Winter Ending Explained: Who Killed Simone and What Does Pegasus Mean?

ITV’s Winter spends most of its first season allowing Dr Ethan Winter to believe two contradictory things at once. Robert Parker has been convicted in connection with the death of Simone Edwards, Ethan’s fiancee, yet the evidence Ethan encounters increasingly suggests that Simone’s case never really ended. By Episode 6, the individual investigations have almost become secondary to the mystery that has quietly driven Ethan since the premiere.

The finale finally gives Ethan and DI Lauren Bell something much more substantial than another theory. They discover a location connecting Simone to two other cases, photographs that appear to link all three victims, and an explanation for the mysterious word “Pegasus.” What Winter deliberately refuses to give them is the identity of the person they are really looking for, leaving its biggest mystery open for another season.

Who killed Simone in Winter?

Winter Season 1 does not reveal who killed Simone Edwards. Instead, the finale confirms something almost as important: Robert Parker appears to have been wrongly convicted, and Ethan is no longer the only person willing to consider that possibility.

Ethan has suspected for several episodes that Parker’s conviction does not fit the evidence, but by the end of the season Lauren is no longer simply tolerating his theory. Parker is preparing an appeal, while Lauren is reopening the Philip Jensen investigation and looking into its possible connection to Simone. That represents a major shift from the beginning of the season, when Ethan was largely pursuing the case alone while everyone around him encouraged him to move on.

The series does not replace Parker with another named suspect before the credits roll. The person responsible for the connected cases therefore remains unidentified, making Simone’s real killer the central unresolved mystery after Episode 6.

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Why does Ethan believe Robert Parker is innocent?

Parker is convicted early in the season after prosecutors present him as Simone’s infatuated neighbor. He insists that Simone was still alive when he found her and that she tried to tell him something, but Ethan initially has little reason to believe a man he has spent years blaming.

That begins to change when the triangle symbol appears in another case. Rosemary Lockheart carries the same distinctive mark associated with Simone, even though Parker is already in custody by the time Rosemary dies. Ethan realizes that if the two cases are connected, Parker cannot possibly be responsible for both.

Lauren later uncovers the older case of Philip Jensen, who also carries the triangle mark. The timeline creates an even bigger problem for the case against Parker because he was already on remand for an unrelated offence when Jensen died. By the finale, Ethan and Lauren are looking at three victims connected by the same unusual signature: Philip Jensen, Simone Edwards and Rosemary Lockheart.

Whatever the complete explanation turns out to be, the pattern makes Parker’s conviction increasingly difficult to reconcile with the evidence. Ethan’s belief in his innocence is no longer based only on instinct or grief, because the Jensen and Rosemary cases give him a factual reason to question the original conclusion.

Why is Wharf Jewellers so important?

The finale’s biggest breakthrough begins with something that initially looks ordinary. While reviewing Jensen’s case, Ethan notices that Jensen had been engaged, and that detail immediately reminds him that he and Simone were also engaged when she died.

Lauren then finds an engagement-ring receipt connected to Jensen and asks Ethan where he bought Simone’s ring. His answer leads them to Wharf Jewellers, a place connected to one of the most important memories of Ethan’s life.

The shop is now derelict, but once Ethan and Lauren get inside, they find evidence that completely changes the Simone investigation. Hidden there are photographs of Simone, Jensen and Rosemary, creating the first physical location that clearly ties all three victims together.

These do not appear to be ordinary police photographs. Lauren quickly recognizes that the pictures look as though they were taken privately by someone connected to the cases, effectively turning Wharf Jewellers into a hidden archive of the victims.

The location also raises another unanswered question. Jensen and Simone can both be linked to engagement rings, but the finale does not establish that Rosemary visited the shop for the same reason, suggesting that the connection between the jeweller and the victims may be more complicated than Ethan and Lauren currently understand.

What does Pegasus mean in Winter?

“Pegasus” is the word Robert Parker remembers Simone saying shortly before she died. Ethan gets that information earlier in the season, but without any context the word could refer to mythology, a location, a business, an object or something personal that only Simone understood.

Episode 6 finally supplies the missing connection. Among the material connected to Simone, Ethan recognizes a photograph containing a statue of Pegasus, the winged horse from Greek mythology, and immediately realizes Parker had been telling the truth about what Simone said.

Simone was therefore referring to the Pegasus photograph. That solves the mystery of what the word meant, but it does not explain why the image mattered enough for Simone to identify it during her final moments.

That unanswered part is far more important than the identification itself. Ethan now knows what “Pegasus” refers to, but he still does not understand what Simone was trying to communicate about the photograph or what information it contains.

Is Simone really appearing to Ethan?

Simone’s recurring appearances throughout Winter are best understood as part of Ethan’s inner life rather than proof that she has literally returned. Ethan talks to her, argues with her and sometimes uses those imagined conversations to process information he cannot emotionally confront on his own.

The series uses Simone to show how completely Ethan has preserved her presence in his mind even years after losing her. At one point, the Simone he imagines effectively acknowledges that she is part of his own mind, reinforcing that these scenes are expressions of grief and memory rather than a supernatural storyline.

That does not make the conversations meaningless. They reveal the version of Simone Ethan still carries with him, including the humor, affection and familiarity of their relationship, and they explain why he remains emotionally trapped in the past.

The Pegasus discovery is different because it exists outside Ethan’s memories. Lauren sees the evidence too, while Parker independently remembers Simone using the word, giving Ethan an objective connection between Simone’s last moments and the new investigation.

What does the Winter ending set up?

By the end of Episode 6, Parker is preparing to appeal his conviction, Lauren is reopening Philip Jensen’s case, and Ethan finally has a police investigator taking the connection to Simone seriously. Most importantly, Ethan and Lauren have found what appears to be a hidden collection of material associated with three victims.

What they still do not know is who created that collection or why the Pegasus photograph was important. Those two unanswered questions turn the finale from a solution into the beginning of a much larger investigation.

Ethan began the season wondering whether the wrong man had been convicted. He ends it knowing there is a broader pattern involving several victims, a mysterious photographic record and a clue Simone apparently tried to leave behind before she died.

The question going into a potential second season is therefore no longer whether Ethan was right to reopen Simone’s case. It is what the Pegasus photograph reveals about the person who has been connected to these victims for years and whether Ethan and Lauren can identify that person before the trail disappears again.