Spoilers ahead for Ripley. If you’re catching up on the mysterious Netflix show, you might be wondering if Dickie really dies in Ripley. The new adaption of Patricia Highsmith’s 1965 book offers an eerie insight into the life of a cunning conman.
The show portrays Tom Ripley as a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder. The drama series is based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling Tom Ripley novels.
“People have a lot of preconceptions about Tom Ripley,” Andrew Scott said about his character to Netflix’s Tudum. “So it’s my job, I suppose in some ways, to ignore all that and try to create our own particular version of it.”
Tom Ripley takes up the job to convince Dickie Greenleaf to come back home from Italy but ends up becoming obsessed with his lifestyle to the point of mimicking Dickie’s life with his girlfriend Marge Sherwood. Tom Ripley jumps through various ways to con his way through life, but can he escape the woes of his own flaws and even murder?
Does Dickie die in Ripley?
Yes, Dickie is killed by Ripley after the former confesses his love to him. Top Ripley strikes him with an oar on the boat until he’s dead and bleeding. The conman then shuffles through Dickie’s belongings and intricately discards his body.
“Tom comes in and has these ideas about the depth of their friendship versus the connection that Dickie and Marge have,” Johnny Flynn, who plays Dickie told Netflix Tudum. “He wants something more. He wants to be him, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.”
Ripley returns to mainland Italy and takes over Dickie’s identity, and skillfully dodges ways in which he could get caught by the Italian police. In the process, Tom ends up killing Freddie Miles, a friend of Dickie’s who got a little too suspicious of Tom. He disposes his body outside of Rome and goes back to his old identity.
Does Tom Ripley get caught by the police?
In a way, yes but also no. After harsh consideration, Tom goes back to using his original identity after using Dickie’s for quite a while. Tom then has a tough time with paranoia and turns himself to the police when he returns to Venice as he thinks they would suspect him to be a person of interest. He also fends off suspicion from Marge and Dickie’s father.
Tom puts up a disguise to Inspector Ravini and the Inspector proposes that Dickie actually killed himself, leaving Tom Ripley to be free. Upon the last scene of the series, Inspector Ravini receives a copy of Marge’s book My Atrani which includes a picture of Dickie—the real Dickie Greenleaf. The picture raises the eyebrows of Inspector Ravini, who interrogated Tom Ripley’s version of Dickie Greenleaf.
