Magnum PI Season 5 Episode 19 Review: 'Ashes to Ashes' and the Finale

Magnum PI last episode guide: where "Ashes to Ashes" sits

Magnum P.I. is the American action drama developed by Peter M. Lenkov and Eric Guggenheim as a modern version of the 1980 series, with Jay Hernandez as Thomas Magnum, a former Navy SEAL who solves cases in Hawaii. It premiered on CBS on September 24, 2018. CBS canceled it on May 12, 2022, NBC picked it up on June 30, 2022, with a 20-episode order, and in June 2023 the network announced that season 5 would be the last.

That final season aired in two parts: ten episodes from February 19 to April 23, 2023, and ten more from October 4, 2023, to January 3, 2024. The last night of the show was a two-hour event. "Ashes to Ashes," the 95th episode overall, was directed by Eagle Egilsson and written by Tera Tolentino, Andrew Blazensky and Barbie Kligman. It was the first of the two hours, so the Magnum PI last episode proper is "The Big Squeeze," directed by Avi Youabian from a script by Eric Guggenheim and David Wolkove.

Readers coming to the Magnum PI last episode from outside the show need only a little background. This version keeps Magnum at the guest house of Robin Masters' estate, working as a security consultant, and turns Juliet Higgins into a woman who becomes his partner from season 2. It shares a fictional universe with Hawaii Five-0 and MacGyver. The cast in this episode includes Zachary Knighton as Orville "Rick" Wright, Stephen Hill as Theodore "T.C." Calvin, and Amy Hill as Teuila "Kumu" Tuileta, with Tim Kang's Gordon Katsumoto as the police contact Magnum would normally call in a case like this one. The episode splits its attention between two plots that never meet, which makes it easiest to follow as two separate stories.

The fire and the case

The episode opens on a blaze. Mahina (Emily Alabi) and her fellow firefighters arrive to search the house, and she thinks she sees someone in a bedroom before the ceiling starts to collapse and forces the team out. A frantic woman named Halia arrives and says her uncle's truck is outside, so he must be trapped. A few days later the fire department finds traces of accelerant, the man has died, and Halia, a contractor who had been living in the house, is facing a manslaughter charge. Investigators even suspect insurance money. Mahina blames herself, and T.C. (Stephen Hill), cheerful that morning, calls his friend Thomas Magnum to help.

Magnum and Higgins (Perdita Weeks) talk to Halia, who says her uncle raised her and inspired her to go into contracting. She mentions a jealous ex, Brian, who denies everything and recalls a stranger smoking outside her house. T.C. and Mahina find the cigarette butt, Magnum gets a DNA match to a man named Henry Carson, and Higgins notices his phone went dark the night of the fire. The last ping leads to a hardware store, and across the street sits a funeral home. Embalming fluid can be an accelerant, so they go inside. The man running the home eventually admits the only thing stolen in a recent break-in was a body, one that sounds like Halia's uncle.

The twist: a prison break and an uncle held at gunpoint

The reveal is that Henry Carson's son, Dominic, is in lockup. Three hours earlier he started a fight and stabbed a man on purpose to get a cell, while men in the vents try to find him. Halia's uncle Moku once worked on the prison compound, and he is forced at gunpoint to guide the escape with a map. Magnum would normally call Gordon and the Honolulu police, but he worries that any interruption would get Moku killed on the spot.

The final confrontation takes place in an abandoned warehouse. Magnum and Higgins draw on Henry and his accomplice, and it looks like an impasse until Henry ends it by shooting his partner in cold blood, saying that he only wanted his son back. The episode closes with Moku and Halia reuniting.

The helpline storyline

The second story belongs to Kumu (Amy Hill). She volunteers at a veterans help line with Rick (Zachary Knighton), and operators use fake names, so she answers as Tammy. After a cheerful montage of irritating calls, a man called DJ phones in from a blocked number, short of breath. He says he has already taken pills. Kumu keeps him talking, learns he left the service six years ago and is divorced with his custody lost, and drops the script when he accuses her of reading from one. She gives him her real name, and he settles on Kumu. Train noise and a bell on the line narrow his location to Chicago, and he tells her he thinks his son sees him as a monster. When she tells him her own father died by suicide when she was ten, he admits he may have made a mistake. EMTs reach him in time, and Rick and Kumu end the episode at her father's grave.

This storyline deals directly with suicide. In the US, the Veterans Crisis Line can be reached by dialing 988 and pressing 1.

Magnum PI last episode facts at a glance

Magnum PI last episode review: an emotional penultimate hour

The review's verdict is warm. It usually prefers Magnum P.I. for comedy and banter, and this episode has less of both than most, with arson, a body theft, a prison break and a suicide call packed into one episode. It still works because the case and the helpline story rhyme: both are about people who go to extremes for a family member, and both end with someone saved.

A Magnum PI last episode guide has to answer a basic question: does the penultimate hour earn its place before a finale? Here the answer is yes, because the stakes are personal, not apocalyptic, and the series saves its sendoff for the next hour. The two halves are not equally strong. The helpline story is the heavier and the better made. Amy Hill plays the call scenes straight, and the moment she drops the script and gives DJ her real name is the emotional center of the hour. The main case is busier, and the twist of Henry shooting his own accomplice surprised the reviewer. Rough Cut Review would add that the arson plot is the more conventional half, and that Higgins and Magnum arriving at an impasse instead of a rescue is a good choice for a penultimate hour.

It is also a fitting episode to read before the finale. The broader run was solid but never huge: the season 5 premiere drew 3.87 million viewers and the finale 3.43 million, compared with 8.12 million for the show's first night on CBS in 2018, according to its Wikipedia entry. That is a long way down, but the show still finished with a full five-season run of 96 episodes, a good result for a series that had been canceled once. For a first visit, start at the season premiere, then come back to this episode and watch "The Big Squeeze" right after.

Sources

• Magnum P.I. (2018 TV series), Wikipedia — Network history, final season dates, viewership
• List of Magnum P.I. episodes, Wikipedia — Directors, writers and air dates for episodes 19 and 20