‘Laid’ Season 1 Ending Explained: What’s Killing Ruby’s Exes?

Those who love twisted dark comedies may have jumped for joy upon hearing about the new Peacock original series Laid, which premiered on the streamer on Dec. 19. It offers a hilariously macabre plot about a woman whose ex-sex partners begin mysteriously dropping like flies. Though the deaths seem to be wholly unrelated to each other, this doesn’t stop the woman, (Stephanie Hsu’s Ruby Yao), from going on a perilous adventure to warn her entire carousel of exes about the impending danger. With only eight episodes to parse through, the show leaves a lot of questions up in the air after its first season but serves to entice fans with a gripping mystery and a fascinating insight into modern dating.

Since so many viewers have been struggling to parse through the shocking conclusion of Laid, it only makes sense that we run through the details of the show and discuss the final moments of the narrative. As always, please be advised that there will be heavy spoilers ahead, so feel free to bookmark this page and return later if you haven’t seen the entire show just yet. Otherwise, let’s press on, and see what we can learn about the shocking and hilarious conclusion.

What Happens in ‘Laid’?

As stated above, Laid centers on Ruby Yao, a 33-year-old party planner who splits a two-bedroom apartment with her best friend AJ in Seattle. After learning of her high school boyfriend’s recent passing, Ruby begins to notice a pattern – all of the people she’s slept with are dropping dead in sequential order. By the time this figure reaches over six bodies, Ruby can no longer ignore the pattern and tells AJ about her twisted discovery. AJ, being a true crime nut, inspires Ruby to investigate further by seeking out everyone she’s ever hooked up with and telling them to protect themselves. Together, Ruby and AJ visit a man named Richie at his job and Ruby ominously tells him that he’s going to die. Understandably, Richie sees this as a threat of some sort and starts freaking out demanding answers.

As Ruby runs through the story, she realizes how harshly she treated Richie during their brief fling. Apparently, she unceremoniously ghosted him after a minor argument and refused to respond to any of his messages afterward. Richie took the ghosting much harder than Ruby realized, which makes her reflect on some of her other missteps in past relationships. Regardless, Richie is furious about his expected fate, and tells Ruby off, calling her the worst person that he’s ever met. After leaving Richie’s place, Ruby confesses to AJ that one of the people on her list of former sex partners is AJ’s boyfriend, Zack, whom she slept with while the couple were on a break. Much like Richie, AJ lays into her best friend and expresses frustration at Ruby’s selfishness, poor impulse control and laissez-faire attitude toward other peoples’ relationships.

What Is Richie’s Fate?

After many of her past boyfriends, hookups and one-night stands continue dying in chronological order, Ruby assumes that Richie has already perished. When she doesn’t hear anything about Richie’s fate on the news or social media, Ruby goes to his apartment to investigate. Much to her surprise, Richie is still alive and has taken a new lease on life, living each day like it’s his last. Ruby can’t seem to figure out why Richie has been spared since the mysterious curse has already moved on to more recent sexual partners. This is just one of several mysteries that never fully get solved in season one of Laid, leaving us with plenty to marinate on as we wait for more episodes.

Richie has mixed feelings about his fate. On one hand, he’s happy to be alive, but on the other, he’s quit his job, spent money recklessly and approached his personal relationships with the carelessness of a man who won’t be around to face the consequences. Despite his initial hatred of Ruby, he admits that she changed his life and winds up coming around to being her friend. This happens at just the right time for Ruby since AJ is currently not speaking to her. The lack of a best friend in her corner makes her further evaluate her behavior over the years and leaves her desperate for a shoulder to cry on. As a result, Ruby and Richie become an unlikely platonic duo who work surprisingly well together.

Where Did the Hex Come From?

One major mystery that does get a definitive answer in Laid is the origin of Ruby’s hex. AJ is the one who figures it out, as she discovers a video of Ruby’s drunken colleague, Brad, bragging that he placed the hex on her. After a bit of digging, AJ discovers that Ruby and Brad had hooked up a few times while co-planning events at work. Like many of her other love interests, Ruby left Brad scorned when she stopped sleeping with him to pursue another man. This caused Brad to resent Ruby and seek bizarre and imaginative ways to get his revenge. Somewhere along the way, he became acquainted with a witch, who agreed to use her magical powers to curse Ruby without telling Brad exactly what the curse would entail. Brad was drunk at the time, and agreed to the terms, not thinking it would work.

Once Ruby and AJ track down the witch, they’re surprised to learn she’s a seemingly normal and modern woman. She even works at a corporate office at Cinnabon. The woman explains that her magical powers have been passed down to her through generations of family members and tells Ruby that the curse cannot be lifted, only transferred. With no other way to save her exes and move on with her life, Ruby begins seeking a new host to transfer the curse, though this mission conflicts with her newfound desire to become a better and more ethical person.

Does Ruby Transfer the Hex?

As if Ruby’s motivation to transfer the hex wasn’t already strong enough, we learn that she’s currently got a major crush on her client Isaac. Of course, Ruby doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with Isaac if it means that he’ll die shortly thereafter, so transferring the hex becomes her number one priority. After spending some time searching for the perfect host to take on the curse, Ruby and AJ land on their elderly neighbor, Jill Blanch. Ruby carries out a series of bizarre tasks designed to transfer the curse, which includes collecting a lock of hair and an item recently touched by the transferee. By the time she does everything the Cinnabon witch says, all Ruby can do is wait and see if her exes keep dying.

As luck would have it, Ruby gives it some time, and the curse seems to vanish. Her exes stop dropping at the previous rate, and she even witnesses the death of an elderly man, who she assumes to be a former lover of Jill Blanch. Feeling energized by this change of tides, Ruby celebrates by sleeping with Isaac. Unfortunately, as the first season of Laid comes to a close, AJ informs Ruby that the hex is back on, as her ex-boyfriend Jason has died, in keeping with the hookup timeline.

How Does ‘Laid’ End?

AJ and Ruby begin to panic, as the next person in line to die is Zack, AJ’s boyfriend. This means that Isaac is now on the chopping block too, leaving Ruby to feel as morally untethered as ever. Just before the season comes to a shocking close, Ruby’s father shows up on her doorstep and informs her that he knows all about the hex, as he once suffered the same fate. This is shocking to Ruby, as her mother died years earlier. In her adult life, Ruby parsed through her difficulty with sexual relationships in therapy and came to the conclusion that her father’s absentee status was one of the factors contributing to her issues with attachment. Despite her hangups with her dad, Ruby seems to reluctantly accept his help, as she can’t seem to make heads or tails of the terrible curse.

So, is this hex generational, like the powers of the woman who delivered it? Was Richie spared because he has a larger role to play in Ruby’s future? And how exactly does Ruby plan to move past the survivors’ guilt of inadvertently killing a double-digit sum of people, flipping the term “body count” back to its original meaning? For now, these questions remain unanswered. With any luck, Peacock will renew Laid for additional seasons in the coming months, and we’ll get to see the show’s take on generational trauma and sexual relationships play out in all its glory.