If it hasn’t already become clear, rumors of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
After a polarizing third season that concluded in the agonizing, yet exhilarating, arc of Heather Gay’s black eye, many fans were ready to throw in the towel. Calls for cancellation flew while rumors of a reboot simmered. Yet here we are one year later, having watched the most magical episode of Housewives having just aired—and it’s none other than the RHOSLC Season 4 finale.
Masterful in every way, the finale proved Bravo’s best days aren’t behind it. A stunning conclusion to the best season in modern history, RHOSLC closed in bombastic fashion, perfectly capping the season’s mysteries. And it wasn’t just Season 4 stories that found closure, but none other than the mystery of Heather’s black eye.
But let’s start from the beginning.
As is RHOSLC tradition, the episode begins with a dramatic cold open foreshadowing the final night in Bermuda’s explosive events.
“There’s something I need to tell you guys, and it’s big, and it’s not good,” Heather says over a stormy backdrop.
A montage of the night’s fights washes over the screen before we rewind to “eight hours earlier.” The calm before the storm, if you will. As the women rehash the previous night—Whitney yelling “you exploited my vagina!” at a flabbergasted Heather—Monica lets slip that Lisa said Whitney’s being “dramatic,” something that confuses Whitney, since Lisa is also dramatic.
Whitney, now sober and no longer accusing Heather of exploiting her vagina, meets Heather in her room to make peace. Now, if you’re an RHOSLC obsessive like me, you had trouble paying attention to this scene once you saw Heather’s outfit. A floral blue set, the piece was first seen in the Season 4 premiere.
In that episode, answering a phone call in the season’s in media res cold open, Heather sounds shaken up.
“Hey, what did you find out? Are you kidding me right now? Shut the f*** up. I’m trembling, trembling. I cannot believe it’s her,” Heather says. “How could she do this to us?”
We started the season with that mystery—who is she and what did she do?—and here we are, five minutes into the finale, and there’s the outfit. Like Heather, I began trembling in this moment, unaware of the power of what’s to come. All I knew is that everything would soon change.
But first, mopeds! A cute little scene, we learn that Meredith hasn’t driven a vehicle since 1987, according to Heather. Meredith tells a producer she doesn’t even know the last time she was behind a wheel. This expands the lore of Meredith’s traumatic car accident from earlier in the season, and adds to her enigmatic persona.
After this cute little fluff and a shopping scene, we dive right into the meat. “One hour later” appears over a black screen, and we finally get to see Heather’s phone call. The all-too-familiar scene airs, followed by another cut to “four hours later.”
It’s dinner time, and Heather shares in a confessional she “just got this devastating information.”
“My head is swimming,” she says. “But it’s too big, it’s too damning, and I have to deal with it. But what’s about to go down could change our friendships forever.”
The women arrive to a dinner beautifully set up in honor of the Bermuda triangle. And some unexpected guests wait for them at the table: the dolls the group designed on pioneer day. A wonderfully goofy cap on the hyperreality that is RHOSLC, Whitney notes, “Oh my God, the dolls are back,” her voice shaky.
Once the women are seated for dinner, Heather announces she wants to play a game. A trope that’s become essential to Housewives and especially RHOSLC, the pot stirring game is always sure to cause trouble, but never has it been this explosive. Who knew the ladies could top the chaos of the “warm and fuzzy/cold and prickly” Palm Springs dinner?
“On this trip, we have learned a lot about each other, but if there is one unsolved mystery about each one of us that you want to ask, take the person’s doll that’s in your bowl, and that’s who you’re going to ask a mystery about this person that you would like answered,” Heather wordvomits. This is reality TV after all, we can’t always get a spotless soundbite.
We start with some light hors d’oeuvres, Whitney asking Lisa why she’d dismiss her dramatics when Lisa is “very dramatic” and had a tantrum of her own the day before on the yacht.
“Was I being dramatic or was I being emotional?” Whitney asks.
This launches into a little game, counting the number of times the women say dramatic after this, and it’s 15, providing a nice palate cleanser before returning to Andy Cohen’s And Then There Were None.
Next up, Meredith turns to Heather to ask why she didn’t support her when the women ganged up on Meredith, believing Monica. This parlays into Heather kicking the can to Monica, announcing she has a few questions for her.
“The mystery for me with Monica is: Who is the real Monica?” Heather announces.
While Heather initially thought Monica was a “truth-teller,” she no longer thinks that’s who she is.
“The real Monica is someone who really doesn’t want to be our friend, that wants to profit from our lives and our pain,” she says. “I know who you really are, and who you really are is…”
Cutting off Heather, the show jumps back two hours to unseen footage. Heather stands alone on the beach, soon joined by the other three OG’s: Lisa, Meredith, and Whitney. At this meeting of the minds, Heather announces she has devastating information.
“Monica is not who she says she is,” Heather reveals. “She’s not our friend, she’s someone that has schemed and worked to infiltrate our friend group.”
Then Heather drops a bomb: Monica runs a troll social media account dedicated to taking Jen Shah and the rest of the cast down. The women gasp in disbelief, and Heather reveals she learned this tidbit from none other than Tenesha, her hair stylist.
More tea spills when Heather reveals that she discovered three Monicas registered in Beauty Lab & Laser’s system, all with the same birthday. Flashbacks show how Heather began to put the pieces together, and our newest Housewives detective says she called Tenesha—our offscreen production warrior—to confirm her suspicions.
“That account has annihilated all of us,” Whitney says as the women grow frantic.
Meredith’s ice thaws and she begins to bawl.
“I’m freaking out. I am so tired of people trying to hurt us,” she says. “This is so f***ed up.”
The meeting of the minds comes to a conclusion as we arrive back at dinner, welcoming Monica and Angie K — remember her? — back into the fold. Heather confronts Monica with conviction, doll clutched in hand.
“I have your perfect formula. Receipts! Proof! Timelines! Screenshots! Fucking everything to prove you are a fucking bully and a fucking troll and you do not deserve to be at this table or anywhere near any of us,” Heather screams.
But Monica doesn’t lay down and die. Mask fully off, she fights back, proving her years of trolling women on the internet has given her some serious fighter skills. She confesses that Heather’s accusation is “part true,” but calls Heather’s assumptions into question.
That’s when Meredith engages, calling back to the Season 2 revelation that Jen and her Shah Squad stole from Meredith’s store. As security footage pops onto the screen, we learn that Monica was in the store that day, despite telling Meredith she’d never been to her store.
Lisa grabs the baton and begins to scream, but Monica swats her away, calling her a “dumb bitch.”
RHOSLC’s resident fighters, Lisa and Monica engage in an unintelligible screaming match, the conclusion to their scintillating season-long feud.
“Monica, the bottom line is, what do we f***ing believe right now? Because you trolled everyone of us,” Lisa yells.
That’s when Monica, in confessional, announces she ran the account with others, very much a Pretty Little Liars A-team reveal. The reveal does help Monica a bit, as it’s simply embarrassing to post as much as some of these tea accounts. It’s definitely nice to know she had some coworkers calling Whitney a swinger.
Then Angie K hops into the scene, getting a little moment as our resident flop queen. It’s unclear if Angie is learning this info at dinner since Heather neglected to invite her to the covert meetup, but she takes it in stride. We learn she had interacted with the account—including calling Angie H. “desperate and thirsty”—a crumb that I will think about often. Maybe we should bring back Angie H. next year for a battle of the Angies.
The screaming match escalates when Angie grabs a bouquet and Monica dares her to throw it. But our Greek warrior calmly takes a seat, bowing out of the season. We love you Angie! Supporting characters matter too.
After Monica admits to recording damning videos of Jen and posting them on the account, Lisa calls her a loser. Monica then launches a tirade of hatred never before seen on Housewives, and it’s beautiful.
“F*** you, you dumb old f***ing piece of shit, leather rubbery bitch, Donald Trump [unintelligible insult word], shut the f*** up,” Monica says.
Unfortunately for Monica, such intense vitriol as in that sentence is only found on Housewives social media, a depraved ecosystem full of people wanting to beat women with sticks over mundane drama. So, she’s definitely not beating the troll allegations. Still, it’s cool to see a deranged fan make it onto Real Housewives—running where Jennifer Aydin has only ever walked.
After the screaming match ends, Heather lays down the law: “I don’t think you understand something about this group. Listen to me: There’s something that you missed out on. We are friends, and we have been through this bullsh*t before, with Jen.”
Then, the reveal of the night happens: Heather finally comes clean that Jen gave her the black eye. The best long-term payoff in Housewives history, dare I say, the reveal ends a genuinely perfect season.
Heather kicks Gossip Girl off the trip, and the season closes with title cards playing as the women sob amongst each other. It’s very avant garde for a Housewives ending, and a departure from the cheesy toasts that usually cap seasons at extravagant finale parties. But RHOSLC’s Call Me By Your Name credits roll is certainly welcomed.
The season finally ends with Monica teasing more to come, all-but-ensuring a monstrous three-part reunion for the books.
There are few words to describe the shock and awe I felt watching this episode. This is perfect TV and we are better people for having it in our lives. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City has officially cemented a wonderful legacy, no matter what happens next.
The storytelling found here genuinely is unmatched in the reality TV universe, hitting the same shocking beats as primetime soap operas like Desperate Housewives and Melrose Place.
With a three-part reunion to come, we have plenty more RHOSLC to look forward to, and thank God for that. Buckle in for more on Heather’s black eye, Monica’s betrayals, and the return of Mary as the women take their well-deserved victory lap, starting next week.
