The End Of Locke & Key Season 1 Needs Some Serious Untangling

Congratulations, you’ve now opened the Omega Door! But… now what? The mysterious, blue-glowing door located down in the sea cave looms over the events of Locke & Key season 1 on Netflix. But, even after it’s opened, there’s still a lot of demonic trouble going on and you’ve probably got some questions. The ending of season 1 of Locke & Key managed to mostly wrap up this initial storyline, but there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding the keys, the Key House and Rendell Locke (Bill Heck).

The season revolves around the Locke children — Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode (Connor Jessup, Emilia Jones, and Jackson Robert Scott) — dealing with the aftermath of their dad’s murder and their mother’s decision to relocate them across the country. They move into their father’s childhood home, Key House, which certainly lives up to its name. No sooner are they in there that they start finding suspicious keys that do “magical” things. It’s all fun and games until a demon from their father’s past returns, trying to collect all the keys for herself. 

This demon is Dodge, and as we learn over the course of the season Dodge is actually their dad’s childhood friend Lucas using the Mirror Key. Confusing? Sure is. As we learn via flashbacks, when Rendell was growing up, he and his friends were the “keeper of the keys” until things went horribly wrong. Lucas became possessed by a demon after they opened the Omega Door and sought to keep all the keys for himself. In a fit of rage, he killed two other friends before Rendell killed Lucas. The group was then forced to cover up the murder, claiming that these three friends drowned after being caught in the rising tide in the sea cave. Later, this basement room in the Key House was boarded up and closed off to everyone. (Also, Rendell’s younger brother, Duncan, witnessed these murders, so the decision was made to remove his memories.)

After this, the remaining friends decide to divide up the keys to keep them safe. It works for a while until Lucas is brought back to life and uses the Mirror Key to shapeshift into the character we know as Dodge (Dodge was Lucas’ nickname growing up). Dodge will stop at nothing to get all the keys, especially the Omega one. 

While the rest of the keys are hidden around the town of Matheson, the Omega Key is actually placed inside Rendell’s head using the Head Key. That way, the only way someone could get to it is if they first obtained the Head Key, and used it on Rendell... kinda like two-factor authentication system. This is certainly a safe space, but after one of Rendell’s childhood friends, Ellie (Sherri Saum), uses the Echo Key to bring Dodge back, he is able to reach out to someone in Rendell’s life and make contact with them and then influence them to try to get the Omega Key from him. 

Dodge, via a painting of the Key House in Rendell’s office, begins talking to a troubled young student, Sam (Thomas Mitchell Barnet). Dodge is able to convince Sam to go after Rendell in hopes of getting the Omega Key, which unfortunately leads to Rendell’s death. And that’s what leads the remaining Locke family to move to the Key House. 

Something season 1 of Locke & Key doesn’t really elaborate on is how the keys came to be, and the greater history of the Key House. The series is based on the comics of the same name, which go on to describe the reason the keys were forged in the first place, and why some of these demons are roaming around our world. While you’d think that’s something that needs to be established for the show, it’s not really necessary for season 1. Additionally, a lot of the story of the Locke & Key comics is told out of chronological order.

The backstory surrounding the keys could come into play at any point in the future, but that means that Netflix is going to have to greenlight more Locke & Key.