The following contains major spoilers for Season 1 of The Watcher, now available on Netflix.
Netflix's The Watcher retools the true story about a family in Westfield, New Jersey, who get stalked by a sinister person. In the series, married couple Dean (Bobby Cannavale) and Nora Brannock (Naomi Watts) receive letters that frighten them and their children. There are also intrusions on the premises that leave the family wondering if they should sell the home they've dreamed of for so long.
As suspicions rise and tensions boil over, a paranoid Dean starts losing his grip on reality. It doesn't help that he's a bit insecure and toxic, especially regarding his daughter, Ellie, who is 16 years old. Shockingly, a domestic dispute erupts at home, where a wild story arc involving racist accusations unfolds, only for it to be dropped by the seven-episode series.
The Watcher Has Ellie Falsely Accusing Her Dad of Racism
In the first season of The Watcher, Dean spends quite a bit of the series focusing on Ellie being too sexual. He's overthinking things and coming off too controlling. Things fall apart when Dean gets her phone and finds provocative texts to their surveillance camera man, Dakota, who is 19 years old. Dean ends up grounding Ellie by taking away all devices, as he thinks she's having sex. He even tries to get Dakota arrested, but it comes off insensitive, tone-deaf and bad for optics, as he is a white man accosting a young Black male in public.
During his attempt to arrest Dakota, both the neighbors and the attending cop dismiss Dean since Ellie is not considered a minor in the state of New Jersey. This leads to Ellie taking her brother's tablet and lying about how her father imprisoned her in her room for dating a Black man. While Dean admittedly overreacts, he's also not a racist nor someone living with a mental health condition. Instead, Ellie is shaped to be quite vindictive, which she has no problem admitting as she tries to get back at her father. She doesn't even care for the psychological trauma he's enduring.
The Watcher Drops the #CancelDean Arc Quickly
Ellie's actions lead to Nora getting her country club membership revoked, as well as Dean's office seeing her video. Many start wondering if the family is racist, after all. This results in Dakota using footage from a camera he planted in Dean's room, thinking Dean was the Watcher who was just trying to force his wife into selling the house. This is where things start to get really weird because Dakota sends the footage of Dean supposedly sleeping with a younger girl to his accounting firm, getting him fired.
The problem is the clip can't be verified and Dean doesn't even have sex with the girl. If he was going to be fired, it should've been for the perceived racism of the previous video, not infidelity in his marriage. Yet that topic's never brought up again, nor is Nora's membership, as she just gets frustrated and wants to get away from this suburban nightmare. Soon after, Dean, Ellie and Dakota patch things up quickly, with no one addressing Ellie's lie and Dakota's hasty -- and clearly illegal -- invasion of privacy.
Ultimately, the scandal ruins the family's reputation, paints Dean as a monster and pedophile, yet he accepts the teens again without much of an apology from them. He's no hero, but he definitely didn't deserve this, not when he's just trying to finger a suspect, even if it's Dakota. It's plot convenience at its finest, with the sub-arc suddenly dropped just to make Ellie sympathetic and show that Dean is willing to move on, ignoring the damage done professionally.
See how Ellie and Dakota falsely tarnish Dean's name in The Watcher, now streaming on Netflix.