‘Where The Crawdads Sing’ ending explained: Is Kya found guilty?

The 2022 murder mystery Where The Crawdads Sing lands on Netflix this week, but what happens to lead character Kya in the end?

The film was based on the massively successful 2018 novel by Delia Owens, and stars Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya, a young woman living on her own in rural North Carolina, who is accused of murdering local man Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson).

Adapted for the screen by Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and directed by Olivia Newman (First Match), the film also boasts ‘Carolina’, an original song written and recorded for the film by Taylor Swift.

Speaking about her relationship with the film, Swift said: “Where The Crawdads Sing is a book I got absolutely lost in when I read it years ago. As soon as I heard there was a film in the works starring the incredible Daisy Edgar Jones and produced by the brilliant Reese Witherspoon, I knew I wanted to be a part of it from the musical side.

“I wrote the song ‘Carolina’ alone and asked my friend Aaron Dessner to produce it. I wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerising story.”

In a two-star review of the film, NME wrote: “Where the Crawdads Sing is often laughable, but Newman doesn’t present the material with the kind of panache that could complete its transformation into a trash classic. Like its heroine, it’s too skittish to embrace its inner wildness – a wannabe naturalist that insists on covering up.”

Is Kya found guilty in Where The Crawdads Sing?

When Kya’s former partner Chase is found dead in a nearby marsh, Kya is charged with his murder and is immediately assumed to be guilty by the suspicious townspeople.

Kya had previously left Chase for Tate, a previous lover that had re-entered her life. Upon learning that Kya had left him, Chase attempts to rape Kya, but she fights him off, vowing to kill him if he does not leave her in peace.

The prosecutors speculate that Kya lured Chase to a bell tower and pushed him to his death, but the jury find her not guilty due to insufficient evidence.

What happens to Kya?

Kya and Tate spend the rest of their lives together, with Kya successfully publishing her own illustrated nature books.

We see an elderly Kya in a boat on the swamp, reminiscing about her childhood and her missing mother. Tate later finds Kya lying dead in the boat in the docks.

As he begins to box up her possessions, Tate finds Chase’s shell necklace that was missing from his recovered body, alongside Kya’s drawing of Chase, and a passage that says, “to protect the prey, sometimes the predator has to be killed”. Tate throws the shell into the marsh.

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