Felix's wife Natalie dies from a staph infection after childbirth, leaving Felix to raise their daughter Miranda alone.

Felix's daughter Miranda dies from meningitis at age three, plunging Felix deeper into grief and obsessive devotion to The Tempest.

Tony orchestrates a board vote that removes Felix as artistic director and installs himself as interim replacement.

Felix rents a rundown shack under the alias Mr. Duke, cutting himself off from his former life entirely.

Felix forges a resume for a literacy teaching role and is hired at Fletcher County Correctional Institution.

Estelle tells Felix that Justice Minister Sal O'Nally and Tony, now a politician, will attend his next screening.

Felix decides to produce The Tempest for the prison and casts himself in the role of Prospero.

Felix hires Anne-Marie Garland, the actress who would have played Miranda twelve years earlier, for the prison production.

Felix promises 8Handz early parole in exchange for rigging the ministers' viewing room with hidden cameras and microphones.

Felix travels to Toronto and buys ketamine and drug capsules to use against the visiting ministers.

The prisoners trigger a fake lockdown complete with gunshots and shouting, trapping the visiting ministers inside the facility.

Felix and 8Handz secretly record Tony encouraging Sebert to murder Sal and Lonnie to advance Sebert's political career.

Felix steps forward and reveals himself to the ministers, exposing the immersive theater experience he orchestrated against them.

Felix blackmails the ministers with recorded evidence, demanding reinstatement as artistic director, Tony's political resignation, and 8Handz's early parole.

Felix decides to release the ghost of his daughter Miranda and accepts his reinstatement at the theater festival.

Felix Phillips, a celebrated artistic director, loses his wife and then his three-year-old daughter Miranda to illness, sending him into obsessive grief. His former colleague Tony seizes the opportunity to oust Felix from his theater position, prompting Felix to disappear under a false name and nurse a years-long revenge fantasy. Felix resurfaces as a Shakespeare teacher at a prison, where he builds a troupe of inmate actors and waits patiently for his moment. When he learns that Tony and a justice minister named Sal will attend his next prison screening, Felix stages an immersive trap using drugs, fake riots, and hidden cameras to record Tony's worst impulses. Felix successfully blackmails Tony into meeting every one of his demands and walks away victorious. Yet his triumph feels hollow, and only when he chooses to release the imagined ghost of Miranda does Felix begin to find genuine peace.

Felix's betrayal, long exile, theatrical revenge, and reluctant release of Miranda's ghost.

After his family's deaths, Felix becomes so consumed by the Tempest production that Tony gradually takes over his theater duties.

Security escorts Felix from the theater building; board member Lonnie catches up and hands Felix the Tempest costume and script notes.

Felix spends years in his shack tracking Tony's rising career through local newspapers and internet searches.

Felix discovers his old magician's costume while searching for his winter coat but decides the time is not yet right to wear it.

The Fletcher Players object to The Tempest because there are no fight scenes and fear being cast in feminine roles.

The prisoners complete their first assignment by memorizing the slurs and colonialist insults found throughout The Tempest.

Felix reframes Ariel as an alien on a mission, convincing the reluctant prisoners to all volunteer for the role.

Felix assigns the Fletcher Players dual roles, requiring each prisoner to portray both a Shakespearean character and one of Prospero's goblins.

WonderBoy proposes to Anne-Marie during rehearsals and attempts to kiss her; she knocks him to the floor.

SnakeEye proposes including prisoners' children's photos in the production; the suggestion sends Felix out of the room in an emotional breakdown.

Felix travels to Toronto to search for props and costumes needed for the prison production of The Tempest.

Anne-Marie suggests using Disney princess dolls as the goddesses during the production's filming, which the prisoners embrace.

Leggs performs a rap as Caliban during filming that reclaims the dehumanizing slur "Hag-Seed" as a badge of identity.

Anne-Marie is placed in a beach-decorated cell with Freddie, where she keeps him calm by walking him through Ferdinand's lines.

Felix brings Sal to the cell where Freddie is held to reunite father and son after the confrontation ends.

Before Felix is fired, his excessive grief causes Tony to gradually absorb his theater responsibilities, setting the betrayal in motion. After his dismissal, Felix retreats into years of solitary obsession, tracking Tony's growing success and hoarding his old Tempest costume as a relic of lost glory. At the prison, Felix navigates the practical realities of casting and rehearsing with inmates, including their resistance to feminine roles, their bold creative contributions, and the unexpected romantic tension between Anne-Marie and the prisoner WonderBoy. As the production takes shape, props are gathered in Toronto, the prisoners film their adaptation, and 8Handz rigs the ministers' room while Leggs reappropriates the slur that gives the novel its title. On the day of the visit, Anne-Marie holds Freddie calmly in a decorated cell while the rest of the scheme unfolds around them. The aftermath sees Felix reunite a shaken Sal with his son, tying off one of the plan's few human loose ends.

The theater preparations, prison dynamics, and overlooked moments surrounding Felix's scheme.

Felix becomes aware he is consciously choosing to believe his daughter Miranda is still alive, despite knowing she is dead.

Isolated in his shack, Felix resolves to eventually restage The Tempest and take revenge on Tony, giving his exile purpose.

During his job interview at Fletcher Prison, Estelle recognizes Felix Phillips beneath his assumed name but hires him anyway.

Felix plots a revenge scheme targeting Tony and Sal from his shack, imagining chess games with Miranda's ghost as company.

Felix announces to the Fletcher Players that a professional actress will play Miranda, resolving their reluctance about the feminine role.

Felix meets Anne-Marie and discloses that he will play Prospero himself, swearing her to secrecy about his real identity.

Felix learns that Sal and Tony intend to cancel the Fletcher literacy program, using the screening as justification for the cuts.

Felix reveals the funding threat to the prisoners, using their outrage to secure their full commitment to his revenge plan.

Felix puts on the Prospero sorcerer's costume for the first time since his firing, fully inhabiting the role he has long planned.

Anne-Marie and Freddie's scripted theatrical exchange in the beach-decorated cell deepens unexpectedly into genuine mutual attraction.

Sal and Lonnie are suddenly woken by blaring music, ending Tony and Sebert's private discussion about murdering them both.

The four politicians eat ketamine-injected grapes in the Green Room and experience vivid drug-induced hallucinations.

After the plan concludes, 8Handz hears the lullaby Felix once sang to Miranda playing unexpectedly through the surveillance feed.

The prisoners present post-show character analyses that reveal deeply empathetic moral readings Felix had never reached in his years of directing.

Felix tells the prisoners that the ninth prison in The Tempest is Prospero's own mind, which no victory can unlock.

Felix's descent begins when he consciously chooses to sustain the illusion that his daughter is still alive, a decision that locks him in a mental prison of his own making for over a decade. Isolated in his shack, he resolves to use The Tempest as the instrument of his revenge, and he quietly constructs his plan while keeping his true identity hidden even from Estelle, who recognizes him at his prison job interview. The rehearsal process surfaces key turning points: Felix casts himself as Prospero, Anne-Marie is sworn to secrecy, and Felix learns that Sal and Tony plan to kill the literacy program, converting his actors from performers into committed accomplices. On the day of the performance, the scheme produces two stunning revelations — Tony's admission that he engineered Felix's firing, and his willingness to encourage murder — while Anne-Marie and Freddie's play-acting unexpectedly blossoms into real attraction. After the confrontation, a small, quiet moment cuts deepest: 8Handz hears the lullaby Felix sang to Miranda playing through the surveillance feed. The final turning point belongs to the prisoners, whose post-show analyses articulate a depth of moral wisdom that Felix, for all his years with the play, had never reached — and Felix names Prospero's inescapable mind as the ninth and most enduring prison.

Felix's pivotal decisions, dawning self-awareness, and the revelations that unmask both him and Tony.