Major spoilers for this week's episode of The Affair ahead! It's been clear for a while now that The Affair was heading into its home stretch (it was recently confirmed that the Showtime series would end after the upcoming fifth season), but this week's episode packed a gut punch that most fans didn't see coming. Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson), one of the show's most complex and prominent characters, was killed off in an apparent suicide by drowning. Alison's fate isn't that surprising from a character perspective; while a devoted mother, she's been battling so many demons for so long that it's not hard to believe she'd take her own life (though her cause of death is still not totally confirmed). What's more shocking is that Showtime would cut ties with one of its core actors when there's still an entire season of story left — especially since Alison is deeply woven into to the fabric of the show. So why was Alison killed off? The answer is actually very simple: Ruth Wilson wanted to leave the show. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sarah Treem, The Affair's showrunner, explains: "Ruth wanted to leave the show. That was a request, so that was decided basically before we started writing. It wasn't a discovery of any kind. That was very deliberate. And actually, we shot all of her work first. Her whole storyline was shot before we shot anything else." Treem didn't give a reason for why Wilson requested an early exit, but she did confirm that "you don't know the whole story" behind Alison's death at the end of this episode. Based on the preview for next week's episode, we'll get to see what happened from Alison's perspective.<doc-sep>If you were hoping for justice for Alison Bailey in the Season 4 finale of The Affair, you were to be frustrated. The finale came just a few days after an interview by Ruth Wilson, who played her, on CBS This Morning, in which Wilson said, mysteriously, “I did want to leave [The Affair], but I’m not allowed to talk about why.” If that sounded odd, she also added, looking like she was choosing her words very carefully: “I’ve never complained to Showtime about pay parity.” On the show, Alison’s presumed killer, crazy Ben, is free and even held her ashes close. Cole, her ex-husband, looks at Ben and knows something is up—but not enough for a satisfying dose of justice. He runs off with the ashes instead. However, something nearly as momentous happened in the finale. Helen smiled. It wasn’t just a fleeting smile either, but a big, shit-eating grin aimed right at the sun, the episode’s predominant motif. We saw the orb at sunrise, sunset, and just glowing on the faces of our chief characters. It made a welcome change from the churning sea, and it was captured by this season’s metaphorical master of all weathers and water, director Rodrigo Garcia. Katie Robbins and show co-creator Sarah Treem wrote the episode from the perspectives of the three surviving members of the quartet: Noah, then Cole, then Helen. Noah was at Princeton with his gifted student Anton, there to visit his perhaps future alma mater. Noah reunited with an old classmate, Ariel, who of course had the hots for him back then (and probably now). Now she was chair of the English department and had written “multiple bestsellers.” When Noah revealed that Alison had just died she asked why on earth he was there; was he OK? Noah replied that he was. Ariel had survived cancer and had no partner and no children—the biggest regret of her life, she revealed. The little clutch of students she taught included a young black guy from the South Side of Chicago, and there were rushed insistences to Anton that Princeton was “pretty woke,” even if one of its residential colleges was named “after a segregationist” (Woodrow Wilson, presumably). A white female student brought up Noah’s novel, Descent, a fictional distillation of the early seasons of The Affair. He wrote women so well, she said; a joke for us in the audience, as Noah’s lack of understanding of Alison and Helen, and his general ass-hattery, were his defining features at that time. The same girl raised again the big issue of Alison, and who she was; her fictional character was the figment of others’ imagination—and The Affair’s multi-perspective structure produced something similar in how she was seen and we saw her. The students were set the task to write about something about someone containing multitudes, per Walt Whitman. Anton wrote, unsparingly, about Noah. It was complimentary, grateful, and very damning. It was, actually, the best assessment of his character we have heard. In Anton’s eyes Noah is noble, vain, self-regarding, and Anton wonders whether Noah can behave in the entitled way that he does because he is white and privileged or if it is because he a sociopath. And Noah is screwing his mother, Anton adds. Anton has to check himself, particularly in predominantly white spaces, he said, and so watches Noah operate with some wonder. Afterward Noah is furious, but Anton tells him he knows what is expected of him, as a young black man, in this arena. It was part of a calculated bid to get into Princeton. Anyway, he was being a writer. Noah has done exactly the same, and caused real damage, so frankly his anger is both misplaced and hypocritical. Really, given that Alison has died, Anton asks: What is Noah doing here? Well, the best of Noah is also there; he is doing something good for someone he believes in and wants to help. Noah can leave him, Anton says. He’s old enough to take care of himself. And then Anton thanks Noah, and says how sorry he is about Alison. “Yeah, me too. Me too,” Noah intones. One of the cultural phrases of the year has more than an echo in the fateful destiny of Alison Bailey. In Part 2, Cole is sitting in the shower, letting the water wash over his racked body. Alison is dead. Today is her funeral. Luisa is asking how he is doing. He just wants to fold up or scream, or both. Their relationship, we know it, has to be over. But she needs him in order for her bid for citizenship to be successful. She also knows he loved Alison. What do they do? He says they will talk about everything after he has buried Alison. Here’s the big news: Hippie-dippie Athena has already cremated her daughter, and in a ceremony on the beach everyone will hold her peach-colored urn, and then bury bits of her in the sand, and then watch the sea come in and claim her, as per Fiona Apple’s theme of “sinking back into the ocean,” which is how she died, and what led to her son’s death. That damn sea. Cole almost crashes the car when Luisa tells him about the beach plan. He hadn’t taken in the arrangements, most likely lost in the haze of grief, and thought it was a church service followed by burial in the plot next to their dead child, Gabriel. Poor Joanie is sitting in the back of the car. She and Luisa sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” a moving multi-layered lament in the circumstances. On the beach Luisa hears Cole assert: “She’s my wife,” present tense, about Alison. Another confirmation. Athena wishes her daughter could regenerate herself, and as we have a final season of The Affair to go, who knows? Noah holds the urn and says Alison was magic, light, and made him believe anything was possible. Really? Well, it is Cole’s perception of Noah, the writer, oily with verbiage.<doc-sep>Season 4, Episode 8 There’s no way to prepare for an episode like this week’s installment of “The Affair.” That’s as true for the audience as it is for the characters involved. Perhaps that’s why so much of this devastating hour of television is spent being not particularly devastating at all. Yes, Cole Lockhart begins his segment of the episode — which takes up all but the final few minutes of screen time — looking and feeling like roadkill, at the end of his cross-country drive from California to Milwaukee. But his dishevelment is handled in a lighthearted way. Bearing a single flower, he cleans himself up in the parking lot as best he can, then attempts to meet his ex-wife, Alison Bailey, at the conference on post-traumatic stress she’s supposed to be attending. His plan is to tell her how he feels: He has been in love with her for years, even after their acrimonious divorce, and he wants her back, damn the consequences. But Alison isn’t there. When Cole bumps into Ben, her very married boyfriend — well, ex-boyfriend since she found out the truth and cut things off — he confirms her no-show status, as well as revealing that she ended their relationship and traveled to California to meet with her other ex, Noah Solloway. Before long, Cole connects with Noah and his student Anton. (The actor Christopher Meyer, who plays Anton with a combination of deft comic timing and personal decency heretofore lacking in the show’s usually obnoxious comic-relief characters, is a breath of fresh air you might not even notice until all the oxygen gets sucked out of the room later on.) Noah and Anton are themselves in the middle of a cross-country journey so that Anton can visit Princeton University. Together, the unlikely trio begins its search for the missing woman Cole and Noah love.<doc-sep>Time will tell if Ruth Wilson's thought is the correct one. Either way, Alison's death has rocked The Affair, and the show will continue to grapple with the implications of her passing. There is only one episode left of the current season. Fans will have to tune in to see if The Affair reveals the truth surrounding Alison's death in the Season 4 finale. There is a whole other season before the show concludes for good, so fans may have to wait for Season 5 before it is revealed.<doc-sep>
Ruth Wilson has left The Affair after 4 seasons The Affair: Ruth Wilson 'not allowed' to say why she left WARNING: This article contains spoilers from The Affair season 4? Season four of The Affair has been gripping audiences on both sides of the Atlantic since it debuted earlier this year. The Showtime series saw a major shift in setting with the action taking place in California, migrating from its former location of Montauk, New York. The Affair season four followed on from Noah Solway (played by Dominic West) and Alison Bailey’s (Ruth Wilson) extramarital dalliance being exposed and how the two couples were trying to put their lives back together. Season four continued to follow the central quartet: Noah, Alison, Cole Lockhart (Joshua Jackson) and Helen Solloway (Maura Tierney), however, fans have now been left reeling after they were hit by a major twist. What happened to Alison in The Affair season 4? It was recently revealed that Alison had died with her body seen floating in the ocean. Noah and Cole had to go to the morgue to identify her body which was found in the waters of Montauk. Episode nine - which the penultimate instalment from the run - went on to further explore Alison’s death in detail as audiences were given two possible viewpoints that The Affair always employs. One version showed Alison’s boyfriend Ben Cruz (Ramon Rodriguez) finally coming clean about being married with two children. WILL THERE BE ANOTHER SERIES OF THE AFFAIR? Ruth Wilson as Alison Bailey in The Affair season 4 Ruth Wilson has left The Affair after 4 seasons In the scenes - which appear to be Ben’s version of events - Alison takes the news well and he keeps telling her he loves her and wants to be with her. While the second version painted a much more dark and bleak vision of what happened with Alison and Ben having a heated argument. During the argument, Ben killed Alison and made it look like a suicide. Actress Wilson has since spoken out about her departure from The Affair confirming that her character Alison won’t be returning. She told CBS This Morning: “I’m not coming back, so she’s dead.” THE AFFAIR SEASON 5 RELEASE DATE, CAST, TRAILER, PLOT The Luther actress went on to say: “I did want to leave, but I’m not allowed to talk about why.” Wilson added: “I’ve never complained to Showtime about pay parity.” In a separate interview from earlier this week, Wilson explained to Vulture: “I had no say over how the character’s arc was going to end, or how she would die and leave. “I always hoped that she would … I always had the image that she would walk into the sunset with her son with no man.” US network Showtime, which make The Affair, has released a statement, which read: “We can’t speak for Ruth, but heading into season four everyone agreed the character’s story had run its course. HOW TO WATCH THE AFFAIR SEASON 4 ONLINE Ruth Wilson has left The Affair after 4 seasons