In The Watcher, husband and wife Dean (Bobby Cannavale) and Nora Brannock (Naomi Watts) team up with private detective Theodora Birch (Noma Dumezweni) to find out who is sending them disturbing threatening letters to their newly acquired dream home. As with the real case on which the series is loosely based, the investigations here go in circles to no avail. There is always someone new who is held responsible for the letters, only to have reasonable doubts about them.
In one case, however, a suspicion is expressed that actually turns out to be correct. However, the derivation of this is not really foolproof if you take a closer look at the series. We want to explain why below, but Warning, there are spoilers for “The Watcher” to follow!
The problem with the K
To move closer to a solution to the Watcher case, Theodora had an expert analyze the handwriting on the three envelopes the Brannock family received from the unknown person. This one stood out that the letter K in Brannock’s name on the third cover has an unusual bow, which is not visible on the first two covers. Theodora Nora shows this in detail again on the basis of the original cover.
By comparing an old Valentine’s Day card from Nora’s husband Dean, who wrote the K there in exactly the same way, the detective concludes that the third letter was written by Dean. (and thus by someone other than the first two). As Dean later admits, that’s actually true. He copied the Guardian’s approach to convince Nora to sell the new house and end the nightmare.
What’s even more amazing is that the said K on the fake Watcher cover didn’t originally feature Dean’s signature bow at all! If Nora takes the letter out of the letterbox two episodes before the Dean reveal (i.e. in episode 3) and we can get a good look at the letters on the envelope, there’s still no trace of that loop:
Could the K’s sudden change in appearance indicate that Theodora has tampered with the envelope and is trying to frame Dean? After all, you can hardly trust anyone in “The Watcher”. That wouldn’t make sense in this case though, Dean even admits his crime, as mentioned before. The much more likely explanation is that the creators around successful producers Ryan Murphy there was just a connection error here, such as there are plenty in the film and series landscape. It may seem small and easily overlooked by many viewers. But since this is such an integral part of plot and character development, it’s also a bit tedious.
In the meantime, even if in the real Watcher case there was also a suspicion that the terrorized family might actually be behind the letters themselves, the three real letters most likely all came from the Watcher, with the third having a very different content than its counterpart in the serial adjustment. We’ve summarized more background on the shockingly real case here: