Bodies ending explained: what happened in finale of Netflix sci-fi drama - who is Elias Mannix (spoilers)

Netflix sci-fi mystery series Bodies follows four detectives who work together across time to solve a murder case and avert a national catastrophe.

The eight-part series, which landed on Netflix today, starring Stephen Graham, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, and Shira Haas, is a murder mystery like no other, as the body of the deceased has turned up in the same location on four occasions over the course of 170 years.

The series is full of complicated twists and turns as time is changed by the detectives and the mysterious Elias Mannix, who seems to have a nefarious plan.

In the final episode, it all becomes clear as Mannix’s true identity is revealed and the detectives collaborate across the decades to try and stop him from fulfilling his warped destiny. This is what happened in the final episode of Bodies:

Major spoilers for Bodies ahead

What happened in the last episode of Bodies on Netflix?

The final episode of Bodies, titled Know You Are Loved, was a bit of a head scratcher - a lot unravelled as the four detectives worked to undo Mannix’s damage.

DC Maplewood travelled back in time to 1890 and convinced DI Hillinghead in his prison cell that she had come from the future to stop Mannix, and that she had killed the man that Hillinghead had been accused of killing.

She warns Hillinghead that he will be killed on his way to Pentonville. On the transport, Hillinghead tells Mannix that he knows his real identity and what he has done, and that he will come to regret his actions.

Time has changed, and now Mannix grows remorseful for his actions, and becomes distant from his wife. He records one final record in secret, expressing his regret and imploring the younger version of himself not to detonate the bomb that will kill so many people.

When DS Whiteman comes to kill him, Mannix convinces him to take hold of the record and hide it somewhere safe for Shahara Hasan to find in the future. He then puts Whiteman’s gun to his head and the detective pulls the trigger, killing Mannix.

Whiteman goes to a local policeman’s pub, The Silk Mercer, and hides the record behind a picture frame, before being killed by police.

In 2053 Hasan and Defoe find a message for them, which Hasan realises is directing them to The Silk Mercer. However, the pub was destroyed by the bomb 30 years previously.

Defoe points out that they still have access to the time travel device, and Hasan travels back to 2023, where she finds the record in the pub and plays it for the young Mannix who is about to detonate the bomb. Hearing the regret in his older self’s voice, Mannix decides not to set the bomb off, and the entire history of the country is changed.

Mannix disappears from the world as he had stopped himself from coming into existence. Detectives Hillinghead and Whiteman never encounter the case of the dead body and so are not executed, and Esther, the young girl Whiteman failed to protect, was not killed either. 

Hasan’s family are alive and well, and she, as well as her two predecessors, do not remember the events which they helped to prevent from happening. However, in the very final scene, as Hasan gets a taxi, we see that her driver is DC Maplewood, who has somehow come to the year 2023, ending the season on a cliffhanger and teasing a second series. 

Who is Elias Mannix in Bodies?

Elias Mannix is the teen from 2023 who, in one version of history detonates a bomb killing half a million people in London and ushering in a new totalitarian state, of which he later becomes the head.

In this timeline, Elias travels back in time to 1890 where he takes on an assumed name and covers up the sudden appearance of Gabriel Defoe’s dead body. Mannix begins a cult, using his knowledge of the future to win over followers, orchestrates the framing and murder of DI Hillinghead, marries the detective’s daughter and has a son.

He begins a family line that will eventually lead to his own birth - creating a loop, and making him his own ancestor. In the 1940s, as an old man, Mannix records a message for his future, younger self, convincing him to detonate the bomb in 2023.

However, following the tense season finale, Mannix is convinced that his actions will not cause him to be loved and that he will only do great harm. He records another message for himself in which he says he regrets his actions and tells his younger self not to carry them out.

The young Mannix then decides not to detonate the bomb, in the process preventing his own birth, and removing his influence from the timeline.