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Warning: This story contains spoilers for “His & Hers.”
Ever been so stunned by something you’ve watched that you sat frozen in your seat because you can’t believe what you just saw? Well, that’s been a lot of people’s reactions to “His & Hers,” Netflix’s latest twisty psychological thriller, which took social media by storm this month thanks to its jaw-dropping two-part finale that no one saw coming.
But before we get there, let me set up the limited series.
Starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal, “His & Hers” is a six-part murder mystery based on Alice Feeney’s best-selling 2020 novel, with all the hallmarks of a juicy crime story — a killer on the loose in a quiet Georgia town, a high-profile investigation, a tragic backstory and a web of sex, lies and unsolved murders. Adding more layers to the plot are the deep personal ties between the main murder victim and the show’s titular him and her, aka Anna (Thompson) and Jack (Bernthal).
The story starts when Anna, a reclusive Atlanta news anchor, returns to her hometown after learning that an old high school friend, Rachel (Jamie Tisdale), has been murdered. As Anna searches for answers, she bumps heads with her estranged husband, Detective Jack Harper, who’s officially on the case. To make matters more complicated, Jack was also having an affair with Rachel before she was murdered (in fact, he had sex with her right before she was stabbed to death).
The two have reason to be suspicious of each other, with Anna’s odd insistence on covering news of the murder, and Jack trying to conceal his involvement with Rachel, raising red flags with his new work partner, Priya (Sunita Mani).
But as Anna’s voiceovers remind us throughout the show, there’s “more than one side to a story,” thus setting the stage for a tangled web of theories and potential suspects behind Rachel’s death and the bloody aftermath.
And so, we’re introduced to Rachel’s former classmates, Helen (Poppy Liu) and Zoe (Marin Ireland), also Jack’s sister — spoiler alert: the two later become murder victims themselves — as well as Rachel’s husband, Clyde (Chris Bauer), who’s the No. 1 suspect in Jack’s investigation (one could assume for obvious reasons, per his and Rachel’s affair). There’s also Anna’s rival, Lexy (Rebecca Rittenhouse), a fellow anchor at her news station who, on the surface, has no direct link to Rachel.
However, that illusion is shattered when it’s revealed that Lexy is actually Catherine Kelly, an outcast from Anna, Zoe, Helen and Rachel’s all-girls high school. It turns out that years earlier, the girls (sans Anna) manipulated Catherine into joining their friend group for sinister reasons hinted at throughout the show. Still, what does Catherine/Lexy’s rebrand have to do with the string of local murders?
Well, according to the show, it appears to all stem from a sick prank the girls pulled on Catherine at Anna’s 16th birthday party (more on that later). Hence, Anna and Jack assume the killer has been Lexy all along, killing off her high school tormentors one by one, with Anna as her final target. Anna figures this is the plan after Lexy’s cameraman husband, Richard (Pablo Schreiber) — whom Anna has been sleeping with — lures her to their lake house.
Once she puts two and two together in the finale, a fight breaks out between Anna, Richard and later Lexy, with the latter pulling a gun on Anna. But before Lexy can pull the trigger, Priya, in a last-minute heroic moment, pulls up outside the house and fatally shoots her.
From there, it seems like case closed, right? Or so it seems. But with 16 minutes still left in the episode, “His & Hers” delivers its most shocking twist of all.
The story jumps ahead to a year later, with Jack and a pregnant Anna now back together and raising Zoe’s orphaned daughter. The three go to visit Anna’s elderly mother, Alice (Crystal Fox), at her house, where Anna discovers a confessional letter from Alice that names the real killer — her.
Yes, Alice, not Lexy, masterminded each one of the murders. And as she explains, the mother’s motive was vengeance for what happened on Anna’s 16th birthday.
See, Anna suffered a devastating loss when her and Jack’s baby girl, Charlotte, died suddenly in Alice’s care. When Anna self-exiled to grieve, Alice watched nostalgic videotapes of her daughter to cope with her absence. But one horrifying tape finally revealed what went down on Anna’s birthday: She was sexually assaulted by three men as Rachel, Zoe and Helen — who orchestrated the attack — sat and watched with zero remorse. Meanwhile, Catherine ran away after almost getting assaulted herself.
Alice, consumed with rage, vowed to get revenge on everyone involved. She started with Rachel after discovering that she was sleeping with Jack. She then went after Helen and Zoe before framing Lexy for all the crimes. Finally, to cover her tracks, Alice faked having dementia so no one would ever suspect her, an old woman, “the picture of frailty” hiding in plain sight, as the murderer — and they didn’t.
Needless to say, that plot twist threw everyone for a loop:
Watching the finale myself, I audibly gasped at the reveal. Like, full-on sat in silence for at least two minutes because it took me by complete surprise. I’m almost tempted to re-binge the entire series to see if I missed any obvious clues because who on earth would’ve guessed that Alice, of all people, was the killer?!
Apparently, director William Oldroyd and the “His & Hers” team did plant a few seeds to help viewers piece the mystery together. “We didn’t want to deny an audience the satisfaction of being able to work it out if they had just looked in the right place,” he told Tudum. “But we didn’t want those seeds to be so obvious they would give it away.”
I have to hand it to “His & Hers,” they got us good with this plot twist. Viewers haven’t been this collectively gagged by a Netflix title since the “Unknown Number” documentary. No wonder it became the streamer’s No. 1 show just days after its Jan. 8 premiere.
I guess that shocker ending is a lesson to us all. When it comes to murder mysteries, consider everyone a suspect.
“His & Hers” is streaming on Netflix.
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