Amid all these maybes, one thing’s for sure: Behind Her Eyes is the latest streaming sensation everyone’s talking about, and it’s all thanks to a twist ending that’s so complicated, it’s more like a double-helix handspring-flip with a completely blind landing. So for those of you who just have to know “#WTFThatEnding” was all about, keep reading. And to state the obvious: Major spoilers ahead!
What is Behind Her Eyes about?
A single mum in London named Louise (played on the show by British actress Simona Brown) meets David (Tom Bateman) at a bar; they wind up kissing that night. Then Louise discovers that her new boss at the psychiatry office where she works will be none other than… David! Sounds awkward, but that’s not the half of it: Louise later bumps into David’s wife, Adele (played by Eve Hewson, a.k.a. U2 frontman Bono’s real-life daughter!). Against her better judgment, Louise strikes up a friendship with Adele, who doesn’t seem to know about Louise and David’s kiss. Adele also asks Louise to keep their friendship hidden from David while helping Louise gain control over her night terrors, a sleep disorder Adele says she once suffered from as well. Louise and David ultimately dive headfirst into a full-on secret romance, even as Louise maintains her secret friendship with Adele. There are also several flashbacks to Adele’s young-adult years, which were marred by tragedy: Her parents died in a fire at their Scottish estate, but she survived thanks to David’s heroics. Afterward, Adele spent time in a psychiatric/rehab facility to process her trauma. While there, she became BFFs with another inpatient, Rob (Robert Aramayo).
What happens at the end of Behind Her Eyes?
So you know how Louise was trying to learn to control her night terrors? She becomes so good at it that she develops the ability to perform “astral projections.” That’s when your soul or spirit can travel out of your sleeping body and invisibly visit other real-life places, allowing you to see and hear what’s happening in, say, your husband’s psychiatry office. It turns out Adele has been astral projecting all along and has been spying on unfaithful David and Louise this whole time. At the very end of the series, viewers learn that when two people astral-project at the same time, they can essentially swap bodies, with one person’s soul/spirit traveling into the other person’s physical self. This is revealed when Adele lures Louise to her house by pretending she’s suicidal. Louise, unable to open the front door, decides to astral-project into the house instead. Adele is waiting for her to do just that and takes the opportunity to inhabit Louise’s body. Meanwhile, Adele had shot up heroin beforehand, so when Louise enters Adele’s body, Louise finds that she’s unable to move because she’s not used to heroin’s effects. That’s when Adele (now inhabiting Louise’s body) retrieves her spare key, unlocks her front door, goes upstairs to where Louise is trapped in Adele’s body and kills Louise’s spirit/Adele’s body by administering another, fatal dose of heroin. Adele kills Louise but then continues living life pretending to be Louise by inhabiting her body. (It’s like the title was giving away the ending this whole time, right?!)
What happens to Rob at the end of Behind Her Eyes?
But wait, there’s more! In a second twist ending, we find out that Rob and Adele had swapped bodies 10 or so years ago—and that Rob had pulled the same heroin trick to kill Adele! Even though Rob frequently proclaims in his flashbacks that Adele is the one true friend he’s ever had, once he witnessed Adele’s perfect romance with then-boyfriend David, that apparently all went out the window and he simply had to have her life for himself. Adele had taught Rob how to do astral projections, so Rob suggested they try swapping bodies for fun. That means that this whole time, we haven’t been watching a David-Louise-Adele love triangle; we’ve been watching a David-Louise-Rob love triangle.
What happens to Adele at the end of Behind Her Eyes?
The real Adele (meaning, Adele’s spirit) has actually been dead this whole time, trapped inside Rob’s corpse. Soon after Rob took over Adele’s body, he threw his old physical self down a well on Adele’s property.
Does David know who Adele really is?
Sadly for David, no. In fact, toward the end of the series, there’s a moment where Louise tries to tell him about astral projections, but he interrupts her. Poor David gets tricked into marrying Rob not once, but twice: Once when Rob is inhabiting Adele’s body, and then a second time when he takes over Louise’s body.
Is the ending of Behind Her Eyes the same as the book?
For the most part, yes. One big difference: In the book, the fact that Rob is gay is kept a secret until the very end. In the series, Rob’s sexual preference for men is mentioned a few times early on—including one funny dream sequence Rob has in which he and Adele are served tropical drinks by a male waiter whose butt is clearly visible. The very last page of the book also suggests that Rob is next planning to somehow kill off Louise’s school-age son, Adam, who’s onto the fact that his mum is no longer the person she once was. Next, read about the books Lupin is inspired by.
