Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 3, 2025
Here we go again, recapping another Harlan Coben streaming series—because I’m a completist, and because Netflix (and now Prime Video) can’t quit him. Even wilder? Audiences keep watching, despite each new entry somehow being worse than the last. It all started back in 2017 with The Safe (starring Michael C. Hall), and since then, we’ve slogged through Missing You, The Stranger, Stay Close, Gone for Good, Fool Me Once, The Woods, and Caught.
At least this one, Lazarus, has a slightly less generic title. It refers to Joel Lazarus (Sam Claflin, continuing the proud tradition of generically handsome Harlan Coben leads) and his father, Jonathan Lazarus (Bill Nighy, clearly enjoying an easy paycheck). This one, somehow, involves ghosts, or something like them.
I’ll try to keep this simple for those who won’t be watching Lazarus (and truly, you shouldn’t) and for anyone who bailed after an episode or two but still wants closure. This one isn’t just blandly bad; it’s actively bad. Its badness insists itself upon you.
The story opens with the death of Jonathan (Nighy), a longtime therapist who appears to have taken his own life. His son Joel doesn’t believe it; it’s not in his father’s nature. The only clue left behind is a note containing a drawing of a stool. Yes, a stool. Meanwhile, Joel, also a therapist, is still haunted by his twin sister Sutton’s unsolved murder years earlier, which triggered his first breakdown.
Now, in the present, Joel seems to be unraveling again. He starts having conversations with his father’s former patients, some of whom are dead. Spoiler right up front: these aren’t hallucinations. We learn at the end of the series that Jonathan recorded all of his therapy sessions, and Joel has been listening to the tapes, then telling people (like his best friend, Seth, a police officer played by David Flynn) that he’s communicating with ghosts.
Eventually, Joel becomes convinced that the same person killed his sister, Sutton, his father, his father’s assistant, and several of Jonathan’s patients. There are plenty of red herrings, including Sutton’s high school boyfriend. Along the way, Joel learns he has a teenage son, Aidan (Curtis Tennant), from a brief high school fling that happened, of course, on the night Sutton was murdered. Aidan’s mother never told Joel the child was his.
Joel also begins a relationship with another therapist, Laura (Roisin Gallagher).
Now, to the tangled conclusion: Sutton’s killer turns out to be Sam Olsen (Edward Hogg), a socially awkward classmate obsessed with her who murdered her out of fixation. Joel figures this out after recognizing a stuffed animal in Sam’s home that appeared in an old video from Sutton’s room. In the present, Sam kidnaps Aidan, prompting Joel to track him down and nearly drown him before the police intervene.
After a carousel of false leads, Joel links his father’s deceased patients to Detective Alison Brown (Kate Ashfield), his father’s close friend and the officer leading the investigation. She’s also Seth’s boss. Joel persuades Seth to confront her, and she bolts. The ensuing chase ends absurdly when she trips over a bike and is struck by a bus.
But that’s not the end. Joel later plays a final recording Detective Brown had in her possession. It reveals that Jonathan himself murdered his patients, believing he was “releasing them from their pain.” Brown helped him cover it up by framing criminals, earning promotions in the process. Jonathan was, essentially, a serial killer; Brown, his enabler.
Eventually, guilt consumes Brown. She tells Jonathan she plans to confess, urging him to take his own life instead. He does, leaving behind the drawing of the stool, symbolizing time as cyclical rather than linear. “Sons become their fathers.”
In the final twist, Joel fears he’s doomed to repeat his father’s crimes. He seeks comfort from his romantic interest, Laura, but when he arrives at her home, he finds her dead. The killer? Aidan, Joel’s son. The cycle continues (only it skipped a generation). The series ends with Joel in shock, staring at Aidan, who’s holding a curved knife.
The end.
