Defending Jacob's twist ending drives home the resilience of Andy Barber, perfectly portrayed by Chris Evans
At the beginning of 'Defending Jacob', when Chris Evans was introduced as Andy Barber (Chris Evans), he seemed like a man who did not have much to lose, a man who has faced harsh conflicts in life. He was not loud, but his resignation was clear. The crux of the show was to figure out if Jacob (Jaeden Martell) was innocent or not and how this question drives away from each other. The possibility of Andy's son being guilty of murder is something that he can stomach because it is only a possibility and not fact, but his wife Laurie (Michelle Dockery) cannot deal with the possibility of living with someone who is capable of murder.
He is a successful assistant district attorney whose life was just perfect. His wife and his son were his only family and that is probably why Andy was able to go to the extent that he did towards the end. As a child, Andy had to defend himself against the prejudice that came with being the son of a murderer himself. As an adult, after burying his past and moving on, the fact that he had to defend his son's innocence against charges of murder only goes to show how much Andy internalizes all his feelings unlike his wife Laurie, who has had at least a couple of break downs since the whole ordeal began.
Initially, Andy is more privy to the possibility of Jacob being the murder, considering that his father was one too. He is caught between reliving his past, now because of his son, or being bull-headed and moving forward with trust in his son. Mostly he forges forward, and that includes the time when damaging evidence is presented against his son at court. While Laurie deals with the stress by going for runs every day, or even to the psychiatrist who consults on the case for Jacob, Andy is closed off from all possibilities of confiding in someone because he is hiding a fair bit of information from Laurie.
When he first reveals that his father was a murderer to Laurie, he initially faces the same judgments that he did as a child and if it was anyone else, one would have burst from all the pressure but Andy doesn't. The only time he loses his calm is when the prosecutor on his son's case Neal (Pablo Shreiber) goads him about hiding a key piece of information -- that his father is in jail for murder -- and in return, he gets punched. In fact, this is the first time that Andy is ever shown to be violent in the show.
Even when Neal continues to hammer away at him in the present, he clamps on his temper and frustration. It is later that we realize in the finale that Andy is trying to defend his wife for something horrible and if he slipped up even one bit, it would end up becoming incriminating evidence against her.
All of this while he is also caring for a family member who is in the hospital. The final twist, that of Jacob's accident drives home the fact that Andy will shoulder everything that comes his way if it means that he can keep his family safe. Everything including the isolation and loneliness that he feels towards the end when he sits alone in a house that used to be his home and sheds a drop of tear for what was once a happy family.