Jim isn’t the only Sullivan to get a bullet in the head this episode. Once Ray puts it all together, he shoots Jim Sullivan between the eyes. As the show has hinted for weeks and made explicit through flashback this episode, Jim Sullivan was having sex with Bridget Donovan, she got pregnant, and then she killed herself because she couldn’t bring herself to get an abortion. What he didn’t realize until the finale was that Jim Sullivan robbed way more than gold coins from Mick.

A blackmail attempt on Kevin Sullivan opened a door to the past for the Donovans, and through that door, Mickey Donovan saw a chance to get what he felt Jim Sullivan robbed from him. The main thrust of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is about bringing closure to the Sullivan Saga. Not to mention it ends in a way that will almost surely bring people back next year, if just to see how the Donovans crawl their way back to normalcy, or if that’s even possible. It was a solid season, not quite as impressive as last year, and the truncated episode count made it feel like the finale was rushed, but it’s certainly more ambitious and emotionally fulfilling than some of the series’ lesser years. It opened with decapitated heads floating to the surface and ends with vengeance for the death of Ray’s sister - it’s almost as if Ray Donovan decided to go to therapy and things just started surfacing everywhere. If this elegiac season has been about what’s been lost, it’s also been about how trauma and tragedy will never truly stay buried.

It’s a remarkably sad episode of Ray Donovan, one that concludes with all of its characters in emotional holes as deep as the one Ray spends the episode digging. It closes the season on a deeply melancholy note that evokes all that’s been lost: Terry’s physical strength, Bridget’s hope for happiness, the Donovans’ childhoods when their father left them to be preyed on by adults. Bridget sings again to end this season, but it’s an ironic song choice that also gives the episode its title, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” the Elvis Presley version of the song is repeated over the final montage, in which every character we see is quite literally alone. Last season Ray Donovan ended on a surprisingly upbeat note, with the entire Donovan clan together in one home hearing Bridget sing at the dinner table.

Ray donovan season 7