Harry Gilby, Teddie Allen, Clarice van Houten, and David Duchovny in a scene from MaliceImage via ©Amazon/MGM Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection
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Amanda M. Castro
Published 52 minutes ago
Amanda M. Castro is a Network TV writer at Collider and a journalist based in New York. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Amanda is a bilingual Latina who graduated from the University of New Haven with a degree in Communication, Film, and Media Studies. She covers the world of network television, focusing on sharp, thoughtful analysis of the shows and characters that keep audiences tuning in week after week. At Collider, Amanda dives into the evolving landscape of network TV — from long-running procedural favorites to ambitious new dramas — exploring why these stories matter and how they connect with viewers on a cultural level.
Sign in to your Collider account Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recapPrime Video’s new psychological thriller Malice arrives looking like another glossy “male nanny infiltrates a wealthy family” series. But the six-episode mystery has something far nastier on its mind. Created by James Wood and led by Jack Whitehall, Carice van Houten, and David Duchovny, the show sets up a familiar playground of marital fractures, class resentment, and glamorous paranoia. What it delivers instead is a full-blown character horror story — one that refuses to hand over the catharsis viewers expect from modern eat-the-rich thrillers.
At its core, Malice asks a brutal question: What happens when revenge succeeds, but justice utterly fails? Its finale answers by shattering the fantasy entirely.
Prime Video’s 'Malice' Weaponizes Class Rage — and Then Denies Viewers the Comfort of Justice
Jack Whitehall bleeding from his lip next to an old car in MaliceImage via Prime Video
The series plays with class dynamics from the opening moments. Adam Healey (Whitehall) steps into the Tanner family’s privileged world as its cheerful, competent nanny. He’s the outsider with a smile, eager to help but always watching. Jamie Tanner (Duchovny), the wealthy patriarch, is the kind of oblivious, self-important employer that modern thrillers love to tear down. And the show keeps nudging viewers toward Adam’s side — his strained past, his financial struggles, the sense that he’s been pushed around by people like Jamie his whole life.
It’s a setup that usually ends with the underdog exposing corruption, leveling the power imbalance, or reclaiming something stolen from them. Malice knows this. And then it burns that expectation to the ground.
The Villain 'Wins' But Justice Completely Fails in 'Malice'
Harry Gilby and David Duchovny in MaliceImage via Amazon/MGM Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection
Malice ends with Adam meticulously destroying Jamie’s life — emotionally, financially, and finally physically. When Jamie confronts him, expecting answers or a moment of truth, Adam gives him none. The execution is fast, cold, and terrifyingly confident. From a distance, it almost reads like the fantasy version of justice these stories often provide: The rich man gets what’s coming to him. But Wood twists the knife.
Adam doesn’t just kill Jamie. He frames a local teenage boy — a working-class kid whose family has nothing to do with the Tanners’ dysfunction. The police swarm the home, the community reels, and the boy’s life is effectively over before he even understands what’s happening.
The wealthy villain falls, but an innocent family pays the price. The system barely catches up. And the final image leaves viewers wondering whether Adam might escape entirely, his next identity already forming in his mind. It’s revenge without righteousness. Retribution without justice. A victory so hollow it curdles into something deeply frightening.
’Malice’s Finale Turns Class War Into a Character Horror Story
David Duchovny and Jack Whitehall in MaliceImage via Amazon/MGM Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection
The last episode reframes everything viewers thought they understood about Adam’s motives. His long-implied hatred of Jamie stems not from Jamie’s actual sins, but from Adam’s need to keep mythologizing his own father — a man whose real history is far uglier than the story Adam built to survive childhood.
The class commentary was a lure. The real twist is that Adam isn’t a righteous avenger striking back at privilege; he’s a man so shaped by childhood terror that he’s rewritten his life into a hero narrative he can control — no matter who gets crushed in the process.
This is why the ending lands with such force. After his so-called triumph, Adam isn’t triumphant. He’s blank. Untethered. Not vindicated, just emptied. And the implication is chilling: Someone this damaged can keep slipping into new households, new roles, new lives, repeating the cycle again and again while convincing himself he’s the victim or the savior. The horror isn’t just in what he does to the Tanners — it’s in how easily the world might let him do it again.
Why Malice Is Worth Watching
David Duchovny and Jack Whitehall in MaliceImage via Image via Amazon/MGM Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection
Even amid a divisive critical response, Malice stands out for refusing to behave like the shows it resembles. Wood and directors Mike Barker and Leonora Lonsdale lean into atmosphere, unease, and creeping psychological tension instead of puzzle-box twists. Whitehall, playing radically against type, is unnervingly calm even when his façade cracks. Duchovny and van Houten give the Tanner marriage layers of insecurity that keep the family’s dysfunction grounded rather than cartoonish.
But the real hook is the finale. Where most thrillers reassure audiences that revenge has moral clarity, Malice insists on messier truths. Sometimes the rich are awful. Sometimes the underdog is a monster. And sometimes the story you’ve been rooting for turns into a warning instead.
Malice doesn’t reward the viewer’s anger — it interrogates it. That’s what makes the show stick in your head long after the last shot fades.
Malice
Like Follow Followed Drama Mystery Thriller Release Date November 14, 2025 Network Prime VideoCast
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David Duchovny
Jamie Tanner
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Jack Whitehall
Adam Healey
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Carice van Houten
Nat Tanner
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Harry Gilby
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Malice
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Amazon Prime Video
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