanwhile, Theodora is in the hospital because her cancer has relapsed with greater vigor. Nora, on the other hand, becomes worries as Dean’s obsession with the Watcher continues as he remains adamant about finding the person responsible for everything.
In a fit of anger, Dean ends up writing letters as the Watcher to all his neighbors who were earlier considered to be suspects. When Nora gets around this revelation, she asks Dean to go and apologize to everyone he wrote a letter to.
Does Dean Find Out Who Was Behind The Letters?
Later, Theodora asks Dean to visit her at the hospital and reveals that she was the previous owner of the house on Boulevard 657. She goes on to tell Dean that she bought the house after her divorced husband’s death. As she did not have to pay her husband’s alimony anymore, she saved the money and bought the house.
But everything was snatched away from Theodora when she was diagnosed with cancer. Theodora was forced to sell the house as she needed to consult an expensive oncologist from Mexico. However, it was after the sale that Theodora realized her late partner had hidden away USD 1.4 million in royalties. The realization dawned upon Theodora that she never needed to sell the house in the first place.
Theodora wanted to lay her hands again on the house she dearly loved, but to do that, she had to convince the Brannocks to sell the house. Theodora, who had also received the ‘Ode to a house’ letter from one of the Westfield High School’s students during her time in the house, decided to use the identity of the Watcher to scare the Brannocks. Even John Graff was a person conjured by Theodora’s imagination.
Further, Theodora easily planted the ideas in the mind of Andrew Pierce, the former owner who was a known addict, by suggesting unreal facts. She clears the name of Chamberlain and Karen also. Theodora admits that she pretended to be the Watcher to get her house back.
Why Did Theodora Say She Was The Watcher?
Dean shares the information with Nora, who gets shocked at the betrayal she received at the hands of Theodora. But Dean finds out quickly that Theodora was lying when Maureen, who’s widowed now, confirms to Dean that no Black person lived on Boulevard 657.
Although Theodora passes away, Dean and Nora talk to Theodora’s daughter who informs the couple that Theodora took the blame to give the couple peace. Soon after, Dean and Nora decide to accept an offer for the house and move away from Westfield.
Another meeting of the Westfield Preservation Society convenes at Pearl’s house with some new members present. The new members include Maureen and Roger Kaplan. In the meeting, the third unnamed member of the society introduces himself as William Webster aka Bill. Roger Kaplan quickly identifies Bill, but Bill attempts to dodge a conversation about his past.
Dean and Nora have moved out of their old house, and Nora discovers that the new buyer is Karen, who was pushing Nora to sell the house from the first day. Nora confronts Karen for plotting everything although Karen denies all the allegations. On a departing note, Nora tells Karen that she will be watching her.
Karen later disappoints her new neighbors Maureen and Pearl when they show up on her doorsteps with some baked goods. At the night, Karen receives a blank call and feels unsafe in her own house as she suspects an intruder. She even tries calling Chamberlain for help, but he refuses as things did not end well with him.
What Was The Real Identity Of The Watcher?
In the middle of the night, Karen wakes up from the sound of the dumbwaiter coming up. She finds a letter from the Watcher in the dumbwaiter. In the letter, the Watcher welcomes Karen to her new house in the same fashion he welcomed the other owners. Karen leaves the house in the middle of the night when she sees the dead body of her dog along with a man who emerges from behind the stairs.
It’s revealed later in a conversation between Dean and his therapist that Karen sold the house only 48 hours after she moved into it. Dean has been visiting the therapist for help to move on from the house. However, Dean continues to find it a difficult task.
In the end, a new family is seen moving into the house on Boulevard 657. Just like when the Brannocks moved in, all the people associated with the house continue to keep an eye over the property. The list of surveillants includes – Pearl Winslow, Jasper Winslow, William Webster, Maureen, Roger Kaplan, and Andrew Pierce. Interestingly, among the watchers is also Dean Brannock, who stands outside the house looking at its magnificent beauty.
When the house’s new owner greets Dean, he introduces himself as John, finally becoming part of the story that haunts the house. On a phone call with Nora, Dean hides the information that he has been still lurking around the house, which has become an obsession for him. Unbeknownst to Dean, Nora has been following Dean to keep an eye on him.
In the end, the case of the Watcher remains unsolved as the identity of the author of the letters remains unknown.
The Watcher is now streaming on Netflix.
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