SPOILER:
'The Outsider' Ending: Breaking Down the Finale, Credits Scene, and Season 2 Possibilities
The ending is deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation, which is a thing that the internet absolutely hates (Google “
Inception ending” to see what I’m talking about). There are two possibilities – one, that Holly is imagining seeing Jack in her bathroom and is just checking up on the case that fundamentally changed her life; or two, that she is under El Cuco’s influence and is checking to see exactly what the authorities know about it as it slowly recuperates in the cave and transforms into Holly.
There’s evidence to support either conclusion. It’s been established that Holly suffers from PTSD, so the appearance of Jack in her mirror could just be a symptom of the extreme stress she experienced in the shootout in front of the cave. However, just before Ralph crushes the monster’s skull, it pulls a T-1000 and transforms into a bunch of people, including Ralph’s boss Yunis and Holly, which seems to indicate that it can mimic anyone, but can only fully duplicate a person when it collects some of their DNA. That means it could’ve been anyone at any time, and although we never see the Claude monster scratch Holly, other members of the group certainly had the opportunity. It’s entirely possible that El Cuco mimicked Yunis, or Ralph, or anyone else, and scratched her arm to gather her sweet, sweet genetic material for the purposes of nefarious shapeshifting. It’s kind of up to you to decide which explanation is more plausible, although the show throws an additional wrench into everything when El Cuco admits that it has no idea whether it is a sole being or part of a race of creatures, meaning there could be more of them out there. (The show tips us further in this direction in Episode 9, when the Cherokee City D.A. learns that another mutilated child was discovered by a hiker, and we know our El Cuco hasn’t been able to successfully kill any more children since poor Frankie.)