The new series has landed on Apple TV+ in June 2024: Presumed Innocent has a tricky plot that needs to be explained, here is a full recap.
It’s based on the famous 1987 novel by Scott Turow and comes decades after the movie with Harrison Ford, which portrayed the same story in 1990: Presumed Innocent lands on Apple TV+ in June 2024 as the new popular series for this summer, and the plot promises fresh developments even for those who already know the story. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Rusty Sabich, the TV show gets more complicated with every episode, so a detailed plot recap is really needed: in this article, the main aspects of the story will be explained, following the development we see every week.
The premise
Rusty Sabich is a talented prosecutor working in Chicago. One day, he receives terrible news: Carolyn Polhemus, a colleague he worked with for years, has been murdered. The case is assigned to him, but we soon discover the risks connected: he has been romantically involved with her, so there is an apparent conflict of interest with him leading the investigation.
After the election for District Attorney, Tommy Molto takes over the investigation and immediately starts using the information he owns to question Rusty. His fingerprints were found in Carolyn’s bedroom, revealing that they still had a relationship. Even worse: Carolyn was pregnant when she died, and Rusty was the father. The plot turns rapidly into a nightmare for the protagonist, who gets arrested in episode 2 of Presumed Innocent: the investigators are not following other leads, and the elements against Rusty become enough to make him the main suspect.
Everyone is against the protagonist, including his family: his wife Barbara was aware of his relationship with Carolyn, but she was told it ended a year ago. After discovering that Rusty is still cheating, Barbara forces Rusty to confess to their kids, isolating him.
These are the facts that trigger the plot in Presumed Innocent: let’s follow the story in the full recap below, with all the details carefully explained.
Presumed Innocent explained: a full plot recap
Although Rusty lied about many aspects of his relationship with Carolyn, it soon becomes clear that there is no objective evidence against him: nothing proves he could be the murderer. In Episode 4, we discover that Molto plants fake evidence against Rusty about his DNA under Carolyn’s nails, which obviously makes the trial harder for him. His position is also aggravated by his violent reaction against Ratzer, the man who seems involved in the Bunny Davis case.
Nevertheless, there is still no proof that Rusty killed Carolyn. The plot of Presumed Innocent keeps challenging us, raising doubts, and confusing us about facts. Rusty is a liar, a cheater, a narcissist, a man who can get obsessed with someone and can have violent reactions. Hoverer, is all this enough to make us think he murdered his lover?
Episode after episode, Rusty tries to convince us and the jury that there is no real evidence against him; it’s just a story built by the prosecution, based on suspicions and prejudices. At the end of the plot, the jury won’t discover the responsible for the murder of Carolyn Polhemus. But we will.
The ending explained: who killed Carolyn Polhemus?
The trial ends with the jury finding Rusty Sabich not guilty of the murder: he succeeded in convincing everyone about his innocence. However, we discover who really murdered Carolyn Polhemus only afterward, in a private scene inside Rusty’s family.
Rusty believes the murderer was his wife, Barbara. He tracked his car in the last few days and found out her car went to Tommy Molto’s house the day the poker was planted in his house: the poker is the murder’s weapon, and only the murderer could have it. However, during the confrontation between Rusty and Barbara, their daughter Jaden enters the room and confesses: it was her.
It was Jaden who planted the poker in Molto’s house, driving Barbara’s car. And it was she who killed Carolyn that night. She went to her home to confront her; Carolyn was friendly to her but had to reveal an important detail: she was pregnant with Rusty’s kid. That made Jaden snap; she grabbed the poker and hit her, killing her instantly, and then she ran away.
What happens next is Rusty’s attempt to fix the crime scene. Rusty went back to Carolyn that night and found her dead on the floor. Instead of calling 911, he suspects someone from his family murdered her, so he alters the crime scene to drive all suspicions on him, tying her up like the murder committed by Liam Reynolds. His plan was to convince Liam to make a false confession to reduce his sentence. That plan didn’t work, so he had to go through the whole trial and prove his innocence, never knowing with certainty who the murderer was.
Presumed Innocent keeps all viewers in doubt until the end: we all suspected Rusty for a moment or two and had many theories about the other characters, but Jaden surely isn’t one of the first options we evaluate. That’s what makes the series’ ending so surprising for everybody.
