Lemony lost track of the Baudelaires after the Last Safe Place was no longer safe. Eventually, he stopped looking altogether, instead looking back and retracing their steps, recounting their story.
For the Baudelaires, this tale of misery had one final twist in store. Stuck on a boat with Olaf, they eventually wash up on a deserted island where the inhabitants live peaceful lives free of technology, books, and spices... and their leader, Ishmael, has his own reasons for wanting to keep it that way.
Tropes:
- Arc Symbol: The island looks like the VFD eye. Also, the area of the city Lemony and Beatrice II meet in is shaped like it.
- Birdcaged: Ishmael has Olaf locked up in one.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Kit dies of poisoning shortly after giving birth.
- Brick Joke:
- One of the strandees was stranded thanks to an incident with a manatee.
- Beatrice recounts how the Baudelaires had an encounter with pirates, with one of them saying "shiver me timbers".
- Call-Back: In "The Bad Beginning" and "The Slippery Slope", Olaf locked up Sunny in a bird cage. Here, Olaf is the one who is imprisoned in a bird cage, while Sunny mocks him from outside.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The Incredibly Deadly Viper, which can be seen in the boughs of the tree.
- Cult: Ishmael drugs his people with fermented coconut juice to keep them from remembering their past lives. Hypocritically, he doesn't drink the juice himself and keeps many luxuries to himself on the other side of the island.
- Dead Guy Junior: Kit's baby daughter is named Beatrice after the Baudelaire's late mother.
- Did Not Think This Through: Olaf, yet again. He believes that simply having the Baudelaires in a boat means he has access to their fortune, and is bragging about how he'll spend it. He also throws the only food on the Carmelita II overboard because he thinks Sunny is insulting him. He tries holding Ishmael at harpoon point, only for Ishmael to point out that's not a good idea when he's surrounded by other people.
- Disguised in Drag: Olaf's last disguise. He pretends to be Kit Snicket. Except that for once, nobody falls for it.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: While not necessarily endings as such, several characters do get happiness.
- The Baudelaires are finally rid of Count Olaf, and after a year leave the island with Beatrice (though her talk with Lemony suggests that they did have further adventures both good and bad, through which they lived).
- The Quagmires are reunited when Duncan and Isadora rescue Quigley.
- Count Olaf's troupe manage to get back into acting, where they are at least happy, if not necessarily any better at acting than they were before.
- Fernald and his sister receive a call from the very-much alive Captain Widdershins.
- Garden of Eden: The island evokes the Garden of Eden.
- Ishmael (who in this version is bearded and has flowing white hair, ala a Grandpa God) is keeping knowledge from the people who live in his secluded paradise.
- There is a large tree in which the Baudelaire parents kept their knowledge and inventions, ala the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
- A snake offers the protagonists an apple... but it's the friendly Incredibly Deadly Viper, and the apple saves their lives instead of damning them.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: Olaf tries threatening everyone with the Medusoid Mycelium, managing to forget it'll poison him as well. He gets poisoned. Olaf gets to eat part of the apple that cures the poisonous spores, but the grievous harpoon gun wound he suffered kills him anyway, a weapon he previously threatened the Baudelaires with.
- Hypocrite: Olaf whines about being put in a bird cage. I.E., the very thing he's done to Sunny twice now.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- As the opening reveals, the Daily Punctillio was eventually shut down and Mrs. Poe arrested for their crimes against journalism.
- Sunny lampshades it when the islanders imprison Olaf in a giant bird cage.Olaf: What're you smiling at?
Sunny: Karma.
- Last of His Kind: By the time Beatrice Baudelaire manages to track him down, Lemony Snicket is the last surviving member of the Volunteer Fire Department from either side of the Schism, as Kit Snicket and Count Olaf died on the island and everyone else involved died when the Hotel Denouement burned to the ground.
- The Leader: Ishmael is not just the leader of the island, but he reveals he was the one who came up with the idea of VFD as a group who would put out proverbial fires as well as literal ones. It is heavily implied he is the principal of Prufrock Prep, which was where he and his lieutenants would recruit people suitable for the organization.
- Motive Rant: Just before getting shot, Olaf rants at Ishmael about how every parental figure in his life has let him down.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ishmael tries to protect the Baudelaires from Olaf by killing him, but ends up shattering the diving helmet and thus releasing the Medusoid Mycellium.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Olaf's escape actually saved the Baudelaires, who would have likely been indoctrinated into Ishmael's cult if Olaf hadn't poisoned them and chased them off.
- Noodle Incident:
- Among the things Violet and Klaus read in their parents' book is a time when Mr. Poe went by a stage name.
- Beatrice mentions that, after leaving the island, Violet visited Briny Beach a third time, a fact mentioned in the books that had until now gone unmentioned. She also begins telling a story about encountering a group of Finnish female pirates.
- Object-Shaped Landmass: The Baudelaire children and Count Olaf end up stranded on an island that is shaped like the letters VFD which fused together to make a sister eye.
- Odd Name Out: "The End" doesn't have an Alliterative Name, and has only one part, while the rest of the episodes were told in two parts.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Kit managed to escape the sinking Queequeg, and the Great Unknown, and make a raft from the submarine's many books, and get away while still heavily pregnant.
- The Reveal:
- We finally, finally learn what's inside the Sugar Bowl and what has made it so damn necessary for Lemony to have stolen it: Sugar. Which has been specifically designed so it can immunise against the Medusoid Mycelium.
- After Count Olaf spitefully and narcissistically renames the Carmelita II the Olaf by flipping the nameplate over and scrawling the new name in chalk, the Baudelaires remove the nameplate to reveal its original name: the Beatrice, named after their late mother, and said boat was what their parents used to leave the very same island the children got stranded on.
- Small, Secluded World: The island is cut off from the rest of the world, with escape only possible once a year when the tide rises enough for a boat to cross the rocky barrier.
- Spotting the Thread: As Violet notes, Ishmael calls the Baudelaires "orphans" despite no-one having identified them as such.
- Take Care of the Kids: Kit's dying wish is for the Baudelaire orphans to take care of her daughter.
- Wham Line: An absolute shocker for fans of the books, who were likely expecting yet another unreveal, only to be flat-out presented with the answer to a question that's remained unresolved for well over a decade:Klaus: What is in the Sugar Bowl?(beat)Kit: Sugar.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: "Chapter Fourteen" shows the fate of the Quagmires (reunited at the self-sustaining mobile home), the Widdershins (receiving a call from their stepfather), Olaf's troupe (enjoying short-lived success on the stage), and Lemony himself (finally getting to meet his niece and getting closure on the Baudelaires' story).
