Spoilers: Some thoughts on the conclusion of The Night Of

The HBO 8-part series The Night Of is engaging right to the end. Spoilers here inevitably: i was half-right in foreseeing how this would work out, in that the defense of Naz, accused of murdering a young woman w/ who he'd had a one-night relationship, would focus on establishing the existence of other possible suspects whom the police did not identify or pursue. Some of these were obvious to any careful viewer from the outset - though I also knew that none of these folks would be charged with the crime. As foreseen, the ending is dark, with Naz exonerated (hung jury, and state declines to pursue a 2nd trial) and now a drug addict and a street thug, thanks to his time in Riker's and he changes he made to survive there. I had thought he would be acquitted and then would have memories of actually killing the young woman - but he comes off as still innocent yet a victim of the system, and that's probably a better ending than the one I'd envisioned. (Under cross-examination, he does for the first time say that the doesn't know whether he killed the woman; that's about as close as the story comes to a possible admission of guilt.) I'm a little troubled by the development in the final episode that suggests the woman's financial adviser had been stealing from her and that he had possibly been the killer and that the DA will pursue indicting him; this leaves the door open a crack for a possible sequel - which I doubt will happen - and seems a little too pat an opportunistic. They'd have done better, in my view, to just leave it w/ the possibility of 4 other killers rather than suggest that the financial adviser is definitely the man