Netflix’s Secrets We Keep, is the kind of series that makes you think about various aspects of parenting, how to create a safe and nurturing environment for young minds, how to set moral boundaries, and how to make sure that a child does not fall prey to problematic behavioral tendencies. The story follows the life of two elite families, belonging to a wealthy neighborhood in Denmark, and how they found themselves stuck in a mess. Ruby, a Filipino, who had come to Denmark in search of a better life, went missing, and nobody had any clue what happened to her. So, let’s find out what happened to Ruby, and if she escaped of her own free will or if something has happened to her.
Spoiler Alert
What happened to Ruby?
The concept of having an au pair might sound quite colonial to some, but it was a common practice among the elites of Zealand in Denmark. But then one day, an au pair, Ruby, who lived with Katarina and Rasmus, a well-known couple from a wealthy business family, went missing. It was suspected that the host family might have had a role to play in the disappearance, but obviously nobody said anything explicitly because, at the end of the day, Rasmus was an influential man, and people knew the kind of hold he had over the system. Before we talk about the aftermath of the disappearance and the theories the local police came up with, let’s go back and find out what strange events led to the disappearance of Ruby. So, a day before Ruby went missing, Katarina was supposed to dine with her neighbor and good friend, Cecilie. Cecilie was good friends with Katarina, and her husband, Mike, worked together with Rasmus. Actually, Rasmus’ company was one of the top clients of Mike’s law firm, and moreover, they had a lot of mutual respect and love for each other. Rasmus always said that he respected Mike because of the kind of work ethic he had, which the former said was only possible when a man didn’t come from money. Mike had built his own empire, and he knew the kind of sacrifices he’d had to make to get there. Cecilie was well aware of the kind of dynamic her husband had with their neighbors, so she was always very cautious about what she said about them. So that day, when Katarina had come over to Cecilie’s house, Ruby had told Cecilie that she wanted to talk to her in confidence. Ruby said that she needed help and that she no longer wanted to work for Rasmus and Katarina. Cecilie didn’t want to interfere in the matter and so told Ruby to talk directly to Katarina. Cecilie didn’t want to cross the boundaries and make her neighbors feel that she was interfering in their business. But she didn’t know that Ruby actually needed help and that she felt that her life was in danger. The very next day, it came to be known that Ruby was missing, and nobody knew if she had left the country and gone back to the Philippines or if something had happened to her.
Cecilie felt guilty, as she knew that she was partly responsible for what had happened. I mean, if she wouldn’t have cared about her rapport with her neighbors, if she would have had the courage to go and confront Katarina about what was happening, then probably Ruby would have been safe. Firstly, Rasmus and Katarina didn’t report the matter for a really long time, and they pretended as if nothing big had happened. Their nonchalance bothered Cecilie way too much, and somewhere it made her feel that they had a role to play in Ruby’s disappearance. There were certain things that led Cecilie to have her doubts about Rasmus, and no matter what Mike told her, she was just not able to believe that her husband’s influential client was innocent. Just a day prior to the incident, Cecilie was driving back to her place when she saw Ruby dumping something in the trash can. She went to check the trash can the next night after Ruby’s disappearance, and she was surprised when she found a pregnancy test kit inside it. She suspected that Rasmus had forced himself on the girl, and when she would have felt threatened to inform the authorities, he would have done something. But the reality was far from what Cecilie thought. Though Cecilie never confronted Rasmus directly, the latter felt a bit pressured because he was well aware of what she thought of him. Rasmus talked to Mike a few times, and he asked him to reign his wife in. Mike also spoke to Cecilie and told her that she was wrong in thinking that their neighbors had anything to do with the issue. But Cecilie just couldn’t ignore her intuition, and as a result of it, Rasmus finally informed the police about the disappearance.
Was Mike having an affair with Ruby?
At first, Cecilie suspected Rasmus’ intentions, but then, after being questioned by Aicha Peterson, the detective in charge of the case, she started doubting her husband’s motives too. Her reasons for suspecting Mike of having something to do with Ruby’s disappearance were that he had already committed a crime when he was a minor. Mike came from a broken home, and he didn’t realize when he went down the wrong path. Mike had raped a girl as a minor and had served time in juviefor it. Maybe due to the circumstances, the judge was sympathetic towards him, and fortunately, Mike was one of those lucky few who got a chance to bring his life back on track. Mike went on to study law, but the ghosts of his past kept haunting him. Cecilie told Aicha that Mike had come back home on that day, just an hour after Katarina left her place. But that detail was not true. Cecilie had taken sleeping pills, and she had no clue when Mike had come back. The fact that she had lied to Aicha ate her up from within. Cecilie checked Mike’s phone, and she found out that he’d been texting Ruby, and apparently one time they had gone out together for coffee. Mike tried to put her mind at ease, and he told her how he bumped into her when he was taking Viggo, their son, to school for practice. He said that she had come with Oscar and Katarina, and since they had a lot of time on their hands, they decided to go out and grab a bite.
One thing that was commendable about Cecilie was that she was not scared to speak the truth. She knew the consequences of going against somebody like Rasmus, but still, she was quite stubborn about doing what she felt was right. There were times when Mike didn’t understand why she was so adamant about ruining their relationship with Rasmus and his family over such a trivial matter. What angered Cecilie even more was the fact that everybody pretended as if nothing had happened. Yes, Ruby was an au pair, but she was still a human at the end of the day. They made fun of the entire issue and cracked quite offensive jokes, which Cecilie didn’t appreciate at all. All of them were sitting together when Rasmus made a really derogatory and racist remark about Ruby that was supposed to be taken as a joke. That was the moment in Secrets We Keep when Cecilie became a bit suspicious about Mike. She had a very ugly fight with Mike, who got really disappointed in his wife for doubting his intentions. Mike said that he had done something in the past for which he had been punished and that it was unfair to hold it against him. He told Cecilie that she had no clue how it felt to wake up every day with a feeling of embarrassment and guilt. Days later, Ruby’s body was found floating in the water, and through the forensics report, it came to be that she’d been pregnant. Mike knew that the only way to shut down all the baseless claims was to get a DNA test done. The result came, and it proved that Mike was not lying about his innocence. After the test, Mike tried to make Cecilie feel guilty for not trusting him, and he somehow posed as the victim. Cecilie felt ridiculed, and she told her husband that he should be ashamed of playing the victim card just because he had to get DNA tested. She reminded him that a woman had been raped and probably murdered, and so he should stop cribbing about every little thing and making himself feel as if he were the only victim there.
What happened to Ruby?
Since the very beginning of Secrets We Keep, one thing that was pretty evident was that Oscar, Katarina and Rasmus’ son, was up to something. From the way he looked at Aicha when she came to his house for the very first time, to what he did in his free time, everything raised questions about his intentions. If somebody would have observed properly, it wouldn’t have taken them long to find out that Oscar was not doing well mentally. Maybe the fights his parents had and the lack of attention that he got had an impact on his subconscious mind. He was at an impressionable age when he was experiencing a lot of changes physically. I wouldn’t say that he understood everything that he was going through, and the kind of friends he had didn’t help his cause even one bit. He didn’t realize when he developed problematic sexual behaviors, which had a detrimental impact on his mental well-being. He had all the resources in the world, which made it easy for him to violate someone’s privacy. We saw how he used his drone to capture people in compromising situations. Moreover, Oscar, together with Viggo and 3-4 other guys, had a group where they all posted explicit content. They all, to some extent, felt the peer pressure to keep posting stuff to prove that they were worthy of being a part of the group. There were times when Oscar put pressure on Viggo to do the same.
Viggo had a sense of what was right and what was wrong. I wouldn’t say that Viggo was a late bloomer, but he was still in his pre-pubescent stage, and so he didn’t feel curious or start to think about that world of dark fantasies. He couldn’t speak up for himself because he was scared of what Oscar would do to him. Oscar had a hidden nanny cam installed in Ruby’s room, and he used it to record her in compromising situations. Moreover the boy had recorded the entire act where he had forced himself on her and raped her. Oscar showed that video to Viggo and threatened to kill him if he told anybody about it. If Oscar would have kept it a secret, then I don’t think that anybody would have gotten wind of it. We need to understand how his mind was functioning at that point in time and how troubled he was, even if he himself wasn’t aware of it. Oscar was not born with problematic sexual behaviors, but his environment triggered something inside him because of which he became like that. We were never told what exactly he saw at his home, but I presume that he might have seen Rasmus crossing the line and treating Katarina in an abusive manner. His father was too busy with his work, and his mother was just not in the right state of mind, I believe, to take the responsibility of a child. That said, I do not mean that they didn’t love their kid, but I believe that just providing love and care is never enough. Raising a child is a huge responsibility, and if not done properly, it can ruin lives.
A child’s mind is like a blank canvas, and one needs to be extremely careful, as even the lightest stroke of a brush can have the deepest impact. After Rasmus volunteered to get a DNA test done, it became pretty clear that Oscar was the one who had raped Ruby. Now, at the time of taking the decision to get tested, Rasmus had no clue that Oscar had done something like that. I believe Rasmus must have hated himself for volunteering to get his DNA test done, as otherwise the police wouldn’t have been able to force him to do it. Anyways, all those years of neglect had led to the boy becoming a sexual predator, and moreover, a young lady had lost her life because of it. Ruby had her entire life planned in front of her, but everything was destroyed in a matter of seconds.
Did Katrina confess to killing Ruby?
I believe it was Katarina who figured out what had happened and decided to kill her. Katarina was a proud mother, and she felt that by killing an innocent girl, just to save her child’s future and family’s reputation, she had done something great. She and even Rasmus didn’t understand that it was their fault that Oscar had developed such problematic behavior. They didn’t understand that just getting him admitted to a good school and giving him everything he asked for didn’t mean that their job was done.
Katarina very proudly told Cecile, while standing on the pier, that she had taken care of the matter, as problems did not get solved on their own. I believe Ruby made the one last call to Katarina, before meeting her fateful end. I believe that when Cecilie told Ruby to talk to Rasmus and Katarina she would have felt that it was a risk worth taking, as the poor girl didn’t know what else to do. Katarina would have realised the gravity of the matter and how it could absolutely ruin her child’s future. So she must have decided to murder Ruby and make it look like an accident. That said, I believe Katarina did deal a severe blow to Ruby’s head. But then, once again, luck favoured her, as Ruby’s entire body grew bloated because it was in the water for such a long time. The forensics experts noticed that Ruby had an injury mark on her head but due to the lack of evidence and the circumstances, they weren’t able to ascertain if it was due to the fall or if she had been assaulted before she fell into the water.
Katarina was well aware of the kind of contacts her husband had and she must have felt that the law enforcement authorities wouldn’t be able to prove anything. But Katarina was not a hardened criminal. She didn’t know what to do with Ruby’s belongings and if it could help the authorities uncover the truth. But later, after the detective made visits to her home, Katarina cleared everything from Ruby’s room, as she knew that once the former got a warrant she wouldn’t be able to touch a thing. I do believe that Katarina killed Ruby and then destroyed the evidence to cover her tracks and not let the truth come out in the open.
Will Rasmus pin all the blame on Ruby?
There is no doubt about the fact that Rasmus would make sure that Oscar didn’t get convicted, and that he would make use of the loopholes in the legal system. Ruby had died, and moreover, there was no evidence to prove that Oscar had forced himself on her. In fact, it was easier to prove that Ruby was the one who had taken advantage of Oscar since the latter was a minor. Amidst everything that had happened, somehow the rich class always managed to victimize themselves, even when it was blatantly clear who was the one who was being oppressed. On many occasions, Rasmus and Katarina spoke about how these young girls from the Philippines came and tried to take advantage of the so-called elites. I mean, what harm could a girl who basically had nothing, who had left her entire family, bring to them? But no matter what the reality was, the narrative always favored the powerful.
Rasmus was a toxic man, and we saw how he treated Katarina and how he always used to make her feel that she was at fault. He told her that she had just one job, i.e., to look after their son, and that too she couldn’t do even that properly. Rasmus had mastered the art of gaslighting, and on almost all occasions, Katarina ended up apologizing, as apparently everything was her fault. I believe the entire toxic dynamic had a deep impact on Oscar. I don’t know why, but Oscar’s situation, his trauma, and his entire demeanor reminded me of Adam Groff from the series Sex Education, as he also felt a void due to the lack of love in his life. I believe Oscar and his entire family need therapy. They need to go and talk to an expert, as this was just the beginning, and God knows what Oscar will do or go through in the future. But I don’t think Rasmus will even care to talk about it once the case is closed. He knows that he will be able to control the narrative and suppress the case.
Meanwhile it was Angel who had to bear the repercussions of what had happened, even though she had nothing to do with the issue. Cecilie asked Angel to leave, as she became a little apprehensive about her son developing a strong bond with the latter. Cecilie didn’t want to take any risks and she fairly compensated Angel, and even gave her extra cash for her startup. Angel tried telling Cecilie that she desperately needed the job but the latter had already made up her mind. Cecilie kept telling Angel how she could seize the opportunity and spend more time with her child. But Angel told her that she didn’t know anything about her life and so she shouldn’t tell her what to do. Angel was obviously angry at being treated unfairly but she knew that ultimately she would have to accept whatever Cecilie told her.
