Netflix’s His & Hers, based on the novel by Alice Feeney, is a barn burner of a show featuring sizzling performances by Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal, a deliciously twisty mystery, and six bingeable episodes that are all streaming right now. But if you haven’t read the novel, you likely were not expecting the absolutely wild, completely bonkers final minutes of the finale, which includes the most insane twist of the year. And yes, I know it’s only January.
I’m going to put a massive spoiler warning past this point, as whatever you think is going to be revealed in the final episode, you’re probably right. And also, you’re completely, totally, utterly wrong, as there’s a reveal in the closing minutes that left me, personally, gasping for air at the sheer unhinged audacity of it all. To properly explain everything, I’ll give you a recap of the finale, then an ending explained in case the whirlwind left you stunned. And then we can throw in some extra odds and ends as well.
First though, to recap before the recap (a precap if you will), the central mystery of the show kicks off with the death of Rachel (Jamie Tisdale). She’s found stabbed dozens of times with a friendship bracelet stuck down her throat, on the hood of a car in the middle of the woods. The series premiere ends with the reveals that police detective Jack (Bernthal) was having regular sex with her in his truck, TV reporter Anna (Thompson) was there at the scene of the crime, and also they are/were married.
What broke them apart? The death of their child, which sent Anna running into hiding, depressed for a year. Meanwhile, Jack stayed in town and though he spiraled out of control in his own way, he was there to take care of Anna’s dementia-ridden mother Alice (Crystal Fox), who has taken to wandering the roads naked at night and occasionally cooking scrambled eggs with the shells in them. Respectfully: yuck.
Over the course of the rest of the show while Anna investigates the murders in order to get her anchor spot back at the TV station from her main rival Lexy (Rebecca Rittenhouse), and Jack gets involved in increasingly byzantine ways of covering up his involvement, another body turns up: Helen Wang (Poppy Liu). This one could implicate either Jack or Anna, though particularly Anna, who discovered Helen’s body. And not helping things is that Helen, Rachel, Anna, Jack’s sister Zoe (Marin Ireland), and a girl named Catherine Kelly (Astrid Rotenberry) — who the rest mercilessly bullied — all hung out back in the day… And clearly had some sort of terrible thing happen at Anna’s 16th birthday party. In fact, it sure seems like Catherine Kelly was sexually assaulted, though nobody is really talking.
Trying to get out of town until things cool down a bit, Anna heads to a remote house with Lexy’s husband Richard (Pablo Schreiber), who Anna slept with as part of her revenge on Lexy for stealing her anchor spot. Only the house isn’t Richard’s house, it’s Lexy’s parent’s house. And Lexy is supposed to show up. And while Richard ominously wanders off through the house, Anna makes a shocking discovery: Lexy is Catherine Kelly.
His & Hers Finale Recap:
I want to be clear on something here as we get into the finale: what I’m going to lay out in this section is not the absolutely over the top twist, but it is important to understand to see just how wild this all is. The finale starts off with a flashback to Catherine Kelly and her sister Andrea (Savanna Gann), who is mercilessly bullying Catherine Kelly for her weight. So Catherine Kelly depletes Andrea’s inhaler just as she heads out on a boat trip with her parents, and subsequently dies. So yeah, we now know that Catherine Kelly is a sociopathic murderer, and Anna is in her house with her husband — who might be in on it.
Not only that, but Jack has just discovered the dead body of Zoe, meaning nearly every member of that old friend group is dead… Except Anna.
Jack realizes Anna is in trouble, and is about to head out… But unfortunately for him, his second-in-command Priya (Sunita Mani) has discovered he’s been hiding and suppressing info about the murders. And seeing him covered in Zoe’s blood while trying to flee by car doesn’t help things much. Jack takes Priya’s gun and knocks her out, while Anna tries to save herself from Richard, who is either in league with Lexy, or totally innocent. One of the two.
Lexy shows up and Anna accuses her of being behind all the murders, with the pissed Lexy saying that Anna lured her into the woods to her birthday. They fight, and while that happens Priya gets the key piece of evidence that Lexy is Catherine Kelly. Jack pulls up to the house, Lexy grabs a gun, and goes to shoot Anna, with Jack arriving in the nick of time to push her out of the way.
The gun, though, is not loaded… But Priya shoots her anyway, straight through the head from outside the house. RIP, Lexy.
As the sun rises, Jack and Anna sit on a bench and reconcile. Anna lays it out for Jack, explaining that on Anna’s 16th birthday, Rachel, Zoe, and Helen led Anna and Catherine Kelly into the woods for a “party,” until men Rachel had sent “pictures” to showed up and they “attacked” Catherine while Rachel, Zoe and Helen “watched.”
Not only that, but the cops discover the knife that was used to kill Rachel, and Rachel’s nails — which were taken from the body inside Lexy’s house. Richard gets arrested on suspicion of working with his wife to kill Rachel, Helen, and Zoe, despite protesting that he didn’t do anything.
So that’s it, right? Case closed. This, by the way, is at about the 15-minute mark in the episode… And there’s 20 or so minutes to go. So yeah, there’s more to come. Let’s get into it, because what Anna lays out is not what actually happened. At all.
His & Hers Ending Explained:
One year later, not only is Anna back in the anchor seat, but she’s also pregnant. She and Jack have gotten back together, and adopted Meg (Ellie Rose Sawyer), Zoe’s daughter. They’re happy, their trauma behind them, and are ready to be a family again. They’re headed off on a weekend trip to visit Anna’s mom. We discover that Richard has signed an NDA, and Anna is being courted by the Today Show, so everything is going just great.
I should note at this point that throughout the show, Anna has been narrating in bits and pieces. The implication is that Anna has been hiding secrets, and we’re hearing her thoughts about everything that’s been going on.
It’s not Anna, and it’s not what she’s thinking. It’s Alice, leading them down the rabbit hole… Which Anna discovers when she finds a long letter from her mother. While Alice is outside entertaining Jack and Meg, Anna reads the letter, and the narration changes from Tessa Thompson’s voice, to Crystal Fox’s… Because what we’ve been hearing the whole series long is Alice’s confession letter.
“My mother used to say, the more you do something, the easier it gets,” reads the note. “I suppose the same rule applies… To killing people.”
Bum-ba-BUM.
So, here’s what really happened. A few years earlier, Anna and Jack were out on a date, leaving their daughter Charlotte with Alice. While taking care of the baby, she died of “crib death” — aka, it was nobody’s fault, but the horrible accident tore Jack and Anna apart, and sent them both spiraling.
When Anna disappeared, Alice — who used to love watching her on TV — spent time watching Anna’s self-tapes from when she was 16, video tapes up in her room played on an old video camera which she used to practice being a TV reporter. Alice used to “treat” herself to five minutes a night. The other thing Alice did was wait for Anna by Charlotte’s grave. One night when she fell asleep there, she woke up suddenly to discover Jack and Rachel were hooking up in his truck in the woods by the cemetery.
She didn’t do anything with that info yet. And over the course of six months, Alice watched through all the tapes, until only the tape from Anna’s 16th birthday party remained. Alice didn’t know what was on it, but quickly discovered it’s not what Anna told Jack it was… Catherine Kelly was initially attacked by the men, but actually ran off into the woods, leaving Anna behind. Meanwhile, Anna was raped by the men on a dirty mattress as Rachel, Zoe, and Helen watched and sang “Happy Birthday” to her while they videotaped the whole thing.
Horrified, Alice made a decision: to get revenge. On the anniversary of Charlotte’s death, as we saw in the premiere, Anna returned and saw Jack and Rachel having sex in his truck. But Alice was also watching. She slashed Rachel’s tires, approached her through the rain, and then stabbed her to death on the hood of her car.
“Whoever said two wrongs don’t make a right lacked imagination and a sharp knife,” Alice explains. “No one expects a woman to be a serial killer. Add the sin of old age. Mistake determination for dementia. There I am. The picture of frailty.”
So yeah, Alice not only killed Rachel, but also faked her dementia so the suspicion would be off her. She purposefully wandered naked through the streets of town, she purposefully put eggshells in the eggs, all so no eyes would be on her.
There’s one other important detail here: throughout the show, the other girls always teased Anna because her mother was a cleaning woman. Guess where she cleaned? Catherine Kelly’s house. The school where Helen worked. And Zoe’s house. She had the keys to all of these places, and as Alice notes, people like her are “ignored, year after year after year. Same locks. Same doors. Same keys.”
Alice goes on to explain she didn’t intend to kill Catherine/Lexy, she was just going to frame her for Rachel’s murder… She thought sending her to prison for abandoning Anna was fair trade, “and I needed a killer for a juicy story.” She knew Anna would be safe, because Jack would protect her. And though she didn’t plan on Pirya shooting Lexy, she also wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.
Alice’s real goal, beyond revenge? Getting Jack and Anna back together. “Killing Rachel brought you home. Killing Helen kept you here. And killing Zoe gave you the family you lost.”
The letter ends with Alice explaining that with a new child on the way, it’s important that Anna take care of her grandbabies, and teach them the importance of “hard work. And planning.” Scenes of happiness, like the birth of Charlotte and Anna’s first day at college are interspersed with scenes of Alice planning and executing the murders, as she continues to explain that a mother’s love is “constant… Continual… Relentless.”
Back in the present, Alice and Anna lock eyes, and Anna is crying… Until her expression locks into a proud and steely half-grin. It’s pretty clear that Anna knows what Alice did for her and her family, and while we don’t know for sure that she won’t give her up… Chances are, she will not.
So yeah: Lexy murdered her sister back in the day, but had nothing to do with the current murders. Neither did Jack, or Anna. It was Alice, all along. Try and match those final twenty minutes, any other show in 2026.
Will There Be A His & Hers Season 2 On Netflix?
There almost definitely won’t be a second season of His & Hers on Netflix, but never say never? It’s definitely too early to say either way as the show just debuted on the streamer as of the posting of this article. Normally Netflix won’t make any sort of renewal announcement until at least the first month’s streaming numbers have come in, at which point it can take a while to make sure all the creative and financial stuff is lined up (unless they’ve already soft picked it up for another season).
The reason we say “almost definitely” not is that the series is based on the book by Alice Feeney, and there’s no sequel to the novel. Everything is also wrapped up tightly for Anna and Jack, as well as the central mystery, and they’ve put their trauma behind them.
…But also we’ve seen time and again that hit one-season series suddenly continue once they’re hits. Look no further than Big Little Lies on HBO, which also was based on a novel with no sequel, and is prepping a third season. So if the folks want it enough, perhaps Anna and Jack will be in action, sooner rather than later. Though how they’ll match that twist for a second season seems… Impossible.
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Hey! Can you tell me if the suicide scene is in? Its a trigger for me and I would like to know before watching. Thank you!
Oh gosh. I’ll be honest, I watched this about three months ago, so I don’t remember it fully, but I don’t remember the suicide scene you’re referring to? Sorry if that’s not helpful.