V.C. Andrews’ Dawn Part 1 ending explained: Was Dawn really kidnapped?

The film series adaptation of V.C. Andrews’ Dawn kicked off its four week event on Lifetime with the premiere of the eponymous first part which introduced viewers to the Longchamps. The working class family were prone to moving around, but Ormand had promised his daughter that their move to Richmond, VA would be their last, enabling her and her brother, Jimmy, to finally plant some roots instead of being shuffled around the country.

For Dawn that meant embracing the Emerson Peabody school, an institution that had a wonderful music program which would allow her to focus on her voice. It’s the teen girl’s dream to have a singing career. However, instead of being able to concentrate on her studies, she had to contend with the bullying antics of Clara Jean Cutler, a fellow classmate who looks down on those with less money than her family and delights in making other people miserable.

The girls got off on the wrong foot thanks to Dawn accidentally exposing Clara Jean’s smoking by pointing out where the smell of smoke was coming from in the girls’ locker room. The mean spirited girl’s brother, Philip, however took a shine to Dawn and the two started somewhat of a romance much to Clara Jean’s distaste and Jimmy’s.

But her clothes being put in the toilet and Clara Jean making snide comments became the least of Dawn’s worries after her mother, Sally, gave birth to her baby sister, Fern. She tried to get her dad to take her mom to the doctor when she noticed her mother’s cough was getting worse. When he wouldn’t listen, she tried to convince her mom to go, but she wouldn’t budge either. Then the night of the spring concert, when Dawn was a soloist, Sally was rushed to the hospital.

Did Sally Longchamp die in Dawn Part 1?

Unfortunately, Dawn did lose her mother. The doctor’s diagnosed her with consumption, a wasting diseases that’s typically caused by pulmonary tuberculosis. The family only got a moment to grieve before Ormand was arrested and it was revealed that he wasn’t her biological father and that he and the mother who raised her, kidnapped her 16 years ago.

In a matter of hours, Dawn was told that she’s actually a Cutler, Clara Jean and Philip are her biological siblings, and she’s not related to Jimmy and Fern at all. It’s because of this that she was taken to the Cutler Cove, a luxury hotel run by the family while the Longchamp siblings were placed in foster care.

Was Dawn really kidnapped by the Longchamps?

At the hotel, Dawn was treated terribly by her grandmother, Lillian. Taken out of school two weeks before the end of the school year and forced to work as a chambermaid, no one would provide her with answers and she kept being referred to as Eugenia, the name she was given at birth.

Still, Dawn refused to let the matter lie. When she learned that Mrs. Dalton, the nurse who was taking care of her the night she was kidnapped, was still employed by the Cutlers after the incident happened, she grew suspicious. The detective told her that her parents were employees at the hotel and that’s how they were able to steal her under the cover night.

Mrs. Boston explained that the Longchamps were sick with grief after suffering a stillbirth and that they must have taken her to replace the daughter they lost. But something wasn’t adding up, so eventually Dawn went to speak to Mrs. Dalton. It turns out, she wasn’t kidnapped. Her birth mother, Lara Jean Cutler, had a propensity for cheating on her husband, Randolph, after they had their son, Philip.

Lara Jean was attracted to singers, and she’d carry on an affair while a performer was in town and staying at the hotel. However, after one such dalliance, she became pregnant. Lillian tried to get Lara Jean to have an abortion, but she wouldn’t. Instead she convinced her mother-in-law to let her have Randolph believe the baby was his. For a time, Lillian went along with the lie, but after her daughter-in-law gave birth, she changed her mind about accepting the baby as a Cutler.

She knew the Longchamps had lost their child and presented them with the opportunity to still have a child by taking Eugenia and calling her their own, even renaming her, Dawn. Lillian paid Mrs. Dalton a year’s salary to keep quiet. The Virginia state police opened an investigation into the child’s disappearance and Randolph threw himself into looking for her until a year later when Lillian had a headstone made and told him to move on.

Dawn asked Lara Jean if what she learned was true and, though she tried to feign being too ill to answer, she did get confirmation that her birth mother allowed Randolph to believe that the baby she was carrying was his, she and Lillian let the police think her baby had been kidnapped, and all the while she was actually safe and cared for by the Longchamps.

Using this information to her advantage, Dawn blackmailed an impressed Lillian into using her influence to get Ormand out of jail, ensured she’d be given respect at the hotel, that she’d be called by her preferred name, and that she’d get to attend a school with an excellent music program. Lillian agreed to her granddaughter’s demands, stating that perhaps she’s a Cutler after all.

The school Lillian found for her to attend was the Bernhart School of the Arts in New York City. The distance, she believes, would be a benefit to them both. Part 1 of the film series ends with Dawn heading off to Bernhart. Before she left, she got to speak to her father on the phone since her letter to him had finally been delivered. He was still in prison, but she got to tell him that she thinks she has a way to get him out, that way, of course, is Lillian.

Dawn also threatened Philip, telling him that their grandmother won’t be around forever to keep him out of trouble. And that the only reason he’s not behind bars for rape, which is clearly what he’d been doing to the girls he’s seen as he attempted to do so with her, is because of Lillian. One day he’ll get what’s coming to him.

As for Clara Jean, she swore to be a thorn in Dawn’s side because she had to live in her shadow all her life. But with the girls separated by states, she may not get to enact the revenge she so wanted to inflict not to mention it seems Dawn has earned Lillian’s respect which could keep Clara Jean from doing what she wants to her sister.

The film concludes before Jimmy and Dawn are reunited. The last they’d seen of each other, he was being hauled away by the police for running away from his foster family. The two had began a tentative romance since they’re not blood related and Jimmy expressed an interest during a time in her life when she felt isolated and alone. He vowed to come and get her when he turned 18 and would no longer be a ward of the state.

Will the Longchamps, including baby Fern, be together again? We’ll have to keep watching the film series to see. Part 2, “Secrets of the Morning,” premieres Saturday, July 15 at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime. Stay tuned to Hidden Remote for more news and coverage.