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HBO’s buzzy Nxivm sex cult docuseries “The Vow” has been criticized for dragging at times over the course of its nine-episode run. But the closing moments of Sunday’s season finale left no doubt about where the storyline is headed in season two, which HBO formally ordered last week.

Warning, spoilers for the finale episode of “The Vow” ahead.

Here comes the counterspin from now-convicted felons Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman, co-founders of the self-help programs at the heart of the whole of shocking story that led to federal human trafficking, sex abuse and racketeering charges. “The Fall,” episode 9 of “The Vow,” ends with hints that the pair will go on camera, or at least on the record, with “Vow” directors/executive producers Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer.

The closing sequence features what appears to be a glimpse of Salzman under house arrest, complete with a shot of her...

Back in the height of Keith Raniere's leadership over Nxivm, as we've seen in HBO's The Vow, the group had a lot of people moving in and out, some of whom eventually turned on Raniere later. One of those people is Frank Parlato, whom we've learned a little about on the documentary. We did a little more digging to see what all we could find out about Parlato. Here's what we were able to find.

Frank Parlato's History With Nxivm

Parlato was actually employed by Raniere and Nxivm at one point, according to Oxygen. In 2007, he was brought in to be the group's publicist, which is how he learned all the inner workings. It was this knowledge of everything happening within the controversial cult that led to Parlato essentially bringing Nxivm down. He started sharing the information he gathered on the sadistic rituals the group was following - especially...

Tracing exactly when HBO's The Vow was filmed can be a little confusing. The narrative isn't exactly linear, bobbing between clips of participants taking Esp courses and Mark Vicente and Bonnie Piesse voicing their suspicions about Nxivm. The latter segments can tell us a great deal about the project's timeline, however. The truth is, production for The Vow officially began in 2017 as a means of self-protection for Vicente and other Nxivm defectors, who did not initially set out to create a docuseries.

HBO bills The Vow as a "documentary series following a number of people deeply involved in the self-improvement group Nxivm over the course of several years." The show is directed by the Oscar-nominated couple Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer. Noujaim has a link with Nxivm - she met Nxivm official Sara Bronfman in 2008 while attending a conference on Richard Branson's Necker Island. With encouragement from Bronfman and Vicente,...

HBO's The Vow takes on the chilling activities of Nxivm. Mainly known as a self-help organization, Nxivm also operated multiple subgroups, including the children-oriented Rainbow Cultural Garden. While Nxivm is predominantly associated with the sex cult Dos, it has also been linked to the Rainbow Cultural Garden, a learning division established by Nxivm founder Keith Raniere in 2006. Given Nxivm's sullied reputation, Rainbow Cultural Garden has, unsurprisingly, raised red flags over the years. Here's what it was and what we know about its whereabouts.

In 2006, Raniere, despite having no background in education, billed Rainbow Cultural Garden as a "revolutionary child development program promoting children's cultural, linguistic, emotional, physical, and problem-solving potential." The child-care and education organization claimed that children, mainly younger ones, could learn seven languages at once through its teachings. The idea was to quickly switch children's caretakers, each of whom would speak a different language with their assigned child.

During the muggy last weeks of June 2019, Keith Raniere, the leader of the self-help organization Nxivm, sat in a downtown Brooklyn courthouse, owlish face peeking out from beneath a halo of pewter hair, looking like an overgrown prep-school boy in a jewel-toned crewneck, as prosecutors recounted a litany of his alleged crimes and peccadilloes, each more depraved and debauched than the last.

Raniere, they alleged, coerced a bevy of bright, ambitious women, including a former WB star and the daughter of an actress from Dynasty, into sending him photos of...