Will ‘Presumed Innocent’ Episode 7 Confirm a Much-Disliked Character as Suspect?
This show is such a tease!
David E. Kelly’s Presumed Innocent is such a tease! The Jake Gyllenhaal-led legal thriller is in its endgame now, with only two episodes left. And the ending of its recently aired episode 6 just unlocked a few new conspiracy theories of who the killer could be.
In Presumed Innocent, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Rosat “Rusty” Sabich, a prosecutor in the Chicago District Attorney’s Office, accused of murdering his fellow prosecutor, Carolyn Polhemus, played by Renate Reinsve. Rusty becomes the prime suspect due to several circumstantial evidence pointing at him, primarily his ongoing affair with Carolyn and her being pregnant with his child.
While Rusty’s wife (Ruth Negga) and kids still support him, and his boss and BFF Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp) agrees to fight his case, his arch nemesis from work (and Gyllenhaal’s IRL brother-in-law) Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard) is the prosecutor in charge of the case. Yeah, Rusty is screwed.
Presumed Innocent has been cleverly dangling possible suspects before us since the first episode. First, it was Liam Reynolds (Mark Harelik), the convicted killer in prison from a case that Rusty and Carolyn worked on. Then, for a hot minute, the suspects were Rusty and Carolyn’s sons, who were both present outside Carolyn’s house the night she was murdered, for different reasons.
But lately, there’s a new person of interest for us audiences to mull over—everyone’s, including Rusty’s least favorite person—prosecutor Tommy Molto. It almost looks like enough reasonable doubt might finally be cast upon Rusty but the episode ends abrutly. And now we will have to wait a whole week until we can finally get sweet relief!
The miniseries, which began airing on June 12, 2024, will air its penultimate episode, episode 7, titled “The Witness,” on July 17, 2024. The final episode is slated for July 24, 2024.
Why it looks like Tommy Molto could be the killer
In Episode 6, Molto puts Rusty’s secretary Eugenia on the stand, where she reveals Carolyn had filed a request with HR about not wanting to work cases with Molto. In the same episode, Carolyn’s son reveals in court that his mother had told him that there was a man at work who she had a problem with and who was starting to scare her. Molto tries to make it look like Carolyn meant Rusty, but there’s a strong possibility that it could be Molto.
In fact, in a flashback scene earlier, Molto is shown confronting Carolyn about her not wanting to work cases with him. She mollifies him by saying she wishes to work with Rusty because he is the deputy chief prosecutor and it would look good on her resume, but you can sense that she is uncomfortable by his presence. It appears like Rusty’s defense lawyer Horgan has caught this and is about to present the possibility to the jury, but that’s when he has what appears to be a heart attack or a stroke, collapses, and possibly dies. (We’ll have to wait and see for sure in the next episode.)
Tommy is a guy who gives you the creeps and you can’t quite explain why. Even his own boss seems to think him pathetic. At the end of episode 6, we see Molto return home to an empty house with only his cat for company. He’s a contrast to Rusty, who has it all—a hot, smart, successful wife, a loving family, the respect of the entire office and his superiors. Perhaps the idea that he got Carolyn Polhemus too, a woman that Tommy seemed interested in, could’ve been the last straw that forced a jealous Molto to commit a crime of passion
But there’s no denying that Rusty still is our prime suspect because he does act so sus and all circumstantial evidence points to him.
A running point in the episodes is Rusty’s friend and lawyer Horgan’s dreams that grow increasingly absurd as the trial grows near. First, he dreams of Rusty killing Carolyn. And in a second one—that might just have been the best jump scare I’ve had in a while—Horgan’s head explodes while he is working on the case in a true “Victoria Neuman from The Boys” style. Both times, his wife expresses her concern about what the dreams might be trying to indicate.
Since at the end of episode 6, Horgan does get his mind blown and possibly dies, maybe that first dream he had, where he suspected Rusty killing Carolyn, might not be such a stretch? Maybe, the man had strong intuition…
Told you, this show is such a tease!
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