Over the course of four episodes, we’ve delved into the assassination of James Garfield, a man who was president for just a few short months. Death By Lightning certainly dramatized a few elements, but the ending’s truth may surprise you.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from Death By Lightning
The new Netflix miniseries tells the story of Charles Guiteau and James Garfield. We get to see Guiteau as a man who initially campaigns for Garfield, but as he doesn’t get the job position in politics that he wants, he starts to turn against the man he admitted.
As for Garfield, he is a man who doesn’t initially want to be President of the United States. However, a passionate speech leads to the Republican Party following him, and suddenly, he is thrust into a chance to bring in reform within politics.
Death By Lightning ending explained: James Garfield didn’t die immediately
In the final episode of Death By Lightning, we see Charles Guiteau shoot James Garfield in the back. Garfield wasn’t killed immediately, and this is exactly how history played out. Guiteau didn’t fight against his arrest, sure that he had done his part to make Chester A. Arthur the next President of the United States — and sure that his name would go down in history for doing something big and grand.
Garfield was treated by Dr. Charles Purvis at first, but Dr. Willard Bliss came in and took over. After all, as a Black man, there were still beliefs that Purvis couldn’t do the job. And yet, Purvis knew that the equipment needed to be sterile to avoid bacterial infection.
Sadly, Garfield eventually succumbed to the wound he faced, but there is debate over whether he would have survived if Bliss hadn’t tried to fish out the bullet. Some say that Garfield’s gallbladder had been damaged, which would have eventually killed him, but others say that he could have lived with the bullet inside him.
It’s hard to tell, but we do know that Garfield died of sepsis months after he was shot. It was an excruciating death, but one that did allow him to be surrounded by his family in his final days.
By the way, Alexander Graham Bell did try to find the bullet with one of the first metal detectors of the time. No, it didn’t work, just like in Death By Lightning.
Charles Guiteau really did sing that bonkers song
The show didn’t focus on Charles Guiteau’s trial. That was going to be the case when Death By Lightning was going to be six episodes, but it was cut to four to be released. And so, something had to give. It made sense to skip over Guiteau’s crazy trial, as the focus should have been on Garfield, as it was.
One thing that may or may not have happened in Lucretia went to see Charles in secret, telling him that he would be a footnote in history. This was a great dramatization to just end Charles’s hope that his name would live on forever.
A part that was definitely based on fact was the very end of Death By Lightning’s main story. Yes, Charles Guiteau did sing a bonkers song just because he was hanged. Despite his brain showing no abnormalities, there’s no doubt that there was something mentally wrong with this man. We’ll never know just what that was.
Death By Lightning is a series that you’ll want to check out in full, and you can do that on Netflix.
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