Spoilers ahead for Netflix‘s Ripley. It’s a mystery that hasn’t been truly solved for decades. Here’s if Tom Ripley gets caught in Ripley for killing Dickie in the new Netflix series.
The eight-episode show depicts Tom Ripley as a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder. The drama series is based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling Tom Ripley novels.
“People have a lot of preconceptions about Tom Ripley,” Andrew Scott said about his character to Netflix’s Tudum. “So it’s my job, I suppose in some ways, to ignore all that and try to create our own particular version of it.”
Tom Ripley takes up the job to convince Dickie Greenleaf to come back home from Italy but ends up becoming obsessed with his lifestyle to the point of mimicking and assuming the identity of Dickie’s life with his girlfriend Marge Sherwood. Tom Ripley jumps through various ways to con his way through life, but can he escape the woes of his own flaws and even murder?
Does Tom Ripley Get Caught in Ripley For Killing Dickie?
In a way, yes but also no. After harsh consideration, Tom goes back to using his original identity after using Dickie’s for quite a while. Tom then has a tough time with paranoia and turns himself to the police when he returns to Venice as he thinks they would suspect him to be a person of interest. He also fends off suspicion from Marge and Dickie’s father.
Tom puts up a disguise to Inspector Ravini and after a lot of manipulating, the Inspector proposes that Dickie actually killed himself, leaving Tom Ripley to be free. Upon the last scene of the series, Inspector Ravini receives a copy of Marge’s book My Atrani which includes a dedication to Dickie. “for Richard Greenleaf with whom I shared my waking dream,” the note read. Right below is picture of Dickie—the real Dickie Greenleaf. Inspector Ravini closely examines the picture, and realizes it’s not the Dickie Greenleaf that he interview.
So in the end, Tom Ripley walks free from all the crimes he has committed. But will the paranoia eventually end?
How did Tom Ripley kill Dickie?
Tom Ripley strikes Dickie with an oar on the boat until he’s dead and bleeding. The conman then shuffles through Dickie’s belongings and intricately discards his body.
“Tom comes in and has these ideas about the depth of their friendship versus the connection that Dickie and Marge have,” Johnny Flynn, who plays Dickie told Netflix Tudum. “He wants something more. He wants to be him, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.”
Ripley returns to mainland Italy and takes over Dickie’s identity, and skillfully dodges ways in which he could get caught by the Italian police. In the process, Tom ends up killing Freddie Miles, a friend of Dickie’s who got too suspicious of Tom. He disposes of his body outside of Rome and eventually goes back to his old identity.
Ripley is now available to stream on Netflix.
