Grace (Sofia Wylie) hath risen. 

In the final moments of The Body, streaming on Netflix now, the teen — who’s spent most of the season in an unexplainable coma — wakes up and declares, “I am God.” Her reemergence comes on the heels of mass hysteria swirling around her mysterious illness, with a growing number of locals believing the comatose student can perform miracles. 

Meanwhile, the Lions, a Catholic high school dance team, are hiding some valuable information. As part of an initiation, Grace took Ecstasy the night she fell into a coma, which was provided by team leader Anya (Kristina Bogic). When Anya and Lisbeth (Geena Meszaros) — who desperately wants to be a part of the Lions — discover Grace’s lifeless body, they decide to take her home, rather than bring her to the hospital and get in trouble for illicit drug use. 

As Anya frantically tries to hide what she did, members of the dance team start claiming they’ve seen visions of Grace. While Anya juggles her guilt over potentially killing Grace and struggles with her simmering romantic feelings for her best friend, Elise (Sara Boustany), Grace starts to haunt her dreams, too.  

Let’s step inside the confessional and hear from The Body cast and showrunners Quinn Shephard and Gina Gammell about all the heartbreak and mystery. Read on to find out who will be absolved of sin. 

What’s going on with Grace — and are people really seeing her?

If you’re left wondering whether Grace was actually in a coma or undergoing some sort of otherworldly experience, that’s exactly where you should be. 

“Everything that happens that has a supernatural theory in the show should always have a counterpart with a totally grounded medical or scientific explanation,” says Shephard. Maintaining those two pillars allowed the writers to be “really free and playful” without ever losing a grip “on something that feels grounded,” Gammell adds. 

Early on, the showrunners did clue Wylie in to what was going on with her character, a secret which remains locked for now. “Quinn’s explanation is something I’d love to keep under wraps because I think the beauty of the show is that it stays within the mystery, whether it’s medical or spiritual,” Wylie says. 

For those who “see” Grace throughout the season, questions still linger around the validity of those visions. Shirley Chen, who plays Maddie, used that ambiguity to fuel her performance when her character convulses and seemingly sees her best friend. She studied videos of street exorcisms and took note of Nosferatu actor Lily-Rose Depp’s movements, which were inspired by Japanese movement theater. 

“There was this one video that talked about feeling a lightning rod had struck your entire body,” Chen says. “I watched a lot of YouTube videos about faith-based religious movements, and somebody talked about feeling like you’re both being pulled up by heaven and down to hell.”

Do Elise and Anya get together at the end of The Body?

It’s not looking good for these two. When we last see Elise, she feels completely betrayed by Anya, who — in turn — is heartbroken over the fact that she might have just lost her best friend. 

But let’s rewind for a second. 

Throughout the season, Anya has been distancing herself from Elise. She can’t tell her that she drove Grace home — potentially leaving her to die — and instead turns to Lisbeth, who’s masterfully ingratiating herself with the dance team leader.  

When Anya finally cracks and gives in to her intense desire for Elise, she still keeps her friend at arm’s length, continuing to date Steven (Orlando Norman) and refusing to kiss Elise on the mouth. Tensions come to a head when, during a drunken hot tub encounter, Anya decides to kiss Elise in front of Steven, pretending she’s only doing so to titillate him.  

“She is just so lost,” Bogic explains. “I think this scene was a way of her being able to kiss Elise guilt-free. She’s like, ‘I found the perfect loophole.’ Once again, it’s just played off as a joke, it’s sexy, and my boyfriend’s here, then she realizes how much she’s hurt Elise.” The actor was intentional in differentiating the way that she kissed Elise versus Steven, explaining, “With Elise, I wanted it to feel primal, like this is something she had to do, and she’s magnetized to her.”

Adds Boustany, “At the time [of shooting], I was like, ‘This is fucked up.’ But now that I’m watching, it’s sad — and that’s what Kristina brings to Anya that I feel a lot of people would have lacked. It’s just this warmness and this desperation that’s kind of beautiful to watch.” Later, Anya finds Elise alone and drops to her knees as her best friend cries. 

“You ache for them,” says Boustany. “Kristina is just a perfect scene partner, and when you’re looking at her, leaning down like that, it’s so heartbreaking. You can’t really be mad at her.”

In the final episode of the season, the Lions head to a debutante ball where tensions climb to an all-time high. Lisbeth and Anya have lost trust in each other, Steven mistakenly thinks he is the one who hurt Grace (after discovering her necklace in his car), and Elise puts the pieces together that it was Anya who drove Grace home. 

That’s a tough enough pill for Elise to swallow. Making matters worse is the fact that she is now being accused of putting Grace’s lifeless body in her bed. “When Elise tells Anya, ‘They think I did it,’ Anya realizes, ‘Holy shit, if I say anything to this, she’s going to know it’s me. Elise can see through me,’” says Bogic. Her character was in “fight or flight” mode, she adds. 

Instead of confessing, Anya innocently asks her friend if she was, indeed, the culprit. Boustany recalls, “When I read that, I thought, ‘Whoa, this is too far.’ It really was. That’s a crazy thing to say.” 

In their last moments together, Elise tells Steven the truth about Anya, accusing her of throwing both of them under the bus to save herself. This is a huge blow to Steven, who, Norman notes, was “stupidly kind” to Anya throughout the season. “There’s a look he gives her in that scene, as though he’s seeing her for the first time,” the actor says. “That was the moment I wanted to find: He’s looking at someone he loves and suddenly doesn’t recognize.” 

Anya promises that she’d never hurt Steven or Elise — a statement that Bogic genuinely believes to be true. “I think at the core of Anya, she always wants to do the right thing. She’s just making bad decisions,” Bogic says. “Nothing that she’s done has been purposely to hurt anyone … I don’t think there was a world where she would’ve done that.” 

Do Lisbeth and Anya come clean about what they did to Grace? 

Anya does. At the very end of the series, she races to Father Franklin to admit that she drove Grace home. Lisbeth decides to … take a different route. She gathers all the Lions together and tells them that she was the godlike force behind all the mysterious occurrences that have been happening. 

“I tried to take [Grace] to the hospital, I tried to resuscitate her. Grace was dead. Like dead dead,” Lisbeth tells her rapt audience. “And then I laid my hand on her chest … and I heard God speak to me — I don’t want to be dramatic — but I think I resurrected her.”

Meszaros couldn’t help but admire Lisbeth’s “quick thinking” at that moment. “Everyone keeps saying she’s a mastermind, or she’s manipulative, and she has this big plan, but she really doesn’t,” the actor explains. “She just sees an opportunity, runs with it, and knows how to look out for herself, because she’s had to do that forever. I think she just acts fast and maybe doesn’t think everything through, which is so fun to play.” 

Why is Lisbeth being so manipulative? 

Lisbeth is the new kid in town. She’s also the fiercely protective older sister of Leo (Jackson Kelly) and desperate to join the Lions, especially if it means getting closer to Anya. “I know everyone else thinks she’s kind of a weirdo, and she really doesn’t fit in there, but I think she genuinely believes that Anya is an equal,” Meszaros explains. “Lisbeth thinks quite highly of herself, and in the church she grew up in, she really was the Anya of it.” 

As time goes on, Lisbeth’s tragic story unravels, revealing that the teen was part of an extremist church, with her late father serving as a cultlike leader. After her dad was killed during a dangerous religious ritual, Lisbeth finds herself losing her grip on her tightly held faith. 

She uses her finely tuned skills of manipulation throughout the season, strategically pulling Anya away from Elise and encouraging Maddie’s eating disorder so she can take her place on the dance team. “There are a lot of moments where I had to really dig deep for Lisbeth to understand why she was being so awful,” says Meszaros, nodding to her behavior toward Maddie.  

“People like Maddie, who are so devout and naive that they don’t question their faith the way that Lisbeth has been forced to question hers, could trigger Lisbeth,” Meszaros explains. “I feel like Lisbeth might even see an old version of herself that she’s angry at in Maddie. I really just tried to play it from that place of empathy and understanding.”

Originally, there was a version of Lisbeth written into the scripts that was “quite sociopathic,” Gammell says, noting that Meszaros made the character far more layered, infusing Lisbeth with her own natural warmth and humor. “Lisbeth is a little unknowable but then constantly surprises you with the way that she understands or sees something, and I think a lot of that came from Geena.”

The character was surrounded by intensity and death growing up, adds Shephard. She feels powerless and, as a result, is frantically grasping for power. “There’s a quality to Lisbeth where she will do literally anything and stop at nothing to gain the security and autonomy that she’s looking for,” the writer notes. “But when she gets there, what she’s lost in the process is actually quite tragic.” 

Indeed, in the wake of Lisbeth’s pot-stirring, mass hysteria has gripped the town, causing many people — including Leo and Maddie — to start believing Grace is a godlike figure. 

Why are Maddie and Leo worshiping Grace?  

For much of the season, Maddie is crestfallen that, unlike so many others, she has yet to be visited by Grace, who was her ride-or-die best friend.

As the dance team heads to regionals, Maddie’s struggle with her eating disorder intensifies, in no small part due to the fact Lisbeth is strategically crushing her confidence. While running on very little food, Maddie gets onstage to perform and, at long last, has a euphoric vision of Grace. 

“We did versions where I was screaming like it was The Crucible, and it was religious hysteria, and we did versions that were very soft and weak, and she was being controlled as if she was a puppet,” Chen says. Ultimately, the most powerful moment came when Wylie showed up on set while Chen was in character.

 “Shooting that scene was really long,” the actor recalls. “Me, as Maddie, being truly the only person facing Sofia felt actually incredible. There’s a really special shot where a single teardrop came out [that ended up in the cut].” 

Maddie, finally relaxed, giddy, and hopeful, calls Leo up and invites him to join her in prayer outside of Grace’s house. A delighted Leo accepts. He meets Maddie in the pouring rain, and the pair clasp hands, sharing an ecstatic moment of worship for their friend.  

“They are both people who struggle a lot with guilt and shame and not understanding why they act or think or feel the way they do, and this is an era before this broader conversation about mental health and mental illness was going on,” Chen explains. “Both have this independent and very all-consuming journey with their own belief system, and Grace embodies somebody who has given them so much.”

Leo, meanwhile, has felt a pull toward Grace from the get-go. “When he starts to hear these whispers of miracles she’s doing, it’s enough to start to sway him,” Kelly says. “By the time we find him at the end of that final episode, he really believes. For so much of this season, he’s just trying to catch his breath, trying to find some solid ground, [so] to finally have some answers, it’s a really nice feeling for him.” 

To get into Maddie’s mindset, Chen headed to a Catholic church the mornings before filming and attended service. “I didn’t grow up religious, but I would listen to a 7 a.m. Latin mass and have my own experience with it,” she says. “Seeing the community that would visit — I would bring that feeling to those days.”

She also cued up Hilary Duff’s “Come Clean” ahead of shooting that rapturous moment in the rain — “It’s all about shedding and releasing something and returning to a pure version of yourself, which is exactly how Maddie feels” — while Kelly selected “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for his pump-up song. He recalls, with a laugh, being “soaking wet, hunched over, AirPods in, blasting that.”

Does Grace wake up? 

Yes! In the last moments of the finale, Grace sits up from her bed and delivers three head-spinning words: “I am God.” As her mother, father, uncle, and Anya all approach to rest their hands on her body, the camera zooms out to a bird’s-eye view, showing more and more hands piling onto Grace before we cut to black. 

Gammell and Shephard knew what those final words would be before they even sold the show. And yes, you saw that correctly, there is absolutely a small smile spreading across Grace’s face as all those hands touch her body.  “There’s a little wink at the end,” Gammell teases. 

It was important — and nerve-racking — for Wylie to get that mic-drop dialogue right. “I find moments like that really difficult because you want it to feel really weighty, you want it to land, and it’s a lot of pressure because if it doesn’t, then it’s so cringey,” she says. “I was like, ‘Everyone in this show is so good and jaw-dropping, I cannot ruin the last moment of this season.’”

Wylie continues, “I think I just wanted it to be as naturalistic as possible. How would someone speak when they haven’t spoken in two weeks? How much awareness are they actually having?”

More questions buzzed in the actor’s head about Grace’s curtain-closing words. “Is she fully aware that she’s even saying that, or is this coming from her confusion from having been in a coma? We don’t really know how sentient she is at this moment. With my delivery, I was hoping it could offer that level of interpretation.” 

The final shot was — in part — a hat tip to the group dance sequence at the end of the pilot. “Gina sent me this really beautiful music video where this guy is in church, and his family and his congregation have their hands on his head and his face, holding him,” Shephard explains. “That, combined with the ending of the pilot, were the two points of inspiration for wanting to end with this moment that was surreal cinematically.”

She adds, “It really foreshadows Grace’s perspective coming into the center.” 

The Body is streaming now.