Spoiler Alert: It should be a given that we are about to reveal spoilers from tonight's episode of The Killing. If you have yet to watch it, please move along and look at some awesome celebrity photos. Everyone else, keep reading!
After coming back from the TV cancellation graveyard, The Killing has burst back on the small screen scene with a new season and a new string of killings to solve. Obviously, the writers have learned their lesson from season one (and two!) and revealed who was the Pied Piper behind the brutal murders of the teenage prostitutes in tonight's season-three finale.
Linden (Mireille Enos) and Holder (Joel Kinnaman) were on the case, and the killer is…
James Skinner (Elias Koteas), aka the leader of Seattle's Special Investigations Unit! Just when you thought all the evidence pointed at Detective Reddick (Gregg Henry) being the killer, Linden stopped by her boss' house to talk about the case, and that's when she saw his daughter wearing the turquoise ring that belonged to one of the missing teens. And then it all became disturbingly clear to our heroine. Skinner's reasoning for offing the teenage girls? He wanted to "save" them from an inevitably terrible life.
The episode ended with Skinner sending Linden on a wild goose chase to find Adrian (Rowan Longworth), who wasn't even really missing. It was all part of Skinner's plan to get inside her head and force Linden to kill him. Well, he got his wish, because just as Holder arrived on the scene, Linden put a bullet into Skinner's skull. And….fade to black.
What did you think of The Killing finale? Did you think it was Skinner all along? And what happens next now that Linden executed the murderer?