Warning: Major spoilers for Cross season 1 below!Prime Video’sCrossadaptation reveals the title character’s parents are dead, but what happened to them?Amazon’sCrosscastAldis Hodge as Detective Alex Cross, who inherits the role from Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry. The biggest swing of the show is that it doesn’t adaptanyof theAlex Crossnovels by James Patterson, and instead takes the characters and places them in an original story. That means the events of the first bookAlong Came a Spiderhave already happened offscreen, and the series is free to remix the backstory for Hodge’s Cross.
Plenty of elements from Patterson’s books remain the same though, including Alex’s enduring friendship with partner Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa).Cross' finale episode"You Had Me at Motherf*****" shows a flashback to Alex as a boy, where his “Nana Mama” comforts him over losing both his mother and father in quick succession.The series doesn’t go into any detail about what happened to Cross' parents, though this scene is key to understanding his relationship with both Nana Mama (Juanita Jennings) and Sampson.
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How Alex’s Mother & Father Died Before Cross
James Patterson’s novels reveal what happened to Alex Cross' parents
Patterson’s books have gone into detail about what happened to Alex’s parents over the years.Growing up, Alex believed his mother died of cancer while his father Jason drank himself to death the following year; from there, Alex was raised by his grandmother Regina (AKA “Nana Mama). Of course, being the James Patterson universe, the true story is far more complex.In the 2015 novelCross Justice, Alex learns that his father was presumed dead after a shooting - but is in fact aliveand living in Florida.
Jason survived being shot and subsequently falling from a bridge and has been living under an assumed identity in the decades since. Not only that, butAlex also discovers his late mother was a drug addict who was killed by her dealer, with Jason then being accused of her murder. TheCrossseries at least sticks true to the order of Alex’s losses from the books, with Regina revealing he lost his father shortly after his mother’s passing.
How Old Alex Was When His Parents Died
Cross knew loss from a tragically young age
In the Patterson series,Cross was only nine when his mother passed. He was likely ten when Jason “died” a year later, with Nana Mama raising him from that point on. Maybe a future series ofCrosswill explore what happened to Alex’s parents in more detail. With season 1 already seeing the titular detective dealing with the grief of his wife’s murder, it may have been decided it was best not to layer on more tragedy in his backstory.
Cross season 1 ends with Alex finally going to see a therapist to start unpacking his feelings, so maybe that’s where viewers will learn of his parents in the next series.
Crossseason 1 ends with Alex finally going to see a therapist to start unpacking his feelings, so maybe that’s where viewers will learn of his parents in the next series. Considering she raised him for most of his life - and still lives with him and his children - Alex probably considers Nana Mama his true mother by this point.
Cross
Cast
Cross follows the life of Alex Cross, a skilled yet troubled homicide detective balancing his role as a devoted father and relentless crime investigator. Haunted by his wife’s murder, he navigates personal turmoil while persistently pursuing justice in the face of dangerous adversaries.
