The Horror of Dolores Roach follows the titular character after she is released from prison after 16 years, only for her to do things worthy of sending her straight back in. The series is streaming on Prime Video.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary:
Flora is starring in a hugely successful play about the serial killer, Dolores Roach, when she is visited by Dolores herself after one particular outing.
Dolores says that she wants to share her story and prove that she isn’t the monster she was made out to be. She lived in Washington Heights, New York, and was dating Dominic Arfonso, the local drug dealer.
Then one day, Dolores was arrested by the authorities and sent to prison for 16 years for possession with intent and assaulting a police officer because she tried to stand up for herself while being taken away.
While inside, she didn’t hear a word from Dominic and spent most of her time with her cellmate, Tabitha, a handless masseuse.
After being released, Dolores heads straight back to Washington Heights, but what she finds is a gentrified neighborhood utterly foreign to her. She does spot a local empanada shop called Empanada Loca which was around back then.
She goes inside and runs into Luis, the owner of the shop, who was still a teenager back when Dolores was arrested. He offers her a place to stay and helps to get her settled back in society.
Dolores wants to work as a masseuse because she had training in the clink, thanks to Tabitha. Luis suggests she do it freelance right in her room after their neighbor, Joy, attempts to get her a job at a salon and fails.
Luis’s employee, a young girl named Nellie, helps her get a vision board and make a plan for what she wants to do. Luis is going through trouble with his new landlord, Gideon Pearlman, and is behind on his rent.
Dolores tries to help, but it reaches a point where Gideon visits them and starts causing a scene. Dolores offers to give him a massage, but when he puts his hands on her butt, she chokes him to death.
Dolores starts panicking and wondering how to get rid of the body, but while she’s out getting supplies, Luis takes care of it. Soon, Dolores realizes that Luis has cut up Gideon and is using his flesh for a new batch of Empanadas that are selling like hotcakes.
Empanada Loca gradually becomes extremely popular and draws the attention of two individuals. Marcie is the local drug dealer who took over after Dominic, and Jeremiah is Luis’s meat supplier who starts getting fewer orders since he started cooking human meat.
Dolores is still hung up on Dominic and wants to find him for closure but Luis is crazy about Dolores and claims that he loves her. Dolores ends up killing Marcie when she accuses them of selling drugs on her turf which explains their newfound popularity.
Meanwhile, Gideon’s son Jonah shows up looking for his father and develops a relationship with Nellie so he shows up often. Dolores visits Tabitha and gets in touch with a P.I. named Ruthie to find Dominic.
Ruthie returns with news that Dominic died in his family home in the Dominican Republic but Luis looks at the reports and lets her know that Dominic must have faked his death. He also mentions that Nellie’s grandmother Sophie was friends with Dominic’s grandmother.
Two more kills are racked up when Marcie’s employee, Hector, shows up for an appointment and Ruthie arrives in search of Gideon Pearlman. Dolores gets more stressed and tells Luis that they need to run away for good.
Jeremiah is a conspiracy theorist and he stumbles on the truth so he offers to help Dolores get away. When an air conditioner malfunction causes blood to clog up the pipes in the entire building, Luis and Dolores have to shift all of the bodies to his walk-in freezer.
Jonah visits one morning and finds his father’s head in the walk-in leaving Dolores with no other choice but to kill him.
The Horror of Dolores Roach ending explained in detail:
What do they do with all the bodies?
Nellie begins to panic because she doesn’t hear from Jonah, and some of Ruthie’s colleagues show up because she hasn’t missed a matinee in years and they’re worried about her.
A dirty cop tries to shake down Luis because he used to collect from Marcie and he knows that she came to meet Dolores last before she disappeared.
All of this stresses her out and she says she’s going to leave but Luis begs her to stick around for just a little longer until he can cause a distraction.
He moves all of the body parts to Nellie’s apartment since no one is inside at the moment and then tips off the cops.
Does Dolores kill anyone else?
Dolores is panicking when Joy shows up asking to get rid of a knot in her back. Dolores relents and offers to help but Joy keeps talking so Dolores snaps her neck.
Luis shows up and is just as surprised that she killed Joy when the police show up to take Nellie away. Dolores finally accepts that Luis is crazy and says she’s going to go without him and that is when Jeremiah shows up.
He confronts Luis and they get into a scuffle. Luis pushes Jeremiah and the delivery driver hits his head and chokes to death. Dolores tries to leave as Luis pulls her back.
She ends up stuffing his head into hot oil and a fire breaks out in the kitchen with her escaping before it all comes down. She makes a run for it Jeremiah’s truck and spent the next 4 years on the lam.
What does Dolores do in the present?
After hearing her story, Flora believes that Dolores was a victim of circumstance but Dolores has made peace with the fact that she is a monster who could have stopped at any time.
She then ambushes Caleb Sweetzer, the writer of play who initially made a podcast about the case and was originally Dolores’ first massage client.
She threatens him for her cut of the profits and he says he can help her find Dominic. He leads her to a fancy house and when she asks who it belongs to, he just tells her to go to the door.
She rings the bell and knocks a couple of times before the face that greets her makes her laugh maniacally. She then proceeds to reach out and choke the person but it isn’t revealed who it is.
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