'Surface' Season 2 Episode 1 Recap & Ending Explained: Who Is Callum Walsh?

The psychological thriller series on AppleTV+, Surface, is back with a second season after having left us with numerous questions at the end of the 1st in 2022. The show is centered around the character of Sophie Ellis, who also has a secret identity as Tess Caldwell, as she flees the USA and comes to England looking for answers about her past. Surface season 2 episode 1 makes for a decent comeback for the series, and it successfully creates intrigue about Sophie and the friend that she has supposedly come to visit.

Spoiler Alert

Why has Sophie really come to London?

Sophie Ellis’ journey laden with personal struggles began with her horrific accident in season 1, after she started recovering from the grave injuries. Sophie had apparently jumped from a boat, aiming to take her own life, but she had been saved by some of the witnesses right at the nick of time, which was why she was still alive. However, despite her physical health improving with time, Sophie lost one of the most crucial parts of her life because of the injuries—her memories. This made her feel extremely lost, and soon after getting back on her feet, with the help of her loving husband, James, she started to piece back her life before the incident, mostly to figure out why she had attempted suicide. Things got more complicated along the way when a police detective named Thomas Baden showed up and claimed that Sophie had been having an extramarital affair with him, and suggested that James might have pushed her off the boat to kill her.

However, as the investigation progressed, a different secret altogether is revealed, which makes it clear that Sophie herself was responsible for her falling off the boat. As it turned out, Sophie Ellis was actually a woman named Tess Caldwell, who was originally from England. At the time of her supposed accident, or suicide attempt, Sophie was actually trying to escape her life in the USA, and for this she had made an elaborate plan. She had safely stored her British passport and a large stash of cash in a safe box, which she wanted to access without raising any alarms. Her plan was to jump off the boat and swim to the shore to get to the safe box, but the real accident occurred when she was pulled close to the propeller, and had she not been rescued, she would have definitely died. 

Although James did not have much to do with his wife’s accident, he did try to use Sophie’s memory loss to save their marriage, as they were on the verge of breaking up. Later in season 1, he also has Baden killed, in order to stop him from revealing the truth about his failing marriage, and this further makes Sophie realize how he is basically an evil person. Thus, with no other avenue to explore than her own past in England, Sophie decides to make another attempt to escape the USA after her previous attempt had failed spectacularly. Thus, at the end of season 1, she once again jumped into the water, but this time she got across to the shore safely and used her British passport to fly back to England.

Surface season 2 begins with Sophie Ellis arriving at a charity event somewhere in London, all decked out and prepared to make an entry, despite having arrived in the country only a couple of days earlier. Before arriving at the event, though, she had made a number of crypto transactions, possibly to her own account, for she knew that she wanted to bid large for something at the charity event auction. At the event, hosted by the Huntley Foundation, Sophie makes an enormous bid for the season ticket to the Philharmonic, only to catch the attention of a woman seated a few tables away. This woman happens to be a member of the prestigious Huntley family, but more importantly, she happens to have once been the closest friend of Sophie, Eliza Huntley.

What is Sophie’s connection with Eliza Huntley?

Sophie soon makes it evident to Eliza that she has come to London solely to search for her, stating that she has been looking for Eliza ever since she left England and found herself a husband in America. Eliza is not impressed by this sudden return, for she is still quite bitter about the way Sophie had left in the first place, refusing to keep any contact whatsoever. It is apparent that Eliza had made many attempts to find her close friend throughout the years, but found no trace of her, despite her access to important contacts owing to her belonging to one of the richest families in England. Therefore, the first meeting between Sophie and Eliza does not go very well, as the latter is too shocked to see her old friend return, and she instead wants to focus on the charity fundraiser event being hosted by her family.

As the episode progresses, we realize that Eliza is a professional cellist who performs at the Philharmonic, and the season ticket that Sophie bought is essentially to see her perform. Based on this unusual bid that she makes, it is revealed that Sophie, or Tess, as everyone on this side of the Atlantic knows her to be, came from an economically humble background originally, meaning that her bid of 25,000 pounds for the season ticket surely catches the attention of Eliza. Furthermore, it is revealed that Sophie had actually taken up a job at the Huntley estate, most probably as a stablehand, and this was her first interaction with the rich British family. As confirmed later by a journalist, this was Sophie’s last job in England before she left the country and went to the USA. 

As it so happened, Sophie made acquaintances with Eliza, the youngest heir of the aristocratic family, at the Huntley estate, and quickly became friends with her, despite the social and economic differences between them. Their friendship soon took a different turn towards the romantic, and Sophie and Eliza eventually became lovers as well. While Eliza is clearly still interested in women, as is evident from the fact that she now has a pretty serious relationship with her girlfriend, Sophie is a much more difficult character to judge. As of now, it seems like Sophie would pick men or women based on whatever her current situation demands, and she is definitely not as interested in pursuing romantic interests as the other characters.

Therefore, Sophie and Eliza’s reunion is one between lost lovers, which is why it has also the associated feelings of anger, frustration, and bitterness packaged in. Eventually, Eliza invites Sophie to a party at her house, simply out of curiosity to learn what her old friend and lover has been up to in the last ten years. At the party, Sophie gets to know Eliza’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, Grace, who is about to marry the elder Huntley sibling, Quinn. While this connection will surely come into play later in the season, what is currently more important is Sophie’s conversation with Eliza. The latter complains about how her lover had suddenly left the country without informing anyone about her plans and states how she had been devastated after this unexpected incident. Sophie clarifies that she regrets having left, although she still does not talk about any particular reason for her departure, and instead says how she missed Eliza throughout this whole time. 

It is quite clear that Sophie genuinely wants to become friends with Eliza now once again, and possibly even get romantically close to her as well. At this point in time, her desire to do so is born out of genuine feelings for her old friend, for she too is confused about what had made her leave. So far, Sophie has figured out (like the rest of us viewers) that she used to work as a stablehand at Huntley estate 10 years ago, where she met and fell in love with Eliza, the youngest heiress. Therefore, she realizes that there was an extremely close bond between the two of them during their younger days, and so she naturally wants to revive that friendship at present. Sophie realizes that the romantic bond might not be possible right now, since Eliza has a girlfriend at present, but the fact that Eliza still shows some interest in her makes it quite possible that Sophie and Eliza might become lovers soon in this season. The real matter of concern, though, is that there is actually a more sinister secret behind Sophie having taken up the job of a stablehand, after working at better positions, ten years ago, which is revealed later in the episode.

Who is Callum Walsh?

After Sophie returns from the Huntley family event, she receives a missed call and a voicemail from an unknown number, which seems odd, as she has no idea who is trying to contact her. The voicemail clears this matter, as a man named Callum Walsh is heard speaking to Sophie, stating that he wants to continue the conversation that they had started a couple of months earlier. While this is once again news for Sophie, as she is finding out about these developments in her past, she does not remember any of it because of her accident. As becomes clear gradually, Callum Walsh is an investigative journalist working for the leading news agency in London, The Brittainian. As part of his work, Callum has exposed numerous criminal enterprises throughout his career, and he currently has an explosive story in the works.

As it turns out, the name of the patriarch of the Huntley family, William Huntley, has been associated with numerous murders over the years, although none of them were proved, or even taken seriously, because of his wealth and associated social influence. As Callum Walsh has stated in numerous interviews, he is particularly interested in exposing the true nature of such rich families and individuals in England, who often use their money and influence to get away with severe crimes. Thus, Callum has actually been investigating the Huntley family, and he has had to face quite a few setbacks in the matter as well.

A few weeks earlier, Callum had been able to get in touch with a woman named Phoebe, who was ready to give him solid information about William Huntley’s true nature and his secrets. However, before he could get any more significant information from her, Phoebe left for a vacation in France, and she has been unresponsive ever since. At present, Callum also gets a call from a lawyer representing the aristocratic family, who pressures the Brittainian to not publish any article about his client that has been written based on information gathered from a transactional source. As it so happened, Phoebe is a sex worker who had agreed to speak against William and his family, probably because she knew them all too well after offering her services to them a number of times.

However, information gathered from such a source is not usable for any serious piece of journalistic writing, especially since Callum had also gotten in touch with Phoebe by giving her money. Therefore, he has to cancel the plan of writing the article, while this also means that the Huntley family had essentially found out about his plan. It is indeed confirmed, in one of the later scenes, that the lawyer was actually ordered by Quinn Huntley to stop the article from being published, and he had also ordered a hit on Phoebe, who has surely been killed in France. It is confirmed that the woman’s mother has reported her to be missing, meaning that the Huntley family has indeed taken the life of another innocent victim, although Callum cannot really do anything about it.

What news does Sophie learn about her past in England?

This is exactly where Sophie’s past comes in, as she learns of significant new information about herself, and especially her time in London. Sophie’s mother, Emma Antoine-Day, had mysteriously died when her daughter was young, and over the years, Sophie had come to believe, surely based on some solid evidence, that William Huntley had murdered her mother. For this reason, she had gotten in touch with the journalist, Callum Walsh, a few months before her accident in the US and had told him about the discovery she had made. However, her accident and resulting memory loss meant that she was no longer in touch with Callum until her recent return to London.

Sophie reaches a safe box she used to keep in a public library, and from here she finds numerous news clippings about the allegations against the Huntleys and also the mysterious death certificate of her mother. From the library, she is led to a swanky apartment in London, which she had bought before her accident, and so she moves in there. Following these discoveries, Sophie makes up her mind to expose the Huntley family once and for all, and she gets back in touch with Callum. They meet during one of Eliza’s performances to finally make a plan to expose the family’s secrets and also to help each other solve the mystery surrounding Emma’s murder. Where Surface season 2 goes from here will be interesting to watch, but it has surely started the proceedings with a fairly interesting premise.

...