Fool Me Once is the latest mind-boggling thriller to arrive on Netflix. Given that the book and show endings are almost identical, viewers may look to the book for speedier answers to the mystery’s outcome.
Both the book and TV show focus on a relatively straightforward but inexplicable premise. Essentially, Maya Stern (Michelle Keegan) is a widow whose husband Joe (Richard Armitage) was murdered. However, one day, while checking on her daughter via a nanny cam, Maya is rattled to see her late husband on camera, alive and playing with their daughter. It’s the kind of idea that sends a shiver down your spine. How is Joe on the camera while he’s also very clearly dead? Speaking of his murder, how did Joe die, anyway?
The spooky occurence quickly sends Maya on a journey as she delves into her husband’s death and is forced to confront her own past in the process. Meanwhile, we must remember that the original novel comes from the mind of Harlan Coben, famous for his mysteries and their unforeseeable twists and turns. Hence, as viewers work through the show’s eight episodes, the mystery gets increasingly complicated as further mysterious deaths and family secrets enter the picture. Whether readers want to compare the TV show and book endings or are just desperate for some kind of answer, here’s how Coben ties up his novel.
Who killed who in Fool Me Once?
One of Coben’s greatest talents is the ability to mislead readers. In Fool Me Once, readers are misled by the idea that Maya is solving the mystery of Joe’s death. However, that’s not the case. The central mystery she needs to solve is how he ended up in the nanny cam footage. As inexplicable as his appearance on that cam is, she knows from the onset that it doesn’t mean he’s alive. She already knows he’s dead and how he died—because she’s the one who killed him.
As for why Maya would kill Joe, it is pretty simple: he killed her sister Claire. Claire was murdered shortly before Joe’s murder in a home invasion. Meanwhile, by the end, it’s revealed that, in the days leading up to Joe’s death, Maya suspected him of killing Claire. The evidence was quite damning, as the murder weapon was a household gun that only she and Joe knew about. Finally, she decided to confront him about her sister’s murder but made the clever decision to switch the household weapon with a dud beforehand while keeping the real gun with her. During the confrontation, Joe does try to shoot Maya, which confirms her suspicions about Claire. Even though his weapon is a dud, she uses her gun to shoot and kill him as revenge, then tampers with the crime scene to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.
After her husband’s death, Maya works backward to determine why Joe killed Claire. It has to do with the fact that Maya and Joe’s family, the Burketts, have some dirty secrets in their pasts. Maya served in the military as a combat pilot before being discharged after a blogger named Corey “The Whistle” Rudzinski leaked video footage of a mission that went terribly wrong in which Maya killed civilians. In an attempt to help her sister, Claire tries to prevent Cory from leaking even more damning audio and video. In exchange, she agrees to help him with another investigation, which happened to be on the Burkett family. Claire actually worked for the Burkett family’s business, but when she started sticking her nose in things that Joe didn’t want her to know, he killed her.
How did Joe end up in the nanny cam?
The nanny cam wasn’t as complex of a mystery as readers might have thought. In the book, Maya’s nanny, Isabella, tricks Maya by having her brother dress up in Joe’s clothes and then altering the feed with CGI. She was put up to this by Judith Burkett, Joe’s mother, the mastermind behind everything. Not only was she the conspirator in Claire’s death, but she covered up a whole string of murders that Joe committed and was involved in numerous scandals with her company, EAC Pharmaceuticals. Maya finally decides to confront Judith about all her crimes, but she ends up getting shot and killed by Neil, Joe’s brother.
That’s right, Maya dies in the end. However, an epilogue 25 years later reveals that a hidden nanny cam captured the confrontation and live-streamed it to the world. In the end, she successfully exposed the Burkett family’s crimes. The epilogue, told from the POV of Maya’s friend, Shane, leaves it up to the reader’s interpretation whether Maya knew she would die during her confrontation with the Burketts. She may have felt the need to sacrifice herself for the truth, and she had little to lose as she, too, would’ve likely gone to prison. Plus, she did leave behind letters for Shane and her brother-in-law, Eddie. Readers learn she left her daughter Lily in Eddie’s care, and Lily lived a happy life and recently became a mother herself in the epilogue.
(featured image: Netflix)
