A Tragic Death Leads to New Beginnings
Lifetime’s latest twisted family saga has come to a close. Part 4 of V.C. Andrews’ Dawn aired on July 29, and it didn’t hold back when it came to campy, over-the-drop drama we’ve come to expect from the network’s adaptations of the V.C. Andrews’ gothic novels. The final installment of this limited series featured a tragic fire, a grab-bag of creepy and vindictive relatives, and a high-stakes game of keep-away with a baby doll. Let’s break down how things ended for the cursed Cutler family in Midnight Whipsters.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for V.C. Andrews’ Dawn Part 4: Midnight Whispers.]
A tragic fire claims two characters in ‘V.C. Andrews’ Dawn’ Part 4
The fourth part of V.C. Andrews’ Dawn jumps forward in time, with the action taking place roughly a decade after the events of Twilight’s Child.
Dawn (Brec Bassinger) and Jimmy’s (Khobe Clarke) daughter Christie (Megan Best) is turning 16. For once, things seem to be going well for Dawn and her family. Christie is planning to pursue a career as a pianist, thus fulfilling her mother’s thwarted dreams of a career in the arts. And Dawn and Jimmy now have a son named Jefferson (Sawyer Fraser). Of course, it’s impossible for the Longchamps to avoid tragedy for long, and it arrives during Christie’s sweet 16 party, courtesy of Dawn’s creepy half-brother Phillip (Dane Schioler) and his wife Bets (Chelsey Reist).
Phillip’s obsession with Dawn hasn’t dimmed with age. He’s even built a shrine to her in the basement of the Cutler’s Cove hotel. Bets knows all about her husband’s fixation, and when Phillip forces Dawn to dance with him at the party, she storms off and rips Dawn’s photos from the walls. When Phillip discovers what she’s done, he’s upset. She implies Jimmy is to blame.
Unfortunately, Jimmy picks this moment to head downstairs and fix the boiler. Phillip attacks him and leaves him for dead, while Bets listens in. Soon after, Dawn smells gas and goes to investigate. She finds Jimmy, barely clinging to life. But before she can bring him to safety, the hotel explodes. Dawn and Jimmy are killed.
Christie flees from Phillip in ‘Midnight Whispers’
With Dawn and Jimmy dead, Chritie and Jefferson are orphans. Uncle Phillip and Aunt Bets, who are homeless following the hotel explosion, offer to care for them out of the kindness of their hearts. Just kidding. Bets – who had long resented Dawn – wants revenge and a place to live. Phillip wants Christie.
One night, Phillip attacks Christie. Though she can hear her niece’s screams, Betty doesn’t intervene. Christie grabs Jefferson and flees to New York City, where she hopes to find her birth father, Michael Sutton (NKOTB’s Joey McIntyre). It doesn’t go as she hoped. Michael has fallen on even harder times since his failed blackmail attempt. He’s living in a cramped walk-up apartment and scraping together a living giving singing lessons. He gives his daughter a bit of fatherly advice – “family can be treacherous, especially when there’s money involved” – but he makes it clear she can’t stay with him.
Dawn’s desperate, but there’s one more person to whom she can turn. Gavin Longchamp (Emrik Lopez), Ormond Longchamp’s teenage son and Jimmy’s half-brother. (The family tree is a bit confusing, but the key thing is that although Gavin is Christie’s uncle, the two are not biologically related. That makes his relationship with Christie marginally less weird.)
Gavin and Christie hide out at the Meadows, where more secrets are revealed
To avoid Phillip and Bets, Christie, Gavin, and Jefferson hide out at the Meadows. (That’s the creepy plantation where Dawn gave birth to her daughter, in case you forgot.) Luther (Dean Redman) and Charlotte (Bronwen Smith) welcome them with open arms, though the vibe is a bit off. Charlotte never really recovered after Homer, her son with Luther, was taken from her years earlier. She has a creepy baby doll named Ruby she uses to comfort herself.
During her conversation with Christie, Charlotte shares some more secrets about the Meadows and the Cutler family, including the big reveal that Lillian’s father traded his daughter to get back the family estate he’d lost in a poker game. That’s how Lillian ended up married to William Cutler (aka Dawn’s biological father) and also explains why she was such a nasty piece of work. (The book Darkest Hour covers Lillian’s story. We’d be shocked if Lifetime wasn’t working on a prequel movie, similar to last year’s Flowers in the Attic prequel.)
Gavin and Christie know they can’t stay at the Meadows forever. As they’re contemplating their next move, Christie’s aunt and Gavin’s half-sister Fern (Clara Alexandrova) shows up with her boyfriend. Fern – who is giving Fairuza Balk in The Craft vibes – is basically here to stir up trouble. She torments Charlotte by stealing Ruby and threatening to throw the doll out the window. She also clues Phillip into Christie’s whereabouts. When Jefferson has to be rushed to the hospital because he has tetanus, Phillip shows up.
Christie and Jefferson return home with Phillip and Bets. But Phillip hasn’t given up his pursuit of Christie. Even worse, he’s now showing signs of his father’s mental illness. In the episode’s closing moments, he reveals that he thinks Christie is Dawn – and that he’s her boyfriend. Then he assaults her. Christie flees and turns to her grandmother Laura Jean’s second husband Bronson Alcott (Matthew James Dowden) for help, who’s only just returned from a long trip abroad.
Bronson calls the police, and they arrest Phillip, but not before he has one last breakdown where the extent of his delusions becomes clear. Bets turns on him. She reveals the truth about the fire at the hotel and tearfully apologizes to Christie. Bronson takes in Christie and Jefferson. One year later, Christie has won admission to Juilliard, is in a relationship with Gavin, and is looking forward to a happy future, hopefully free of the family curse for good.
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