Riley Keough in “Under the Bridge.”

HULU/DISNEY

The true-crime series Under the Bridge reveals in Episode 5 at least part of the story behind what’s been haunting Rebecca Godfrey (Riley Keough) throughout the show.

Keough and Lily Gladstone star in Under the Bridge, which streams on Hulu. Based on the late Rebecca’s bestselling true-crime novel of the same name, the eight-part limited series debuted on the streaming service with two episodes on April 17.

A new episode of Under the Bridge premieres every Wednesday on the platform, with the eighth and final episode scheduled to debut on May 29.

The core story of Under the Bridge chronicles the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta). Reena was a 14-year-old girl who was murdered in 1997 following a bullying incident involving other teens under a bridge in a small town in British Columbia, Canada.

There are subplots in the Under the Bridge as well, including Rebecca’s traumatic memories of the death of her brother, Gabe. When Rebecca returns to her small hometown to write a book about teen girls growing up in the area, she is forced to confront a horrific incident from her youth involving her older sibling.

Even though Under the Bridge is being billed as a true-crime series, each episode opens with a disclaimer that reveals that some elements of the show are fictionalized or invented for dramatic purposes.

As such, some of the key elements in the first four episodes have been verified to be either fact or fictional.

Godfrey Partially Explains What Happened To Gabe During Episode 5
Rebecca Godfrey addresses the death of her brother, Gabe, in the first three episodes of Under the Bridge, in conversations with her father, Charles Godfrey, (Paul Jarrett) and her childhood friend-turned-local police officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone).

However, the circumstances behind Gabe’s death remained a mystery through the episodes. His death wasn’t discussed in Episode 4 of Under the Bridge because the neither Rebecca, Charles nor Bentland were part of a back story detailing Reena’s past.

In Episode 5, though, Rebecca reveals to one of the teens implicated in the incident before Reena’s death—Warren Glowatski (Javon “Wanna” Walton)—that her brother drowned in the ocean when she was 13 years old. Tragically, drowning was one of the contributing factors in Reena’s death.

Rebecca told Warren that she was suffering guilt over her brother’s death and felt that she could have done something to stop it—which prompts Warren to reveal a dark secret about Reena’s death.

Sadly, Rebecca died of cancer in 2022, and in her obituary in The New York TimesNew York Times 0.0%, the publication reported that her brother, Jonathan Godfrey (who is renamed Gabe for the series), died at age 16 in 1981 from drowning after falling from a local bluff.

The author, The New York Times detailed, was 13 years old at the time of the tragedy—the same age her character said she was in the series when Gabe drowned.

While it remains unclear if there will be a flashback depiction of Gabe’s death in a future episode of Under the Bridge, the character did appear in a fantasy sequence in Episode 5 of the series.

Played by actor Teagan Stark, Gabe appears to be the age he was when he drowned as Rebecca hallucinates after taking drugs with Warren at a party.

According to the Under the Bridge cast listing on IMDb, Georgia Acken plays “young Rebecca” in the series, which suggests that a flashback scene—perhaps involving Gabe’s death—may be depicted at some point.

New episodes of Under the Bridge premiere every Wednesday on Hulu through May 29.