We’ve been so saturated with thrillers over the years that sometimes they stop giving any kind of chills, just violence and unwarranted adult content that doesn’t help the plot in any way. Fortunately, the Australian TV series No Escape by Paramount+ is not one of those and mixes the old with the new for a cat-and-mouse chase that is familiar but riveting at the same time. Added to that, it’s got some wonderful young blood whom we look forward to seeing in the near future. Maybe it’s the Australian charm that keeps this show afloat amidst all the other thrillers.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In ‘No Escape’ Series?
Clear blue sky, the gorgeous shimmering sea, and a cute little yacht in the middle of it all. “No Escape” begins with a haunting view of the emptiness of this yacht when a search and rescue team arrives at the scene answering a distress call. There is food on the table, beds unmade, and a confession on the wall that appears to be written in blood, but most importantly, no people are found on ‘The Blue.’ A young girl named Emma gets called out of her job (she doesn’t look very happy about it) because she might be the only connection the police have to the party yacht ‘The Blue.’ As the questioning begins, we go back six weeks to see why the yacht ended up the way it did near Townsville, Australia, her homeland.
Lana (Emma in the future) and Kitty are heading to the Philippines on a one-way ticket. Something’s amiss with them, but we don’t know just yet. Quickly, the partying and fun end when their stolen credit cards get declined, and they go from petty theft to stealing a woman’s wallet. In the wallet, they find a ticket for a yacht named ‘The Blue.’ What’s the best way to hide yourself from the world? Somewhere in the middle of the ocean, They hashed out a plan to get on the yacht by returning the wallet, pretending they found it fallen down. Michelle, or Chelle, as they like to call her, is the owner of the wallet and the only woman onboard, along with Aaron, the captain; Dennis, his brother; the Australians; Heinrich, who is German; and Joseph, who is Filipino-French. Chelle offers the girls a position on the yacht as a repayment for bringing the wallet, and Kitty thinks it’s a great idea. There are certain rules on the yacht, including no intercourse with fellow crew members, shared expenses, etc. Lana and Kitty feel up to the task and stay on. Immediately, Lana is suspicious of everyone on board and checks out the boat to find things she can steal in case she and Kitty have to escape. Considering they have no money and nowhere to go, it’s possible now that whatever they’ve done is going to come back to bite them. With the little money they stole from Chelle’s wallet, they decide to buy some things for themselves on a small island and split up for a bit. Lana gets lost when the police arrive, and everybody gets dragged around, but she quickly finds Denny, who is doing some shady business with a local. He gets her out and tells Lana that he is buying drugs. Quickly, we understand that Joseph is smitten by Lana, but Denny has his eyes on her too.
The next day on the yacht, Denny teaches Lana how to steer the boat, and while it looks like he wants to impress her, it’s possibly more important than that (we’ll know soon enough). The crew realizes a bit too late that the yacht has steered in the wrong direction. They’re faced with another boat that is very close to them, but they don’t get any response from them when Aaron tries to hail them. It looks like it’s empty, so Heinrich, Denny, and Lana swim up to it to check what’s inside. Lana is the last to jump, so by the time she reaches the boys, they have already found something. A bag full of money that they take from the boat.
They have a crew meeting and decide by vote what they need to do with the money. Chelle is the most skeptical of them all and hates the idea of keeping the money, whereas Kitty is desperate because it looks like the solution to all her problems. They vote to keep the money, but it belongs to The Blue’s collectively. Chelle believes they may have stolen from powerful drug dealers and are going to get in big trouble, but Aaron just chucks the bag and keeps the money and the diamonds, worth one and a half million dollars. Aaron hides the money in a secure spot in his cabin. Now Kitty and Lana get restless, so they make a plan to escape with the money on the eve of New Year’s, when everyone is partying. Chelle is right not to trust them, but Aaron is more worried about Heinrich, who’s been with him for much longer. Denny, on the other hand, is trying to make moves on Lana, and she’s uninterested, or so it seems. On the boat, Aaron tells Lana in a quiet moment that it’ll be the death anniversary of his wife on New Year’s Eve. She had seen pictures of her and a sonogram when she had stolen earrings from Aaron’s cabin. Denny had seen her wear them, but they both had things to hide from the crew.
The next day, when Kitty tries to find the money in Aaron’s cabin, he shows up, and she pretends she was there to call him for something up top. He gives her some money to spend on the island they’ve just arrived on and share it with the crew, which we don’t think she intends to do. Aaron, in the meantime, pushes Heinrich into the water with Stingrays to show him who he’s boss and that he shouldn’t be messing with him or stealing anything. Finally, it’s time for Lana and Kitty’s plan, and at the party, when the other guys are drunk, Lana makes her way to the yacht. On the beach, Kitty finds Aaron fighting Denny. Aaron punches Denny in the nose, and Kitty stops him from hurting him anymore. Aaron knows that it was Denny’s idea to steal the money. To stop Aaron from going to the yacht, she kisses him, and as they get it on in the middle of nowhere, Aaron sees his wedding ring and flips out. He walks into the sea, and Kitty hears that it is nearly midnight. She runs for the bus station, leaving Aaron in his weird state to meet Lana. But Lana, who has gone to the yacht to steal the money, has the other brother in her way. Lana gives in to Denny’s desires, and before she knows it, it’s well past midnight.
On the other hand, when Kitty was waiting, she was punched in the stomach hard enough to get her on the ground, and her purse was stolen. Now they don’t have passports or the money to survive on the yacht, so their only option is to stay on. Kitty tells Chelle what happened, but Chelle takes her straight to the station, and Kitty can’t put her details in because then the English police could be alerted. While Denny is off the boat and Lana goes looking for him to get help with their passports, the Filipino police arrive to check all the international yachts. Aaron, who is off buying things for the yacht, realizes what’s happening and tries to call Chelle to tell her to hide the money and diamonds but gets cut off. The police find the money, but the diamonds aren’t in the bag, so Chelle uses her presence of mind to bribe the officer by offering him all the money they found as a fine for Kitty not having her passport. Now they have very little time to get off the island before the chief inspector catches wind of what’s happening. Kitty is desperate to know what happened to Lana and decides to get off and go look for her. Nobody likes the idea, but Joseph says he’ll help her. Aaron plans on leaving the second the engine is fixed, even if that means leaving his brother or Joseph behind. Aaron apologizes to Heinrich for his bad behavior because he has realized it was never him but Denny who probably stole the diamonds.
In the meantime, the person who was supposed to help Denny with Kitty and Lana’s passports is dead (the same drug guy), and Lana and Denny have been found by the killers too. A chase ensues, and Denny and Lana barely manage to escape and reach the port, where police are on standby, which stops the goons from reaching them. They reach the yacht just as the engine is fixed, and Aaron leaves without any signs of Joseph or Kitty. But there is something else: Denny stole the diamonds as payback for Aaron’s punch and handed them over to Lana, who came up with another plan. She hides the diamonds from the crew, and they pretend like the diamonds were lost in the chase. On the other hand, Joseph and Kitty were stuck in the middle of protests at what looked like a young boy’s funeral. Now things are coming into the picture, and Joseph asks around about what happened. When Kitty and Joseph arrive at port, the yacht is already quite far away, and the two have to jump off, swim, and get on the tender to get inside. With the teamwork of the rest of the crew, they get on safely.
Whose Diamonds And Money Were Stolen?
The funeral that Joseph and Kitty saw was that of a 14-year-old boy whose parents were paying ransom to a terrorist organization called BLF. The money and diamonds were left at sea for them to find, but when they were never found by the terrorists, they killed the poor boy. So, the Blue Crew has stolen the ransom for the young boy, meaning they’re essentially murderers.
Now, the crew is all furious with Denny for guiding the terrorists straight to their boat. But instead of throwing him off in the middle of nowhere, Joseph is the one who gets kicked off for instigating a fight between the crew members; according to Aaron, he won’t stop until everyone turns on each other. The crew quite narrowly escaped the terrorists by hiding the yacht in a mangrove. Joseph is meant to leave, and everyone believes he has, but he actually hides on the yacht. Because Kitty thinks Denny and Lana are getting too close, they have a big fight, and everything has gone wrong now. Aaron decides to ride off into a storm, and Heinrich almost gets thrown off into the sea while fixing a leak in the yacht because of the storm. Heinrich has a tennis injury, so he takes a horse tranquilizer to get rid of the pain. Because Aaron is out of ideas, he, too, takes the drug, and they get super high when they’re supposed to be on the lookout. Underneath, Kitty and Chelle get cozy while Lana finds Joseph and hides him in her cabin. Soon, everybody takes the tranquilizer except for Lana. After a night of partying, Kitty comes down to Lana to apologize but finds Joseph there. At the same time, Aaron wakes up and, in his addled state, brings out his revolver to shoot Joseph for returning to the yacht. Joseph thinks they need to all go to jail for what they’ve done and tries to send out a distress signal, but Aaron pulls all the plugs, making the yacht lose electricity. After a little bit of searching, Joseph falls into the sea, and everybody panics. Kitty thinks she’s the one who pushed Joseph into the sea, but it was Aaron, and Denny makes her believe it was her.
Aaron throws out all of Joseph’s stuff and tells the two girls to stay on the yacht while the rest of the crew goes to the shore. Since Kitty and Lana don’t have passports, they have to stay, but the rest of them will now do everything by the book. This is Lana and Kitty’s chance to escape, and Lana plans on getting on a fishing boat that will lead them anywhere safe where they can sell the diamonds and change their identities. But when Lana jumps into the water, Kitty doesn’t follow; instead, she decides to stay back because Lana is better off without her. Kitty still thinks she killed Joseph, just like she killed the woman both she and Lana had called their mother.
Who Is Sharon, And What Happened Back In The UK?
Lana and Kitty began this journey because their foster mother, Sharon, accidentally died because of them. Sharon was always abusive towards Lana, and on Christmas day, when Sharon forced Lana to confess to being bad, they began fighting physically. Kitty, in the hopes of stopping them, split them up and accidentally pushed Sharon too hard, and she hit her head and fell to her death. In reality, Sharon wasn’t quite dead just yet, but Lana never called an ambulance; instead, she made the decision to leave with Kitty so they could stay together forever. With the guilt of Sharon and Joseph’s murders, Kitty decides to stay on the yacht, and Lana tells her she’ll meet her in Townsville.
In her state of fear, anger, and sadness, Kitty takes her lipstick and writes, “I confess” in her cabin to absolve herself. Kitty confesses to her new love, Chelle, that she did, in fact, push Joseph, but Chelle is sure she didn’t. But it is Heinrich who tells her that she was too drunk to even stand, never mind push somebody over, so she really didn’t hurt another person. Kitty realizes it was Denny who made her believe she killed Joseph, so she goes to find him. But Aaron comes in and tells her that it was he who pushed Joseph off the yacht. Denny is just the clean-up boy. Just like he was in the past. Turns out, Helen, Aaron’s wife, had overdosed when she was pregnant, but it was Denny’s child, and he had “cleaned up” that mess too, so that Aaron would not be in trouble. Because Lana has left with the diamonds, Denny has reached his limit. He slashes Aaron’s throat while Kitty watches on. She shuts the door from the outside and tells Heinrich to watch it while she goes to send out a distress call. Heinrich, unfortunately, opens the door upon hearing Denny’s voice, and he’s next to die. It is Kitty who stops Denny from shooting Chelle, who escapes on the lifeboat, but Kitty stays on in the hope that she can kill Denny so he doesn’t follow Chelle. Unfortunately, she fails, and he kills her.
A few days later, The Blue is found, and Aaron’s body is the first to be found. Lana, who is living as Emma, lies about everything on board, from when she was there to who she was with. The police believe her, strangely, and soon enough, the first survivor is found. Denny shows up, telling stories about how the BLF found them and slit their throats, but he managed to escape alone. Lana trusts him and begins to stay with him in his home, where his father is a judge. When Colonel Reyes from the Philippines arrives, everything changes. He knows the real truth and is here to get the diamonds for BLF to save his own family. Lana doesn’t know this, though, and at first, she doesn’t tell him anything, but when he shows her a picture of herself with Kitty and Joseph, she starts to panic. He tells her that he doesn’t think Denny is telling the truth, as the evidence doesn’t add up, and because Denny’s father’s a judge, the Australian police aren’t looking into it. Lana tells Reyes that she, too, thinks Denny is lying and needs help to escape him. Reyes isn’t interested in her story, though, and only wants the diamonds. He also knows about what happened in the UK, as their department has been warned about Kitty.
Denny loses his patience and tells Lana to show him where the diamonds are. She says they’re on The Blue and sends him off as she runs off to show Reyes where the diamonds really are.
‘No Escape’ Ending Explained: Who Is The Last Survivor Of ‘The Blue’?
Denny manages to get out of trespassing a crime scene at the station and makes his way back home to where Reyes and Lana are. Lana shows Reyes the key to a locker that she hid in the fishing bowl, and when he removes it, she sees the tattoo on his arm, which matches perfectly with the tattoo of the drug dealer who had died at the hands of the BLF. Lana thinks Reyes is working with the BLF, and he says he used to, but now they have taken over even the police force, and he pleads for his child’s life. Before Lana can make a decision for herself, Denny arrives and hits Reyes on the back of his head with a cricket bat.
Lana tries to call the police, but Denny pushes the phone out of her hand and breaks it. She’s all alone in this house, and it becomes a little game of hide and seek. Lana manages to lock Denny on the balcony and comes running down to the ground floor, but of course, he jumps down and finds her. He chases her out of the house, and she faces a dead end. Denny tells Lana that it is a shame she didn’t realize they were so similar. It is true that, in many ways, Denny and Lana are similar, but Lana would never hurt somebody voluntarily for her own advantage. She does worry about herself and is a survivor, though, but Denny, on the other hand, is happy to kill anyone in his way, including his own brother. Finally, Lana uses all her strength and pushes the guy off the fence into the rocks and the sea, where he plummets to his death.
A discouraged Reyes tells his wife to escape from home before something bad happens, but Lana, who is about to be arrested, makes her one phone call to him telling him where the diamonds are so she doesn’t have to bear the weight of more dead people. Reyes can save his family with the diamonds and maybe quit this lifestyle for good. Lana confesses to everything from the UK to her stunt as Emma to the detective. The detective tells her they have found another survivor, and she desperately hopes it’s Kitty, but as we know, it’s Chelle, who apologizes to her for not being able to save her best friend. No Escape ended with a flashback from the good days at sea when Lana told Kitty that she could never survive without her. Kitty tells her that she will always be with her, pointing to their legs, referring to their matching tattoos, where they’re connected forever.
Joseph had once spoken about a Filipino concept called Gaba, which is like Karma, and he wanted to make things right before he was killed because of Gaba. Lana, who never believed in such things, and was the one who always lied about everything, finally got tired of her lies and told the truth for once to redeem herself. Kitty would’ve been proud of her, and in the end, Lana did what Kitty would’ve expected her to, and it’s a shame she could never see it. Every one of the crew members faced their punishment for what they did, and finally, Lana was doing the same by going to prison.
