‘Smoke’ Ending Explained: Do Gudsen Or Calderone Go Down For Their Crimes?

After Smoke Episode 8’s jaw-dropping twist, I fully expected the Season 1 finale of Dennis Lehane’s fiery Apple TV+ drama to bring the heat, But hear me when I say that nothing prepared me for one of the wildest, most exhilarating, outrageous television episodes of the year.

When we last left Smoke, Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) shocked viewers and herself by accidentally killing her ex Steven Burk (Rafe Spall), setting fire to his house, and framing her arsonist partner Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) for the crimes.

She planted a glove that Dave left in her car at the scene and sped away in hopes that investigators would find his DNA and they could finally put him away for years of arson. But if there’s one thing we know about Gudsen, it’s that he never goes down without a fight…

Smoke Episode 9, “Mirror Mirror” (aka the Season 1 finale), shows Calderone desperately trying to cover her tracks, Gudsen scrambling to save face as those around him close in on the truth, and the partners fan the flames of their fiery feud.

In need of a Smoke Season 1 finale recap? Curious how Smoke Season 1, Episode 9 ends? Does Gudsen go down for his arson crimes? And does Calderone survive the season without anyone questioning her coverup? Buckle up (IYKYK) Smoke fans, you’re in for one heck of a ride.

Smoke Ending Explained: Does Calderone Get Caught Or Take Gudsen Down?

Each of Smoke‘s installments kicks off with a timely definition, and Episode 9, “Mirror Mirror,” teases what’s to come with “Conflagration: a large and destructive fire that causes devastation; a conflict.” Both definitions apply, but before the showdowns and blazes, we pick up the morning after Burk’s house goes up in flames.

Calderone sits in bed replaying the fire, memories of Burk, and her own traumatic experience with her mom. Meanwhile, Captain Pearson (Amy Carlson) meets with Harvey (Greg Kinnear), Esposito (John Leguizamo), and Agent Hudson (Anna Chlumsky) at the scene of the crime and reveals Burk’s charred remains were found in the entryway. She asks about the task force, their suspicions about Gudsen, and who else she should speak with. Naturally, Calderone is summoned to the scene, and when Harvey confronts her with care — well aware that she and Burk were romantically involved — she acts shocked and devastated by the loss.

While Calderone waits to chat with Pearson, she sees an officer mark the glove with Gudsen’s DNA as evidence. For a moment, it seems everything is going according to plan. But then, she clocks it: a security camera on the roof of Burk’s neighbor’s house that most definitely caught her every move that night. Before she can fully process the pickle, Pearson questions her, reveals Burk was a close friend, and assures her whoever torched his house is in for a shit storm. The good news? Burk’s neighbor is out of town! The bad news? Calderone has to call in a favor. She buys a burner, dials her brother Benji (Mishka Thébaud), and asks him to take care of the security cam.

Another thing Calderone doesn’t take into account when framing Gudsen? The fact that Esposito and Hudson were staking out his ex wife Reba’s house all night and swear he never left. As Gudsen watches the news at Reba’s that morning, he realizes he’s about to be framed, and his defense falls apart when Reba refuses to be his alibi. With the cards stacked against him, Dave heads to work to deny the crime to Harvey’s face. Finally, Harvey drops the act, reveals Burk was days away from pinning 20 fires on him, and says he’s confident Dave lit one blaze that killed a kid. Gudsen threatens to take Harvey down with him, then heads to his office to greet Calderone, who promises she’ll arrest him once she has what she needs. Before they fully unpack their feud, they’re alerted to a suspicious fire at a research lab. On the scene, they receive a troubling emergency wildfire alert.

Turns out, embers from the fire at Burk’s house blew and ignited nearby fields, woods, and a sawmill. With Calderone in the passenger seat, a maniacally smiling Gudsen starts driving up behind the fire, talking about his mom’s rejection, his dad’s drinking, and the first flames he ever saw at age 12, which were “beautiful.” As “Jump Into the Fire” by Harry Nilsson starts playing, Smoke goes full-on action movie. Thunder cracks overhead, and Gudsen speeds through the burning sawmill site straight into the fiery forest. Clocking the crazed look in his eye, Calderone screams at him to slow down and buckles her seatbelt as he cackles. When Gudsen slams the gas harder, Calderone holds her gun to his head, shoots his window, and threatens to blow his brains out unless he stops the car. “Yeah! With pleasure!” he chirps before recklessly swerving, intentionally unbuckling Calderone’s seatbelt, and crashing so hard that she flies out the vehicle.

The episode fades to black, the sound cuts, and the assumption is that Calderone’s a goner. When the smoke clears, the music resumes, and Gudsen cuts himself out of his seatbelt, however, he sees that she not only survived, but is tying up her hair, fully ready to fight. At first, he chuckles, but when Calderone starts shooting at him, he grabs his gun, drops out of sight, and reverses the car straight into a tree. Calderone keeps shooting until he crawls out of the passenger door and drops to the ground. She walks over, kicks the car door closed, and knocks the smug smirk right off his face with a swift stomp between his legs. She kicks him, slams his head into the side of the car, then puts her gun in his mouth and flirts with the idea of pulling the trigger. Just then, it starts down pouring. Calderone looks to the sky, lets the rain wash her intrusive thoughts away, and instead of killing Gudsen, she reads him his rights and cuffs him.

Back at Burk’s, Calderone’s brother sits outside the neighbor’s house and calls the woman, pretending to be a detective. He tells her to stay away from the house until the state of emergency is lifted, then breaks inside, watches the incriminating security footage, and permanently deletes it for his sister — only first, he smiles and downloads it onto his personal drive, for later use, it seems.

Calderone marches Gudsen to Esposito’s car, and after fantasizing about the moment for years, Esposito asks, “Who’s living the dream now, motherfucker?!” Despite the role reversal, Gudsen seems fairly confident he’ll be set free, until Esposito reveals the DNA on a glove on Burk’s property was “a perfect match” for his. As they walk Gudsen through the station, his fellow officers — mourning Burk — body check him in disgust. Calderone collects herself in the bathroom before interrogating Gudsen, where a haunting vision of Burk messes with her head.

“They’ll figure it out eventually. If this frame-up doesn’t hold, and I have my doubts that it will, then they’ll reopen the investigation,” Burke’s ghost taunts. “Cops don’t stop when other cops get killed. There’s no cop killers roaming the streets of this country scott-free. We avenge our own, and our batting average is 1,000. It’ll just take one person who guesses that we were fucking to say something, then they’ll start looking at you. Asking where you were that night, pinging your cell, running a magnifying glass over every detail that you’d forgotten that you forgot.”

Calderone pushes thoughts of Burk aside, ties up her hair again, and faces Gudsen in the interrogation room. The two engage in a tense face-off, in which Calderone presents a crime scene detail in Gudsen’s book that only an arsonist would know. “When you look in the mirror, do you even see yourself? Or do you see Donald?” she asks. Gudsen turns to the two-way mirror, and the reflection staring back at him is one we’ve seen several times this season. He’s the handsome Taron Egerton with a twist. His hairline is receding. He’s older; more weathered. Different. His true self. “I see me!” he snaps. But when he looks back to Calderone, he’s still the same dashing, “heroic” version of himself we’ve spent the majority of the season with.

Just when Calderone hits a wall in her questioning, she gets a text from Esposito and Hudson, who headed to the impound lot with a warrant and searched Gudsen’s car. In the glove box, they found sunglasses, a hat, and a green jacket — the D&C arsonist’s disguise. She shows Gudsen the photos and lets out a victory laugh as he nervously denies the allegations. “That’s not me! That’s not me! That’s not who I am! I’m a hero,” he says. As he pictures himself unmasking the D&C arsonist, however, his face falls. He’s finally forced to examine his reality and true identity. He’s Dave and Donald. He’s a villain posing as a hero. He’s an arson investigator and arsonist. Hence the title, “Mirror Mirror.”

As Gudsen looks in the mirror again, Smoke cuts to Emmett (Luke Roessler) and Ashley rebuilding their lives without him. Emmett brings his mom a stack of framed family photos and asks if they’re trash, and as the two place the tainted memories in a box, we get visual confirmation that Dave was never the man with Egerton-level good looks we watched move through this world all series. In reality, he looks like the alternate version of himself we’ve caught glimpses of in the mirror.

Back in the interrogation room, as Calderone forces Gudsen to confront his identity head-on, his outward appearance finally appears true to form — both in and out of the mirror. As Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way” starts to swell, the two sit across from each other at the table, and after Gudsen’s smile fades, Calderone’s grows. Before the end credits roll, she knows she’s got him.

Smoke Season 1 is now streaming on Apple TV+.