Big Mistakes Ending Explained: Is Elizabeth Perkins TV’s Newest Crime Boss?

The Shocking Annette Reveal in Netflix’s Big Mistakes Season 1 Ending Explained

LOS ANGELES — Honestly, if you told me five years ago that the man who gave us the “fold in the cheese” mantra would eventually be playing a closeted pastor protecting a cartel secret in a nightclub bathroom, I would have checked your temperature.

Yet, here we are on April 9, 2026, and Dan Levy has officially burned down the David Rose canon to build something far more dangerous, hilarious, and frankly, unhinged.

Big Mistakes, the new eight-episode crime comedy co-created by Levy and the brilliant Rachel Sennott, hit Netflix today, and it is already trending like a house on fire.

The core premise is peak “accidental criminal”: two deeply incapable siblings—Nicky (Levy), a tightly wound suburban pastor, and Morgan (Taylor Ortega), a school teacher with a chaotic streak—steal what they think is a gift-shop necklace for their grandmother, only to realize it belongs to the Italian mob.

The stakes here are not just about who gets whacked. This is about Dan Levy’s massive overall deal with Netflix and whether he could successfully pivot from the warm, fuzzy hug of Schitt’s Creek to the cold-blooded reality of New Jersey gangland.

For the studio, this is a major windowing strategy win. By dropping all eight episodes at once, Netflix is leaning into the “binge-and-discuss” model that Stan Twitter thrives on, especially with a cast that includes the legendary Laurie Metcalf as a mayoral candidate mother who is more concerned with her poll numbers than her kids’ kidnapping.

Everyone was expecting a lighthearted romp. What we got was a high-stakes odyssey involving cocaine-filled bull testicles and a body count that would make Tony Soprano sweat. But the real conversation—the one that has every fandom forum in a tailspin—is that ending.

If you haven’t watched yet, turn back now. We are going deep into why the Annette reveal just changed the game for Netflix crime comedies.

The Annette Blindside: Why Elizabeth Perkins is Your New Nightmare

For seven episodes, we were led to believe that Nicky and Morgan were being bounced around by a hierarchy of terrifying men. It started with Yusuf, then Ivan, and then the looming threat of the Italian mob.

We thought Elizabeth Perkins’ character, Annette, was just the supportive, wealthy family friend hosting a victory party for Laurie Metcalf’s mayoral win. We were wrong.

The final moments of episode eight, Rock, Paper, Scissors, are a masterclass in tonal whiplash. Annette lures Morgan upstairs, hands back the original “Nonna necklace,” and drops the bombshell: she is the one running the entire operation.

The Italians? They work for her.

The cartel? They answer her.

And now, Nicky and Morgan are essentially her indentured servants.

According to Dan Levy in a fresh Tudum interview, this twist was baked into the DNA of the show from day one.

It recontextualizes every “kind” gesture Annette made throughout the season as a cold, calculated move to keep her new “assets” close. The final shot of the season—a family photo where Annette stands behind the siblings, her hands gripping their shoulders like a predator—is haunting.

It signals an absolute impossibility of escape. This isn’t just a crime comedy; it is a horror story about being trapped by the very people who claim to love you.

Sibling Regression: The Physics of Nicky and Morgan

The brilliance of Big Mistakes lies in how it handles the psychological regression of adult siblings. We see Nicky and Morgan go from functioning adults to bickering eight-year-olds the second they are under pressure.

Dan Levy mentioned that he wanted to explore how siblings find themselves “reducing to their most childlike selves” when trapped together.

Nicky is the anti-David Rose. He is insecure, repressed, and so concerned with optics that he breaks up with his secret boyfriend just to keep him out of the line of fire.

Morgan, on the other hand, is the engine of the chaos. She steals the necklace, she survives the Miami shootout, and in a moment of sheer “adulting” failure, accidentally hits her partner, Max, with a car while trying to break up with him.

The chemistry between Levy and Taylor Ortega is the only thing that grounds the more implausible plot points.

Let’s be real: why was a million-dollar necklace sitting in a suburban gift shop on public display? The show never quite explains that logic gap. But you stop caring because you are too busy watching Nicky try to maintain his “pastor poise” while negotiating with the mob about those drug-laden bulls.

Netflix’s Binge Bet: Did Thursday Just Become the New Friday?

The industry chatter around this release is all about the “HITS” (High-Intensity Television Specials) strategy.

Netflix is desperate to find a successor to its binge-era titans, and by pairing a prestige creator like Levy with a genre-bending “cringe comedy” vibe, they are targeting a very specific demographic. They want the Succession crowd that also likes Fargo.

Is it a triumph?

Some critics are calling the mob subplots “generic” and “tedious” compared to the sharp familial drama. But from where I’m sitting, the “Annette reveal” elevates the entire series from a passable distraction to a mandatory watch.

It forces a second viewing just to see Elizabeth Perkins’ performance in a new light. She played the “kind family friend” with such steely authority that nobody saw the crime boss coming.

Why You Should Care

Look, the “civilians accidentally in crime” trope is older than the hills. We have seen Ozark, we have seen Only Murders in the Building. But Big Mistakes works because it doesn’t try to make its protagonists cool.

Nicky and Morgan are genuinely bad at this. They are messy, they are petulant, and they are terrified. That humanity is what makes the dark ending hit so hard.

This is a massive win for Dan Levy’s post-Schitt’s Creek career. It proves he can do “dark” without losing the “heart,” even if that heart is currently being held hostage by a New Jersey socialite.

If Netflix is smart, they’ll announce Season 2 by Monday. We need to see Morgan deal with the “marry my son, or I’ll kill you” ultimatum from Annette.

Via Tudum and Screen Rant, the creative team has confirmed that the path forward for Nicky and Morgan is essentially a one-way street into the underworld.
Barkha Jha, Journalist