The Affair Finale Recap: Montauk Fairy Tale (S5 E11)

The final episode of The Affair was the stuff fairy tales are made of with the Solloway family mending their traumas in the same place that they began. Joanie Lockhart came to terms with her demons in Montauk as well.

Whitney marries Colin

It was Whitney’s wedding but it was really about Noah and Helen. Noah — the pariah, the uninvited — helped everyone. He organized the flashmob intended to surprise Whitney with everyone (including Sierra and her beau, Leif) dancing to the tune of “The Whole of the Moon.” Eldest son Martin was there as well and Noah helped him with suggestions for his speech. Colin’s father got arrested in Belfast for getting drunk so Noah arranged another flight to get Colin’s mom to the wedding. He corralled a wandering Bruce and pretended to be Bruce’s kid brother to get him back inside. Then when Helen alerted him that Whitney was on the way, he dutifully left and went back to his room at the Memory Motel.

The glowing bride was quite incensed when she learned her father handled the guest list. She insulted her mother and unleashed a stream of profanities on her grandmother. Honestly, she would have been saying her “I do’s” with a big red handprint on her face back in the day. Helen did get mad when Whitney informed her that she was only invited because of “the optics.” But Helen turned that into a little heart-to-heart in which Whitney admitted that she wasn’t even sure that she really loved Colin. These were some of the moments throughout the episode that really fell flat. Most mothers would strenuously urge her not to go through with the wedding upon hearing that.

At some point, Helen decided that she would rather be with Noah then at the wedding and she slipped away. While dancing with her brother, Martin, Whitney decided that she really missed Noah and she arranged a diversion with her suddenly lucid grandfather. He pretended to fall in the pool. Whitney, her new husband and her siblings took off to the Memory Motel where Whitney observed her parents in bed together through a wide open curtain. Whereas several hours ago, she would have had an invective-laden hissy fit nonpareil, this was now okay. Four kids (and a new son-in-law) who all want the toxic parents to get back together. How rare is that?

Joanie was running out of gas in her storyline and she just happened to be doing that near the Lobster Roll, so she dropped in for some coffee and scrambled eggs. The virtually empty diner was manned by none other than a very old Noah. He could see that Joanie was in a state and tried to draw her into a conversation. He noticed that she was reading “Montauk”, a book we later learned was written by his daughter, Stacey. Joanie said she was “loosely connected” to the author, making Noah suspect who she was. She tried to blow Noah off politely but his continued commentary led her to this angry outburst: “Mister, I just found out that my mom’s boyfriend murdered her 30 years ago and got away with it, so I don’t need your f***ing advice.” Now he knew who she was but she stormed off home and got out Cole’s shotgun, determined to give Ben his just desserts.

E.J. showed up and talked her out of such stupidity, suggesting instead that they run off together to Vienna and leave the past behind, including the husband he just found out she has. Joanie was going to go, too, but E.J. (Eddie James Ullah) confessed that he was “loosely connected” to her: “My mother is your mother’s ex-husband’s ex-wife’s new partner’s lover.” So yeah, he is Sierra and Vik’s kid. Joanie also found out from E.J. that the buttinsky in the diner was Noah. She went back there and Noah was just full of sage revelations, including filling her in on some stuff that Cole did not tell her — like how Cole and Luisa tried to get full custody of her and humiliated Alison. Noah urged her to go back to her husband and kids with his insight on E.J.’s trauma-through-the-generations stuff: “if trauma and pain can echo through generations, then so can love. If abandonment can ripple across time, then so can presence.” It’s nothing new anyhow and is referred to as “breaking the cycle” often enough. Joanie returned to her husband and her children to try to do that.

In the final scenes, Noah read Stacey’s book out loud at Helen’s grave. You know you really can’t tell how old someone was when they died from a gravestone that only gives years because you don’t know if they died before or after their birthday, but Helen was 78 or 79 when she expired. Buried next to her was her dad, Bruce, who died in 2024 at 74 or 75. And her mom, Margaret, was there too. She died at 99 or 100, the same year as Helen, who obviously remarried Noah since her headstone said “Helen Kathleen Solloway.” Noah then hobbled off to a cliff to relive his flash mob memories.

Other notes:

• Sasha sent a big flower wall to the wedding with this Victor Hugo quote: “Life is a flower for which love is the honey.” Sasha attributed it to Balzac so Noah called him an a$$hole when he read the card.

• Joanie’s “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life” quote was from “Casablanca” (1942). She said it was Alison’s favorite film.

• Presumably, Noah was 80-something in his “old” scenes. He had a hearing aid and walked with a cane. Noah told Joanie he moved to Montauk after Whitney’s wedding “which was 30 years ago now.”