Who Is Natalie's Dad In Cape Fear? The 3 Biggest Theories, Explained
Since Apple TV’s stellar Cape Fear reimagining began, fans of the property have been increasingly more impressed with the series’ new additions to the story.
From Max Cady’s self-created voodoo religion to Anna and Tom's ethically dubious backstory, creator Nick Antosca sure is giving us a Cape Fear adaptation to fit our grey-area modern times.
The latest episode to air (Episode 6, ‘Possum’) gave us plenty of new material to chew on. While continuing to dance around the big secret that Anna and Tom are desperately trying to hide, another big question resurfaced: Who is Natalie’s biological father?
Let’s have a look at the prime candidates, and see who currently ranks as most-likely.
Paul
Currently, the official story from Anna is that Paul is Natalie’s biological father. According to her account, she was engaged to Paul and pregnant with his child throughout Max Cady’s trial, where she was his defense lawyer.
However, since the trial took so long and their engagement was already turbulent, when Anna went into labour in the court room on the day of sentencing, it was Tom, the prosecutor, who took her to the hospital and stayed with her, shifting her feelings onto him and concluding her relationship with Paul.
Since Anna’s story seems to have always been that Paul is Natalie’s biological father, we might not need to question that. Unless we consider…
Tom Bowden
Tom and Anna’s feelings for each other clearly started sparking at a highly inconvenient time. Anna was not only still engaged to Paul and struggling with alcoholism, but she was also Max Cady’s defense lawyer, while Tom was the prosecutor on the case.
If it turned out that Tom was the father, that would mean that Natalie had been conceived during the trial, when the two of them should have had absolutely nothing to do with each other.
It could be that Tom is indeed Natalie’s biological father, and it would shake up their current distant step-dad and step-daughter dynamic, forcing them to reconsider each other. I can’t say this is truly where my bet lies, however, since…
Max Cady
Since the beginning of the series, there have been several moments heavily implying that Anna and Max shared something more than a professional relationship. In Episode 6, Tom and Anna go to Max’s place, intent on confronting him and telling him to back off.
During the interaction, Max looks at Anna coyly while reminiscing about the beginning of their working relationship, saying, “Anna, I trusted you. Because when you represented me, [deep breath], you know what I mean. You know what I mean.” When Tom questions Anna afterwards, she admits that “maybe... before his wife was found dead, maybe there was something going on, like some sort of emotional connection”. However, we still don’t know how far that “emotional connection” went.
This was not the first time Max implied something more than professional happened between the two of them. In Episode 4, he even went as far as to kiss Anna forcefully in the park. While she is clearly not enthusiastic and tells him to “never do that again”, she also doesn’t seem shocked, and their body language suggests that this was not the first time. Anna’s feelings about Max remain less explicit, but it does indeed seem that early on in the case they had a connection, before something changed.
The upcoming Episode 7 is called 'Mongrel' and, according to the official logline, "Anna and Tom kick off a dangerous plot against Max. Seeking answers, Natalie hits the road". With Natalie now looking for answers, and with only three episodes left, I’d bet that this episode will give us more information about Natalie's parentage.
So far, we haven’t met her so-called biological father, Paul, but according to IMDb he is played by Jay Huguley and appears in one episode in the series, so we might finally meet him very soon.
