The Season finale, “Collision Course,” put Cola (Jessie Mei Li) through her paces as she fought to expose The Hexts for the lie that sentenced her father Benny (Carl Ng) to life in prison. But when the titular yacht took to the water for a charity gala, all of Cola’s carefully laid plans began to unravel.
She’d crossed the line several times in her quest to get the evidence she needed to prove Fiona (Karena Lam) and Christopher (Toby Stephens) had covered up a man’s death. However, it was ultimately Cola’s boss Carrie (Celina Jade) who put her in a pinch that she could only hope to manipulate her way out of.
Thank goodness for small mercies as the yacht blowing up later in the night put Cola in a more advantageous position than she had been in when she joined the party with Queenie (Mishy Lee), a journalist for The Current who’d been promised a good story.
The Hexts’ Gala Goes Off The Rails in ‘The Season’ Finale
Cola thought she had the upper hand at the start of the gala. She’d brought Queenie to ensure she wouldn’t be turned away at the door, and she felt confident David (Justin Chien) would do the right thing and give her the information that would exonerate her father.
Though she’d learned Benny had been paid handsomely to take the fall for Christopher’s hit and run, she was still determined to set him free. Cola leaned on David’s love for his son to push him into handing over the evidence. He’d known about the crime for years, having been told by his father to hold onto a ledger of payoffs for a “rainy day.”
Carrying the secret weighed on David, and he was glad to be rid of it even though it meant betraying his family’s oldest friend and employer. He gave Cola the flash drive with the evidence but not in a enough time for her to get off the yacht before it set sail.
Stuck with no way out, and the Hexts’ head of security Jon (Lee Jae-yoon) dogging her steps, Cola hid the drive in an empty vodka bottle before she was forced down to the engine room to be held captive. Having grabbed a lighter, she set fire to her fan and chucked it into the room. Jon, fearing the danger her actions could put everyone in, rushed to put the fire out. Cola quickly locked him in the room and went to retrieve the flash drive only to be stopped again, this time by Christopher.
She’d been struggling to get the drive out of the bottle. When she heard the billionaire coming, she shoved the bottle into a dresser that the staff had been using as a serving table. Turns out, it was up for action at the dinner Christopher was dragging her to and Carrie would be the one to buy it.
Carrie Gets Revenge For Cola’s Betrayal
An unexpected consequence of Cola’s night out with David and Andrew (Chris Pang) the previous day was a drug-induced hook-up between her and David. The Hexts’ lawyer had just gotten his budding romance off the ground with Carrie and they were planning to share the joy of their new relationship with their social circle.
Those happy plans fell through because Carrie found out. She’d arrived to pick David up for the gala and found the earrings she’d let Cola borrow laying on his bedside table. But she didn’t confront the two over it until the bidding on the dresser started.
Carrie clocked Cola’s preoccupation with one of the dresser’s drawers. Her summer associate’s eyes rarely strayed from it while they sat at the table. She bought the piece of furniture for $500,000, handed Cola back her earrings, and then gave a thinly veiled speech about how she was going to give the dresser to her partner David but realized he’d want a newer model, so she was giving it to Cola because she wouldn’t be hiring her for a full-time position and that she hoped Cola thought of her every time she looked at it.
Needless to say, the mood in the room crashed into an awkward silence. A bit later, Cola snuck off to where the auction items were being held to try to retrieve the flash drive, but the vodka bottle wasn’t in the drawer. She found Carrie with it by the boat railing, ready to chuck it overboard.
Cola begged her not to, explaining that she needed it to get her father out of prison. Carrie couldn’t see why she should believe Cola, after all she’s done nothing but lie to her since they met. It hurt her to learn that she’d been a mark the whole time and that the only reason Cola grew close to her was so she could get closer to the Hexts.
To add insult to injury, sleeping with David wasn’t even a part of Cola’s plan. It was a mistake she made, one she intended to walk away from with Carrie none the wiser. Neither Cola’s guilt over her actions nor her reasons for doing them appeased Carrie. She threw the bottle in the water and left Cola to process what she’d done.
Cola Blackmails The Hexts
Realizing that she still had a card to play with the Hexts, Cola let herself be seen going into their office. She knew they’d be told of her whereabouts and, like she planned, they came right to her.
Because she already knew that the drive contained a ledger full of payoffs, Cola was able to bluff her way into forcing Fiona and Christopher’s hand. She demanded that they get her father released and that they make her their financial advisor. Otherwise, she’d expose their cover-up of Christopher’s fatal hit-and-run and not only ruin their reputation but destroy their empire at the same time.
Fiona wasn’t willing to risk all they’d built, but before the Hexts could agree to Cola’s terms, their daughter Alison (Kōki) busted through the door with Jon in tow. She’d found him just as Jay Byford (Jai Day), the Australian vodka supplier who was plotting with his wife Sara (Claire Lovering) to set fire to the ship to burn their supply and cash-in on the insurance, was gearing himself up to throw a molotov cocktail into the engine room.
He’d spooked when he heard Jon calling for help and dropped his bottle while trying to play off what Alison may have seen. She freed Jon and rushed to the office in the nick of time to stop her parents from giving into Cola’s demands. Alison called Cola’s bluff. She wanted Cola to prove that she had the evidence she said she did by showing them.
Cola attempted to go along with her lie but then the yacht lurched. While she’d been busy carrying out her mission to expose the Hexts, David had gotten so high to cope with the night that he’d decided he needed to go home. He commandeered the bridge and turned the vessel around. His reckless steering inadvertently caused a fire which got out of hand quickly.
The Season Explodes
The fire was caused by Andrew’s lit cigarette. He’d been taken down to the kitchen earlier in the night to cool off after Cola provoked his temper. She’d let him know that Carrie had stolen the Qatari investors he’d had lined up to help him purchase the Hexts’ hotel, The Percy.
Cola had used him as a distraction to bypass Jon, and Andrew has been held in the kitchen ever since. He bummed a pack of cigarettes off his guard when Madeline (Yvonne Chapman) came to tell him that she’d struck a deal with Carrie and bought the hotel herself. But he was alone by the time David had taken over the yacht.
When Andrew was thrown against the wall due to the vessel turning, so too were the cases of vodka that had been stacked on top of each other. They broke, spilling alcohol all over the floor. Andrew lost his cigarette in the mess. He’d paid no heed to it when he left, grumbling about the mess his best friend had created.
The vodka caught fire. Though a crew member tried to put it out, he was unsuccessful and had to pivot to help evacuate the yacht. The fire traveled to the engine room where it grew due to the vodka spilled there as well.
Everyone managed to get off The Season before it exploded. Cola was out a life vest because she’d given hers to David. But she survived the jump off the boat unscathed and conveniently had been pushed by the current into the path of the vodka bottle with the flash drive in it.
Cola Frees Her Father
With the evidence of The Hexts’ crime back in her possession, Cola was able to leverage the family for the terms of her demand. She became their financial advisor and ensured Carrie’s firm was fully compensated for their work on the Percy hotel deal.
Christopher wasn’t too happy about that stipulation due to Cola’s duplicity, and likely because he blames Carrie for not properly vetting her, but he had no choice. However, the gesture did not smooth things over between Carrie and Cola.
The latter’s former boss made it clear that she has every intention on slowly and systematically taking everything from Cola for the way she was used and for breaking her heart. If The Season gets a second outing, their rivalry and Carrie’s vow to get revenge on Cola would be the most intriguing story progression.
As for Cola’s father, she was able to get him out of prison. The Hexts having him beat in episode 5, “Ships in the Night,” to send a message to Cola wound up working in her favor as her father’s age and that situation made him eligible for compassionate release.
After an emotional reunion, Cola took Benny to the docks to present him with a very expensive boat and then head out onto the water. She had been told she had to choose between making good out of the life her father sacrificed for her to have or losing everything to expose the Hexts and set him free.
Cola defied those choices and took the option that allowed her to have her cake and eat it, too, though it meant becoming the villain of her own story and making an enemy out of Carrie.
All six episodes of The Season are available to stream on Hulu. Follow Sabrina Reed on Forbes for more coverage of what’s airing on television, like her weekly recaps/analysis of The Vampire Lestat, and explainers on what’s happening in the entertainment industry that’s impacting consumers.