Secrets We Keep’s ending is all about Cecilie finding out if the person who raped Ruby and the one who killed her are one and the same or not. So, on one hand, you have Cecilie, her husband, Mike, their son, Viggo, their daughter, Vera, and their Filipino au pair, Angel. And on the other, you have Katarina, her husband and Mike’s boss, Rasmus, their son, Oscar, and their au pair, Ruby. After a dinner party, Ruby approached Cecilie, asking for help regarding some problem she was having with her host family. But Cecilie didn’t want to intervene in her neighbor’s family matters, and about 24 hours later, Ruby was nowhere to be found. A few weeks later, Ruby’s dead body was discovered, and it was proven without a shadow of a doubt that she was pregnant at the time of death. Since Cecilie came across a discarded pregnancy test kit near Rasmus’ house, she assumed that he was the guilty party. Then she discovered the texts that had been exchanged between Mike and Ruby, and given how Mike had raped a girl in the past, she assumed Mike was guilty. However, after Viggo exposed Oscar for sharing a video of Ruby where she was naked, and also for showing a video where Oscar had raped Ruby, Cecilie wanted Oscar behind bars. Unfortunately, the road to that outcome was not as black and white as she expected. Why? Well, allow me to do a scene-by-scene breakdown of the finale to explain that, and also because that’ll help me exorcise all the dark thoughts I had after watching that episode of Secrets We Keep.
Spoiler Alert
Katarina Destroyed Video Evidence
Once it became obvious that the nanny cam had been used by Oscar to shoot that nude video of Ruby, the first thing that Katarina did was destroy the original footage that was on the memory card of said nanny cam. She knew that police officer Aicha would come for it one way or another, and she wanted to ensure that Aicha didn’t have any actual evidence to prove that that video of Ruby had been shot by Oscar on a device that belonged to his family. I mean, seeing Katarina do all that with that smug expression on her face, and also reprimand Aicha for harassing her family because of some vague insinuations of sexual assault, made my blood boil. And then she had the audacity to scold Cecilie for complaining to the police because Oscar had “allegedly” shown some sexually explicit material to Viggo, while reminding her how she had supported Cecilie during her darkest hours.
A couple of things that I want to point out here. If your son is a rapist, and you are defending such a heinous crime, you are officially one of the worst mothers of all time. You have lost the right to speak about how any other mother in the world is bringing up their children. You should shut the hell up, think about where you went wrong, and spend the rest of your miserable life trying to make your son a better person (even though it’s impossible for a rapist to redeem oneself). A woman like Katarina giving her son a free pass after he assaulted another woman, Ruby, might seem unrealistic. You might even be inclined to call it contrived because the showrunners just want to chastise men and the mothers that raise them (that’s not a criticism I’m pulling out of the void; it’s something that was brought up by people who watched Adolescence). But if you read up on all the rape cases that happen on the daily, which is unfortunate in and of itself, and focus on female family members coming to the defense of the perpetrator(s), you won’t find the portrayal of Katarina to be a stretch.
DNA Test Proved Oscar Assaulted Ruby
Once the forensics department compared the DNA of the unborn fetus in Ruby’s dead body to Rasmus’ DNA and found a 24.1 percent match, it was really obvious that Oscar (hence the partial match) had raped Ruby. When news of that went out, Oscar essentially broke into Cecilie’s house and claimed that what he had done was right because his family was paying Ruby to “love him.” Cecilie was too stunned to react, but thankfully Mike arrived at the right time to take the rapist back to his home, where Rasmus ambushed Mike, demanding to know how they should proceed with this matter legally in order to save Oscar. You know there’s this common criticism that’s brought up, mostly by men, when it comes to rape cases: “Where’s the evidence? Proof or it didn’t happen.” The problem with that stance, as shown really aptly in Secrets We Keep, is that as long as the law is being defined and interpreted by conscienceless men to protect other conscienceless men, the existence of evidence can’t do jack. Despite its boring storytelling, another Scandinavian noir released earlier this year, The Breakthrough, managed to show that forensic technology has become advanced enough to point the police and the judiciary in the right direction. What they do with that information is a whole other story. And after all that, it boils down to morality and ethics.
I mean, Rasmus’ knee-jerk reaction to proof that his son has raped somebody, and that the victim has died by suicide (for reasons I’m coming to in a bit), is, “How can we get things to play out in our favor?” If a father doesn’t want his son to face the consequences of his actions, that son can get lifetime imprisonment and not feel an ounce of guilt because his parents have acquitted him of any wrongdoing. You can hear the arrogance in Oscar’s voice when he tells Cecilie that Ruby deserved what she got because she apparently broke some unwritten clause of “loving him” unconditionally. Where does he get that hubris from? His parents, of course. Yeah, it’s easy to blame the internet for everything. However, if your parents are refuting DNA-based evidence, you can go around claiming that you have the right to rape and walk away unscathed. In addition to that, I have to mention that Oscar’s whole body language made me almost combust in anger. There’s something so casually sinister about him, his shark-like dead eyes, his weird posture—it’s all too off-putting. You truly have to be soulless to love a son like that. BTW, this is an appreciation of Frode Bilde Ronsholt’s performance.
Blame Games and Some Shame
When Rasmus told Katarina that not only was Oscar going to be sent to boarding school, but they had to attend the funeral ceremony that the Filipino community was holding for Ruby, Katarina was livid because she saw that as a sign that they were “accepting defeat.” Yeah, ever since she was confronted about her son’s actions in that parent-teacher meeting, where she punched a teacher for speaking ill about the apple of her eye, she has been treating this whole thing as a competition. It wasn’t enough that Oscar was not going to face the legal consequences of his actions; she wanted to dunk on all those who had pointed fingers at her family as well. She ignored the fact that it was her horrible parenting that had contributed to Oscar’s cruel mindset and blamed Rasmus for being an absent father.
Meanwhile, Rasmus claimed that he had given Katarina everything she needed to look after Oscar in his absence, as he was too busy making up for the losses he had incurred in his business, and she had failed to do the bare minimum. But they refused to acknowledge how they behaved in front of Oscar. We heard the racist venom and sexist bile they spewed during a casual soiree. So, we can only imagine the stuff they said when nobody else was listening. And they assumed that that wouldn’t have an effect on their son? Well, the only good outcome of this whole situation was that the very people, the Filipino community, that Katarina and her family abused and demeaned got to chase her and Rasmus out of the church they had arrived at to “pay their respects” to Ruby. Upper-class folks who rely on immigrants to get the job done always think that they’re doing the working class a favor, and hence, they have the right to look down on them at all times. First of all, it’s a transactional relationship; nobody is doing charity, and nobody is working for free. Secondly, just because the dynamic is transactional, it doesn’t mean there can’t be love and respect in that bond. Thirdly, love and respect are two-way streets; you can only buy them up to a certain extent. After that, you get what you deserve. Of course, Katarina and Rasmus deserved something much worse than some public shaming, but the fact that they had to exit the house of God all red-faced was pretty satisfying.
Mike Supported Oscar
A twist that I didn’t see coming was the revelation that Mike was willing to prove in court that since Oscar was a minor and Ruby was an adult, the latter had raped Oscar. Then what? She just decided to die by suicide because Oscar didn’t want to bring up that child or give her the money that she needed to raise it? That didn’t matter. All that Rasmus wanted Mike to prove was that Oscar was the victim, not Ruby. Aicha was shocked when she learned that Oscar’s lawyer was taking this route, which was why the police had no option but to suspend further investigation. But why was Cecilie surprised? This is a woman who had married a guy who had raped a girl when he himself was a juvie. Whoever defended Mike proved that he sexually assaulted a girl because he was high and didn’t know what he was doing. Of course, when the time arrived, he’d do the same. So, when Mike decided to interpret the law in a way that benefited his boss, Rasmus, and his boss’ son, Oscar, why was Cecilie so flabbergasted?
Sure, I, as the audience, could express astonishment at a father’s decision to disparage his own son Viggo’s testimony about the video that Oscar had shown him, where he saw Oscar raping Ruby. Why the hell was Cecilie astonished? She thought of herself as this smart, all-knowing girlboss who knew everything about how the world worked. Yet she couldn’t see a former rapist coming to the defense of a current rapist? I accept dumb people acting dumb, but when self-proclaimed shrewd people act dumb, it really grinds my gears. Just to be clear, I am appalled that Mike, who said that he was a reformed man who had put his sordid history in the rearview mirror, was protecting a criminal. But I am equally angry that Cecilie married such a man, brought two more people with his genes into this world, and continued to live with him after he showed his true colors. The ladies who gave their lives so that women like Cecilie could have access to basic rights would be ashamed if they saw them with men like Mike. Whatever you do, girls, don’t be like Cecilie. I don’t have any words of advice for the boys, especially those who think and act like Mike.
Cecilie Fired Angel
There are two ways to see the scene where Cecilie fired Angel. For the first interpretation, I am going to assume that Mike had managed to convince Cecilie that Ruby had in fact raped Oscar, blackmailed him, and then, for some reason, died by suicide (yes, I am coming to that in a bit). Hence, she was legitimately afraid that Angel, who had lied on her resume about not having a son, even though she did have one, and had taken money from Viggo, would one day rape Viggo and then extort her host family. So, before that happened, Cecilie decided to cut her ties with Angel and made sure that she went back to the Philippines so that she was as far away as possible from Viggo. Based on that reading, you can see Cecilie unjustly punishing Angel while having this superiority complex that she was actually doing her au pair a favor.
For the second interpretation, I am going to assume that Cecilie felt that there was a chance that Viggo would try to rape Angel one day. If that happened, Mike would come to Viggo’s rescue, and Cecilie wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she had to defend her son for sexually assaulting a woman. By firing Angel, Cecilie was safeguarding her from a potentially bad situation. Cecilie knew that her son had been exposed to all the stuff that Oscar was seeing. She was aware of the fact that her son had his father’s (a rapist) genes. Therefore, she didn’t want to burden herself with the responsibility of looking after Viggo and also worrying about Angel’s safety. But what does that say about Cecilie as a person? Well, to me, she comes off as weak, and she projected that onto Angel. Women like Angel had faced situations much worse than whatever Denmark had in store for them. Whatever the reason may be for Cecilie’s decision, she’d ruined Angel’s prospects of scripting a bright future for herself and her child. If she’d imparted the right lessons to Viggo, if she’d stood by Angel, and if she’d ensured that Mike or Rasmus had no effect on the family, that would’ve been a show of resilience and strength. The route that Cecilie opted for just proved that she didn’t have a spine. All her displays of solidarity for the Filipino community were a charade. When it comes down to it, she’ll do what her husband wants her to while convincing herself that she’s doing it for everyone else’s benefit.
Katarina Killed Ruby
In Secrets We Keep’s ending, Katarina practically admitted to Cecilie that Ruby hadn’t killed herself; she had been murdered by Katarina. Ruby had told Katarina that she had been raped by Oscar. In order to save her son from a police case, Katarina killed her and then dumped her body in the docks. Katarina and Rasmus apparently even had a verbal spat over the whole thing, but then they decided to feign ignorance until the police had nothing that they could use against Oscar. Well, their plan worked. Oscar was not jailed. Nobody suspected Katarina of any foul play. Rasmus was free to go back to save his dying business. No one was going to believe Cecilie even if she told Aicha that Katarina had killed Ruby, and the guilt that her advice to Ruby to talk to Katarina about her problems got her murdered will eat Cecilie from the inside. The villains won, just like they do in real life. And the first thought that crossed my mind while watching this scene was that it’s better to not be born at all or be an orphan than to have a mother like Katarina.
I mean, kudos to Danica Curcic for making me scream in frustration due to her pitch-perfect portrayal of Katarina’s slimy, grotesque, and just downright evil personality. But maybe I’m in the minority here. Maybe men like Rasmus want a wife like Katarina, and boys like Oscar want a mother like her, because they know that she’s willing to take the feminist movement back to the dark ages by literally murdering the woman who is a “threat” to her family. I don’t know if Katarina suffers from a severe case of internalized misogyny or if she is a straight-up psychopath, but the prospect that women like her are out there, protecting men by hurting other women, makes me shudder. It’s one thing to be ignorant about the crimes that the men in your family are committing; it’s completely different to be aware of said crimes and protect them from the consequences of their actions.
The ending of this miniseries is so infuriating (intentionally so) that I have to cope with it by dreaming that, one day or the other, Rasmus’ business will crumble, Katarina will lose her mind, and Oscar will be bullied into oblivion in the boarding school (bullying is not okay, but bullying a rapist is perfectly fine, in my opinion). I don’t know if the real-life counterparts of Rasmus, Katarina, and Oscar will ever face such an outcome; all I can do is dream that they will. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t marry and/or have kids until the world (and the internet) has been rid of the men and women who endorse crimes such as rape. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the ending of Secrets We Keep. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
