The psychological thriller Behind Her Eyes has a truly ludicrous pair of twists in its final episode, but what is the big reveal at the end of this Netflix miniseries? Released on Netflix in February, Behind Her Eyes initially feels like a psychological thriller in the vein of A Simple Favor or Gillian Flynn’s output.

The convoluted, sexually-charged story of a lonely single mother who falls for both her new boss and his strange, troubled wife, Behind Her Eyes spends most of its six-hour runtime as an engaging, if unspectacular, domestic thriller akin to The Girl On The Train. Like that twisty story, Big Little Lies, and Gone Girl before it, Behind Her Eyes is another glossy psychological thriller set in suburbia and filled with cheating spouses, secret affairs, and shocking twists. Unlike those earlier efforts, though, Behind Her Eyes features a laughably ludicrous final revelation that changes the genre of the miniseries entirely.

Related: Behind Her Eyes: Cast & Character Guide

Although the show's early episodes are some effective, if unsubtle, domestic drama, almost all of the coverage received by Behind Her Eyes since its release has entered around the inane twist ending featured at the close of the miniseries. It’s a bizarre left-field turn that deserves to be explained in detail if only so viewers can avoid spending six hours wading through slow-burn drama before laughing at the demented ending of Behind Her Eyes.

What Happens In Behind Her Eyes' Ending

Eve Hewson in Behind Her Eyes on Netflix

Like fellow Netflix smash Below Zero, even the simplest explanation for the ending of Behind Her Eyes requires a little backstory for the characters involved. The heroine of the series, Louise, has an affair with the seemingly sweet Dr. Dave, her new boss. She’s also attracted to Dave’s odd wife Adele, a strange but beguiling woman who has never been the same since her friend from rehab, Rob, died mysteriously. Louise becomes entangled in the lives of Dr. Dave and Adele, eventually subscribing to Adele’s theory that Dr. Dave killed Rob from rehab because he suspected that Adele was having an affair with him. Louise reports Dr. Dave to the police for Rob’s murder, only to find out that the unstable Adele has set her home alight and is attempting to overdose while inside.

Fortunately, Louise intervenes in time to save her. Unfortunately, said intervention involves astral projection, something this Fatal Attraction/Disclosure-style potboiler had not hinted at until this juncture. As Louise astral projects into Adele, she attempts to save her friend, only for said friend to steal her body and murder her. To clarify, that is Adele’s soul in Louise’s body, leaving Louise trapped in the overdosing Adele body and taking Louise's physical body to steal her identity and run away with Dr. Dave (her own husband). It’s an insane twist — and it’s not the last one featured in the miniseries.

Whose Soul Is In Louise’s Body?

Robert Aramayo in Behind Her Eyes on Netflix

Just when it seems like viewers understand what is going on — Adele’s soul stole Louise’s body, now she’ll be able to live happily with Dr. Dave while Louise’s soul is left trapped in Adele’s dead body — things are complicated a little further. Like so many of the worst horror movies, Behind Her Eyes features a double twist, as viewers discover that the soul inhabiting Louise’s body isn’t Adele. It’s actually Rob from rehab, the otherwise largely forgotten minor character, and Dr. Dave didn’t kill him — the astral projecting madman has already switched bodies with Adele and killed her while she was in his body, hiding the corpse in a well. So, once more for clarity, Rob stole Adele’s body and killed his body while Adele’s soul was trapped therein, and now he’s done the same to slip from Adele’s body to Louise’s.

Related: Gone Girl 2 Updates: Why The Sequel Could Happen

What About Louise’s Son?

Behind Her Eyes

Behind Her Eyes often seems to forget that Louise’s young son Adam exists for long stretches of the narrative when his presence would get in the way of the twisty, sexy storytelling. However, viewers can be assured that he returns in style in the last episode's Us-referencing final twist, pointing out to his mother (actually Rob using his mother as a host) that she hates sailing after she agrees to put the whole ordeal behind her by joining Dr. Dave on a cruise. He seems to be aware that something is up with his dear doting mum, but beyond a bit of squinty side-eyeing, nothing comes of this reveal.

Is Behind Her Eyes’ Ending Problematic?

Netflix February 2021 Behind Her Eyes

At the risk of mealy-mouthed centrism, it’s easy to argue for and against the allegation that Behind Her Eyes has an offensive ending. On the one hand, the series only features one LGBTQ+ male character, and he is a predatory body-hopping sociopath, which carries a lot of troubling implications. However, the depiction of Rob as a duplicitous villain isn’t far from how the crazy female villains of most psychological thrillers are depicted, with Rob being a male version of the usually female obsessive stalker archetype popularized by the likes of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. As a result, there’s an argument to be made that Rob’s character is inherently pretty problematic, but the argument has to address the psychological thriller’s history of depicting women as irrational and dangerous romantic obsessives too.

Does Behind Her Eyes Ending Steal From Us?

Lupita Nyongo as Red and Adelaide in Us

It’s hard to deny that the ending of Behind Her Eyes, featuring a young son sitting in the backseat of a car and realizing his mother is not who she claims to be but deciding to keep her secret identity to himself, is very reminiscent of Jordan Peele’s 2019 horror satire Us. The closing moments are similar (although the ending of Us is a lot more chilling and less ludicrous), but as the original novel Behind Her Eyes is based now was written in 2017, so if anyone can be accused of plagiarism it is the television adaptation's helmers and not the writer. That said, Jordan Peele has always been open about how much creative borrowing goes into his directorial efforts, so it’s unlikely the creator would be worried by this nod to his critically-acclaimed blockbuster.

The REAL Meaning of Behind Her Eyes’ Ending

Aston McAuley in Behind Her Eyes on Netflix

The meaning of Behind Her Eyes is a tricky one to decipher given how surreal and unexpected the series' last-minute left-field turn into horror territory is. The most resonant theme is identity, as Louise, Adele, and Rob all prove to be interchangeable behind their eyes (hence the title) despite their different appearances, races, and genders. What Behind Her Eyes seems to say is no one is necessarily who they seem and you can never trust a person by their appearance alone, a somewhat reactionary but also reliably popular theme that crops up in a lot of thrillers set in the seemingly safe, often secretly depraved world of suburbia.

More: Best Movie Plot Twists Of The Decade