The double-twist ending of Behind Her Eyes explained

Warning: This post contains several spoilers about Behind Her Eyes.

BEHIND HER EYES, from left: Eve Hewson, Tom Bateman, (Season 1, ep. 104, aired Feb. 17, 2021). photo: ©Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection
(Image credit: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo)

The Behind Her Eyes ending had everything thrown at it: sex, drugs, an affair with a difference and a very trippy dalliance with dream manipulation and astral projection. Nope, we didn't see that coming, either. 

When the six-episode Netflix series started, it was reminiscent of one of those 90s sexy adult thrillers. There's the good-looking but ultimately doomed couple (David and Adele) and a lot of sexual tension; a single mum battling her own demons (Louise) who becomes romantically linked to David before becoming thrown into an offbeat friendship with Adele. Louise tells neither of them about their respective relationships and so begins a tangled web of lies while a brooding David keeps Adele heavily medicated and Louise tries to unravel the couple's dark past.

However, not even Louise could ever have imagined just how dark things would get, nor how blurred the lines between the good guys and the bad guys would become.

As for those secrets, rewind a few years and Adele's parents died in fire at their mansion. Miraculously David, a student at the time, managed to get Adele out unharmed. So did David start the fire in order to get his hands on Adele's family money?

Tom Bateman, who plays David, told marieclaire.com: "I think he's a guy that has found himself throughout his life in situations where there are only bad outcomes. And invariably someone who lives a life like that is constantly going to look like a bad person because they are making bad decisions... But I don't think that he's a person that would have started a fire."

Ok, but if David's this decent guy then why is he so awful to Adele, monitoring her whereabouts and forcing her to take pills every morning?

Tom continues in the interview: "They're both of them in a very, very awful, poisonous relationship. But I still think there are moments where he did still love her. He talks about it as well. In the script, David has lots of lines: 'Adele used to be this. We used to laugh so much. We haven't laughed in ages.' And it's hard to let that go."

And then [drumroll please] we hit on episode six. Via flashback, we learn that Adele taught Rob, the heroin-using friend she met in rehab, how to astrally project into other locations. Rob, now fully enamoured with Adele's wealthy lifestyle, suggests they try to project their souls into each other's bodies. It works and Rob (who is now Adele) kills Adele (who is now Rob).

And the body-swapping doesn't end there as Rob who is now Adele tries to kill herself in a fire on finding out about David's affair with Louise and the involvement of the police in recovering the body. Louise rushes to save Adele's life but an ill-fated attempt at soul swapping means Rob then becomes Louise, while the real Louise, who is trapped in Adele's body, is killed via a heroin overdose.

Confused yet?

What we will say is, David, who at one point seemed the master manipulator and abuser, turns unexpectedly into a sympathetic character. While the new Louise is the stuff of nightmares. And that definitely wasn't on the cards.

Fiona Embleton

Fiona Embleton is a multi-award-winning beauty editor who has tested over 10,000 products in her 10 years +  of writing and shooting beauty stories. For the past four years, she was the Senior Beauty Editor at Marie Claire, having previously worked in the role of Beauty Editor at both Stylist and Cosmopolitan. She has recently gone freelance and alongside My Imperfect Life, she has written for titles including ELLE UK, ELLE Canada, Buro 247, Harper's Bazaar Arabia, Vogue Scandinavia, and ES Magazine. Beauty journalism allowed her to marry up her first-class degree in English Literature and Language (she’s a stickler for grammar and a self-confessed ingredients geek) with a passion for make-up and skincare, photography, and catwalk trends. She loves jumping on the latest internet-breaking beauty news, dissecting the best red carpet looks, and having the crème de la crème of dermatologists, make-up artists, and hairstylists on speed dial so she can tap them for the best advice. She’s a discerning beauty shopper and knows it can be confusing trying to navigate what’s hype and what really works. So if she really likes something, you can trust that she has reached that opinion by vetting it against everything else she’s ever tried. Her career highs? Interviewing Cate Blanchett and winning a Jasmine Award for the deeply personal feature Cancer Stole My Mother’s Scent.