Netflix’s new miniseries, His & Hers, starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal, is a steamy, twisty, entertaining whodunit. From the title and how the show unfolds, the idea is to nudge the audience to suspect the protagonists—Anna, a news anchor, and Jack Harper, a small-town detective. Anna had been away from home for almost a year, and the moment she returned to Dahlonega, there was a murder! Jack too wasn’t as innocent as he hoped to portray; he had secrets he’d been hiding from his partner at the department, Priya, that he knew would present him as one of the primary suspects. So, were Anna and Jack involved in Rachel’s murder? And if so, what was their motive? Let’s get into the details.
Spoiler Alert
Who Was The Serial Killer?
The first half of the final episode of His & Hers will have you convinced the killer was Lexy, the news anchor who took over Anna’s job, and was one of Anna’s childhood friends who was almost unrecognizable after a glow-up (even Anna didn’t know that Lexy was actually her high school friend, Catherine). But during the ending of His & Hers, it is finally revealed that the actual serial killer was Anna’s mother, Alice. So, why did Alice murder Rachel, Helen, and Zoe?
Alice blamed herself for the death of her grandchild. Anna and Jack had left their daughter with Alice for a night out, and by the time they returned, they discovered that their child had succumbed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Anna struggled to cope with the death of her daughter, and one day she just left. In the time that she was away, she didn’t contact her mother and her husband. Later, when Anna and Jack finally spoke about the devastating effect the death of their child had on them, Anna explained that she often felt the pressure to move on from the incident, especially coming from Jack, even though she was clearly not ready to let it go. She, at times, even blamed Jack because that night, even though Anna thought there was something wrong with their child, Jack had insisted that she was alright. She regretted not staying back to look after her daughter, and the guilt had started to consume her. After a year, Anna finally decided to return home, and she was shocked when she saw Jack in a compromising position with her former high school friend, Rachel. Rachel was married to Clyde, but they had an open marriage, and it was gradually revealed that Rachel and her friend, Helen, explored their sadistic kink with Clyde. Now, coming back to Alice, she had a tough time coping with her daughter’s absence. Every night, she used to spend at least five minutes watching Anna’s old news reporting tapes. It was her way of feeling close to her daughter; she hoped that one day Anna might turn up at the cemetery where her daughter was buried, but she never did. Soon, Alice ran out of tapes, and she was disheartened when she discovered that her daughter had been replaced by the new anchor, Lexy Jones. Alice only had one tape left, and it was an unlabelled one. When she played it, she realized it was from Anna’s sixteenth birthday party. Anna and her friends celebrated the day in the woods, drinking alcohol and dancing to music. Alice assumed it was just a regular birthday tape before things took a dark turn.
His & Hers’ ending revealed that Anna was raped at her birthday party, and her friends had simply watched. As it turned out, Rachel was the ringleader, and she had taken sensual pictures of her friends and circulated them among older guys. They showed up at the party unannounced and attempted to force themselves on Catherine. Anna protested and tried her best to help Catherine, and while she succeeded, Catherine simply left, even though she saw the men pin Anna down. She’d begged Catherine to help her, but she’d walked away. Although Rachel was the mastermind, Helen and Zoe knew about her plan as well. Rachel was paid by the men to lure Catherine and Anna into the woods on the pretext that they’d arranged for a party. Zoe regretted not standing up for Anna, but she tried to get over her guilt by telling herself that she was too young then to tell the difference between right and wrong.
The entire incident was caught on Anna’s camera, and when Alice saw the video, she was determined to punish the girls. When she witnessed Rachel and Jack together, she became all the more resolute about her plan. Alice felt the urgency to strike when, one night, she saw her daughter walk into the woods and spotted her husband with Rachel. Alice blamed herself for Charlotte’s death, and she thought killing the girls who’d destroyed Anna’s life was just the perfect redemption arc. So, Alice came up with a plan. She struck Rachel with a knife and later stripped down and walked naked on the streets. And the reasons were simple—she wanted to get rid of the blood on her body, and she wanted the cops to assume that she was suffering from dementia.
How did Alice frame Lexy?
Alice didn’t regret her decision. Perhaps she’d convinced herself that killing her daughter’s bullies was the least she could’ve done after everything Anna had been through. She also wanted to make sure that Anna’s decision to return home wasn’t jeopardized by the presence of her former school friends/bullies. After she killed Rachel, she hunted down Helen, and it wasn’t really a challenge. Back in the day, she used to be a janitor and had the keys to most of the doors. This explains how Alice managed to break into the school where Helen was found brutally killed and also how she ended up entering Zoe’s house and murdering her in the bathtub. Since Rachel, Helen, and Zoe knew Alice, they didn’t even try to fight her, and they were killed before they could even realize what was going on. According to Alice, she hadn’t planned on murdering Lexy. Her crime was a little less serious than the rest, so Alice figured that a few years behind bars would be just right for Lexy, aka Catherine. The fact that Anna, who once used to be Catherine’s friend, didn’t recognize Lexy, but Alice did from television footage, was a bit of a stretch! Regardless, we’re expected to believe that Alice had sharp eyes and she connected the dots before anyone else could. Catherine wasn’t really an innocent teenager; she had her vices, and the series hinted at the possibility that Catherine was responsible for her sister’s death.
Alice broke into Catherine’s lake house and left a few pieces of evidence, such as Rachel’s nail clippings and the murder weapon, at her house, hoping that it was enough to lock her up in prison, but things didn’t really go according to Alice’s plan. We discover that Alice was the one who’d called the hotel where Anna and Lexy’s husband, Richard, had been staying, and cancelled their reservation by pretending to be someone from the network. She’d assumed that Richard would offer to let Anna spend the night at the lake house, and she hoped her daughter would finally realize who Lexy really was. She’d also hoped that Lexy would end up becoming the primary suspect in the case, since she too had been bullied and had pretty much revamped her identity before she started her career.
After Anna arrived at the lake house and saw the family photographs hanging on the wall, she figured out the truth. And just like Alice had hoped for, she guessed that Lexy was the serial killer. She had the motive to do it, and Anna assumed that Richard also helped her with the killings. Without giving it much of a thought, Anna pulled the trigger on Richard, but she missed her target. Anna managed to lock Richard in the basement before Lexy showed up. Anna and Lexy got into a gruesome fight, and while Lexy managed to grab hold of Anna’s gun, Jack came to Anna’s rescue (also, the gun didn’t have any bullets left). Officer Priya shot Lexy from outside the lake house; she figured Lexy was a real threat and there was no way they could get to her without putting others’ lives at risk. Later, Priya expressed her guilt over killing someone who didn’t even have bullets in her gun, but Jack encouraged her to move on, underlining that it was just a small town (quite similar to the scene in ‘Chinatown’ where private investigator Gittes was taken away from the crime scene after Evelyn was wrongfully shot and killed, and he was told, ‘Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown’).
Although Alice didn’t plan on getting Lexy killed, she didn’t feel guilty for how things turned out, because she knew that Catherine wasn’t really an angel. Clearly, Lexy wasn’t really grateful to Anna for helping her escape that night in the woods. Even though Anna literally chose to put her life at risk, for some reason, it wasn’t enough for Lexy to consider that maybe Anna was a genuinely good person. The fact that Lexy went after Anna’s job suggests that she continued to consider her a rival. Maybe that night at the lake house, she had decided to confront Anna because she wanted to let her know that she wasn’t the murderer. But she didn’t get the chance to explain herself.
How did Alice fool the cops?
Considering Lexy’s history with the murder victims, the fact that she was on the verge of killing Anna, and the evidence procured from her house, there was enough reason for the cops to come to the conclusion that Lexy was the serial killer. Alice believed that the detectives saw only what they wished to see, because the most glaring evidence that Priya and Jack failed to look into was the footprints that were found at Rachel’s murder scene. Priya looked into the bootprints, and no one really considered the coincidence that the night Alice was found walking naked on the street was the same night Rachel was killed, and there was a possibility that the two events were connected. No one really considered Alice a suspect, because she was an older woman with ‘onsetting dementia’. People assumed that her mental health was rapidly deteriorating, and that she needed help, but in reality, Alice was sharp enough to fool everyone around her and get away with murder.
For Jack, the case was too personal; he was having an affair with Rachel. The friendship bands found on both Rachel and Helen’s corpses were made by Anna when they were in high school, so naturally whoever was the murderer knew about the significance of the bands, and used them as a symbol or a reminder of their betrayal. So, Jack knew that at some point Anna would come under suspicion, and he wasn’t ready to objectively investigate the case anymore. He tried to pin the blame for the murders on Clyde, but deep down even he knew that Rachel’s husband wasn’t the killer they were after. For the longest time, Priya didn’t know about Catherine, and she assumed that it was Anna who’d killed her friends because of some past rivalry, her husband’s affair with Rachel, and maybe also to revive her career as a news anchor. The fact that Jack kept his affair a secret was enough reason for Priya to suspect her partner.
In His & Hers’ ending, Clyde had revealed that Lexy Jones, aka Catherine Kelly, had confided in Rachel about her sister’s death (the fact that she’d killed her), and later Rachel and Helen had tried to blackmail her (and hence Richard broke Rachel’s jaw, resulting in the assault and battery charge). Moreover, no one outside the group of five knew what had happened with Anna on her 16th birthday. Had Zoe told the truth to Priya, then maybe she could’ve arrived at the conclusion that Anna might not be the only one who would’ve wanted revenge, but even her mother could’ve been deeply impacted by what had happened to her daughter. The past complications and histories made it impossible for the detectives to arrive at the conclusion that maybe the killer wasn’t someone from the group.
Did Anna forgive Alice?
His & Hers fast forwards to a year after the lake house incident. Anna’s personal and professional life was on a roll. She was pregnant and hopeful about starting a future with Jack all over again. After Zoe’s death, Anna and Jack had adopted Zoe’s daughter, and the three were already a happy family. Professionally, Anna was back as the face of WSK. We also discover that Richard had agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep the details of the night away from public scrutiny.
His & Hers’ ending revealed that Alice wrote a letter for Anna, where she confessed to the killings (the narrator’s voice changes in the end; what seemed to be Anna’s POV, or even Lexy’s, in reality had always been Alice’s). Anna’s expression revealed that she was shocked at first, but she was extremely moved by the lengths her mother was willing to go to see her happy. It can be assumed that Anna will keep the truth to herself, because she probably didn’t believe that her mother had done anything wrong. Yes, murdering her bullies was extreme, but she did it out of love, and Anna didn’t intend to punish her mother. Alice believed that what she did was the reason why Anna chose to stay in her hometown, rekindle her relationship with her husband, and build a future with him. It is quite evident that Anna was grateful to her mother, and well, they lived happily ever after! Hopefully, history will not repeat itself. We can only hope that Anna will not be inspired by her mother to the extent that she’ll end up killing those who would dare hurt her child (and that Anna’s unborn child won’t cross paths with monsters like Rachel and Helen).
What Does The Title Of The Series Suggest?
Throughout the series, it’s repeatedly stated that there are always two versions of the truth, his & hers, ours & theirs, etc. The title as well as the ending confirms this idea of the absence of an absolute truth. Maybe most in the audience might consider Alice’s decision morally wrong, but in Alice’s eyes, she did the right thing. Similarly, Anna choosing to never disclose the truth could appear objectively wrong, but she believed it was only fair, because whatever her mother did, she did out of her love for her child. Anna will likely never confess what had happened on her 16th birthday or that her mother was the killer, because these truths would only destroy the future that she so eagerly wanted to build. There also remains the possibility that if Jack found out that Anna was raped, he would do everything in his power to track down the men and seek revenge. Additionally, Jack might decide to go after Alice for killing Zoe. So, hiding the truth might just be Anna’s way of ending the vicious cycle of revenge and starting her life afresh in Dahlonega.
