Warning: This article contains spoilers for Under the Bridge.
Hulu’s Under the Bridge episode 6 made some small and big changes to the facts that influence the overall plot and characterizations. The true crime show Under the Bridge fictionalizes the true story of who killed Reena Virk, mostly following the real events of the crime. However, like any adaptation, details are left out and changed in order to improve the overall narrative.
In adaptations of fiction works, this isn’t as significant of a deal. However, due to the fact that this murder really occurred, and a family lost their loved one, it’s important that changes only be made when it gets to the core truth of the event or person, even if it alters the facts and timeline. Under the Bridge episode 6 aligns with this rule of thumb, making only a few major changes to the story.
Early in Hulu’s Under the Bridge, Cam and her police partner visit an assisted living area meant for First Nations and Métis people. While it isn’t directly stated, the conversation between Cam and the person at the front desk heavily implies that Warren knew about his grandmother’s heritage because he had visited her there, albeit not recently. In real life, Warren didn’t know that he was Métis on his mother’s side at the time of his crime.
According to the Afterword in the 2019 reprint of Rebecca Godfrey’s Under the Bridge, Warren only learned about his Métis background on his mother’s side when he was in prison after getting sentenced for Reena Virk’s murder. The lack of knowledge about his Métis heritage would make sense based on the information shared about Warren’s mother in Under the Bridge. She lived with alcohol use disorder and wasn’t very mentally present in his life.
Ultimately, Warren’s discovery of his Métis heritage made him more drawn to the restorative justice program. Warren learned that the practice of restorative justice instead of punitive justice is based on Aboriginal and non-Western principles. This program is what helped both Warren Glowatsky and the Virks heal from the trauma. Additionally, according to CTV, Warren Glowatski asked that his parole hearing incorporate Métis elders. They ended up having a healing circle involving Suman and Manjit Virk in conjunction with the parole hearing. Without Warren Glowatski learning that is part Métis, this type of healing might not have happened.
In Under the Bridge episode 6, “In Water They Sink the Same,” the police chief and Cam interrogate Samara, whose real name is Syreeta Hartley, in a schoolroom outside the Shoreline School’s dance. The police chief makes an initial comment about the fact that she might as well have killed Reena herself if she doesn’t share what she knows. Besides this one comment, though, the police are relatively kind while interviewing Samara. However, the true investigation of Syreeta Hartley, outlined in Godfrey’s Under the Bridge, is vastly different and worse than what’s shown onscreen.
In real life, the first interview occurred in a police investigation room with Constable Cameron taking the lead. While he never asked her leading questions, he had her repeat parts of the story many times. He pressed her to think about it again when she seemed uncertain. He asked whether there was anything else more than once, continuing this line of questioning even after she said she was sure that she told them everything. This technique of repetition and applying pressure could easily be viewed as coercive, even if it’s allowed.
The police proceeded to interview Syreeta two more times; the last involved them traveling to her grandparents’ house just to push her for more details. According to Godfrey’s book, when she didn’t have anything more to tell them, they started giving her a hard time, acting like she didn’t know this was a murder investigation. They insisted she was hiding information for Warren because of her feelings. Between the repetition and pressure in the first interview and the third interview where they chastised her, Syreeta’s real experience with the police wasn’t the compassionate depiction in Under the Bridge.
In Hulu’s Under the Bridge, Warren goes to a school dance where he gets arrested for Reena Virk’s murder. He goes knowing the police would likely be waiting, but he wants to see Samara. This changes the real story of Warren’s arrest. Rather than a dance, the teens all planned to meet on the Shoreline field to party and drink, just like they had many other nights. There was nothing especially fancy or special about that night – just teens trying to hang out with one another.
However, when the teens arrived, they noticed that the field was full of adults – undercover cops. Like in the show, Warren knew that police were waiting to arrest him. He found out that they were at the party from his friends Geoff and Paul. He figured there was no point in running away because had nowhere to go and was already emotionally wrecked. His only hope was that he got to see Syreeta before getting arrested.
In the show, he meets Samara at the dance before the police take him. She warns him that the police are looking into him for the murder of Reena Virk. In real life, Warren didn’t get to see Syreeta until after he was arrested by Bruce Brown. However, she saw the entire incident from the back seat of a car. During both the true story and Hulu’s series, Warren didn’t resist arrest.
Based on the way that Dusty spoke about Reena’s murder at the end of Under the Bridge episode 5, and throughout episode 6, it seemed like the teen was planning to go to the police because she couldn’t handle what happened. In fact, she’d already cracked right after finding out Reena was dead while talking to Cam. Her inclination towards confessing causes Josephine and Kelly to plan to kill Dusty with poison and then later with a train, with Jo saving Dusty at the last minute. This is a massive divergence from the true story.
There’s no way to know for sure if Dusty internally wanted to go to the police; however, the statements made by Dusty and Josephine in Godfrey’s book indicate that Dusty wasn’t planning on going to the cops. According to Godfrey’s book, Dusty threatened to “f*ck up” anyone who told police about her. She told Nadja that she only told people she trusted about what happened, not wanting anyone to notify the police. Then, when Kelly asks Josephine about whether Dusty told on them, Jo said the following:
Despite her desire to avoid the police, it is worth mentioning that the real-life Dusty did feel immense guilt over what happened. Combining all these factors, it’s likely that Dusty’s sorry and remorse were amplified in Hulu’s Under the Bridge in order to create conflict between Dusty, Jo, and Kelly. It also provided a reason for Kelly to try and kill Dusty, a further indicator of her mental state and violent tendencies.
At the end of Under the Bridge episode 5, Rebecca realizes that Warren has no support when he hasn’t even eaten dinner. This leads to her inviting Warren to stay at her house while figuring out what to do in episode 6. She offers him emotional support and even lets him use her late brother’s suit to wear to the dance. At first glance, this seems plausible because the fictional Rebecca Godfrey is one of the main characters in Under the Bridge, and the real novel written by the author starts before Reena’s murder.
However, based on her own interview with Electric Lit, this is a huge deviation from the truth. In reality, she only learned about the crime after reading the article “Grisly Killing of Girl, 14, Startles a Town in British Columbia” by the Associated Press in The New York Times. The article specifies that the teens were already arrested. Then it took time for her to go from New York to Saanich. As such, she might have gotten close to Warren during their interviews, but he was already in custody at juvie when Godfrey and Warren spoke in real life.
The beginning of Under the Bridge episode 6 shows a flashback of Rebecca and Cam’s childhood where they are baking when her brother Gabe comes in with a bloodied face. Cam comforts Gabe, and they plan to go to a dance together. Then, a little bit later, two boys come to tell Rebecca what happened to her brother Gabe – he “fell” and drowned. This changes one major fact about the true story. Cam wasn’t in Rebecca’s childhood because Cam doesn’t exist. Cam Bentland was created in order to reflect the issues present in the police department at the time of Reena Virk’s murder.
Despite this major change, the flashback gets to the heart of the incident and how it impacted Rebecca in real life. In The New York Times obituary for Rebecca Godfrey, they detail that her brother Jonathan died when he was 16 by falling off a bluff and drowning. She explained to The Believer that this caused her to have a difficult teenage experience filled with anger to mask her pain – an experience that allowed her to empathize with the teenagers involved in the crime. Ultimately, this childhood trauma was crucial to her reporting and writing Under the Bridge.
Sources: Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey, CTV, Electric Lit, The New York Times, and The Believer