'Teenage Bounty Hunters' Ending Explained: Truth bomb reveals why Debbie protected her arsonist twin sister
'Teenage Bounty Hunters' revolves around Blair and Sterling's 'bond' as "fraternal twins". They are two halves of a whole, communicating telepathically all the time. They are each other's ultimate backup plan, believe in "twin swears" and both describe each other in glowing terms of mutual affection and love. In one particularly revealing bit of dialogue, Blair tells Sterling "I love you so much I almost absorbed you in the womb." To which Sterling replies, "I would absorb you any day." Even when their relationship hits rock bottom after Sterling fails to show up to take over from Blair on the bounty recon, they still go together to find out about their mother's mysterious past.
Blair is the first to realize that their mother, Debbie, is hiding something and there is something not very savory behind her church-going, loving wife, mom, and perfect hostess facade. She believes that Sterling, who is the favored child, doesn't have the ability to sense the truth about Debbie, unlike her who is like a cat left outside with just bread and water. Her break up with Miles makes her angsty enough to dig up clues about her mother.
This leads the twins to an extremist, cultish church in Nandina, Georgia, that their mother was a part of. They also learn of her criminal past that involved her burning down an abortion clinic. Once they get back home, Debbie confesses and says she strayed onto the wrong path when she was young and impressionable and has tried so hard every day to be the exact opposite of what she was. Blair and Sterling forgive her and all seems back to normal.
Bowser is not so easily appeased though. After a rough day, he trashes his office, only to find Debbie's picture with a $90,000 bounty on her head. A suspicious man before the twins made him "go soft", he instantly believes that the twins were fooling him all along, only becoming his "interns" to help their mother evade the law. He says he won't send their mom to jail but he fires them on the spot. Though the twins try telling him they just found out too, he refuses to believe them. He decides to leave town because Yolanda is dating Terrance Coin and there was "nothing left" for him in Atlanta.
And then, comes a very peculiar scene. We see Debbie get into the family truck as her husband, Anderson, tells her to call once she is over the border and in Mexico. At this point, we assume that Debbie is being extra cautious and will lay low in Mexico until her trail falls cold again. She picks up heartbroken Sterling from the lock-in event at school and Sterling wonders how she knew that she needed to be picked up. Thankfully, she texts Blair and that's when the penny drops. Debbie in the car is not Debbie but Debbie's twin sister, Dana. Dana is the real arsonist, who Debbie has been covering for all this time, helping her evade the law.
When Bowser, Blair, Debbie and Anderson arrive to stop Dana from escaping to Mexico with Sterling, we see Debbie and Dana communicate telepathically just like Blair and Sterling do. As Debbie berates Dana mentally for destroying her life, she also begs her not to tell the truth. But Dana, certain that she is going to be locked up for a long time, throws the truth bomb -- Sterling is her daughter, not Debbie's. This means that Blair and Sterling were never twins and this was why Dana was escaping with just Sterling to Mexico.
We see Bowser grimace because he knows exactly how foundational the twin identity is to Blair and Sterling. With her words, Dana effectively shatters the womb-to-death bond between the girls. This is when you realize why Debbie capitulated to Dana's requests for money time and again. She was afraid of exactly this scenario -- of Dana claiming Sterling as her own and taking her away from them. We also realize why Sterling is the 'favorite child' -- Debbie thought she needed more protection with an arsonist mother on the loose.
The show ends on the cliffhanger of Sterling's face that collapses as she hears Dana's words while Blair turns to her shocked. Season 2 will concentrate on how the twins' relationship will change after this revelation.
'Teenage Bounty Hunter' premiered on August 14 and is available to stream on Netflix.