How much can we trust The Shards‘ version of young Bret Easton Ellis (Igby Rigney) to tell the truth? And how much can Bret even trust himself? The unreliable narrator is not just a feature, but an undeniable driving force behind FX‘s The Shards‘ appeal — and Episode 8 “Hamlet” pushes this concept to its limits. We see scenes where ’80s prep school kids shift into Shakespearean garb and a hazy, dreamy sex scene that might never have happened at all…
**Spoilers for The Shards Episode 8 “Hamlet,” now streaming on Hulu**
The Shards Episode 8 “Hamlet” ends with Bret arriving home to discover Robert Mallory (Homer Gere) sitting in his room. Bret’s convinced that Robert is the Trawler, a serial killer stalking the wealthy teens of Los Angeles, but is that really just a cover for his real obsession?
Robert humbly asks Bret what he wants with him and begins to recount how the police took him in a second time. He wonders why Bret hates him, but Bret reframes his obsession. “There are just some things about you I can’t ignore,” he says. Soon the two teens are kissing and having sex in Bret’s room.
The next morning, however, Robert creepily whispers, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” in Bret’s ear before leaving. When the Bret turns over, the bedding is bizarrely neat. It’s almost as if no one slept in Robert’s place. Nevertheless, when Bret lays back down, he begins to smile as if the two shared an intimate night together.
This episode also begins to raise overt questions about how real Bret’s version of events are, meaning… Are we supposed to intuit that this Robert/Bret sex scene was pure hallucination? Or did it really happen? And if it did, what does that mean for the boys’ relationship going forward on The Shards?
Here’s everything you need to know about the sex scene at the end of The Shards Episode 8…
The Shards Episode 8 Ending Explained: Did Bret and Robert Have Sex?
We don’t actually know if Robert was at Bret’s house and the two teens had sex or if Bret imagined it all in his head — and that’s kind of the point.
When DECIDER caught up with the stars of The Shards last month, Homer Gere revealed that the whole meaning of the scene what it represents is so different depending on your interpretation.
“Well, on one level, there is catharsis, because if it’s real, then there is kind of a resolution to it,” Gere said. “But what I think is [there is] even more tension, it didn’t actually happen.”
“And I completely disagree,” Igby Rigney said. “I think Robert absolutely was in my bedroom and he just left early in the morning to get ready for school. And made the bed as well, because he’s a gentleman.”
Gere said, “I think if you look at it a certain way, it becomes kind of a key to the rest of the series as solving this kind of tension between Bret and Robert. Is Bret telling the truth? Is Robert really as bad as she says? It’s all through his lens. So, yeah.”
“It’s a beautiful scene, too,” Rigney said. “I just have to shout out Homer’s performance.”
“We had a lot of fun,” Gere said.
Their co-star Hayes Warner was amused by this. “We had a lot of fun on that day,” she quipped.
“No, that was a really fun thing to shoot,” Gere said. “We shot with Max Mingella, who’s lovely to work with.”
“Yeah, but you were really good in the scene,” Rigney said. “That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“You were great, too,” Gere said.
“You guys were both good,” Warner said.
Both Gere and Rigney were great in the scene, especially because they leave the reality of the moment up to the audience to decide through different facets of their performances.
So what do you think? Is Bret making the scintillating scene up? And if so, is the entire plot of The Shards a complete fiction. (Well, I mean, we know it kind of is, since it’s written as such by the real Bret Easton Ellis?) Or, did Robert come to Bret’s house within the reality of FX’s The Shards to play one more sadistic game with the amateur detective?
The Shards finale airs next week, Wednesday, September 9, at 9 PM ET on FX and streams on Hulu at the same time.